Archive for January 22nd, 2009

Weeks ago, I got a comment that I promised to answer in greater depth. Well, I’ve finally gotten around to it. Here was the question:

I read with interest the blog in which you say that you use AQ as a four / five bet semi bluff.

With what hands are you getting called with?

I ask, because in analyzing how to play against Harringbots, I discovered that there are some unusual hands that do well against standard Harrington hand ranges. For example, KJs is almost as good against AQ+/77+ as AQo. The benefit of playing KJs is that opponents will automatically add KQ and AJ to your range which will presumably make the AA/KK hands even more profitable. Of course, KJs does not occur as often as AQo but playing AQo 2/3 of the time and KJs 100% of the time would give you the same semi-bluff frequency.

I think this is an interesting idea, particularly because of the deception it creates. As the commenter points out, people may assume that if you showed up with KJs you will also be shoving hands like AJ and KQ. I was frankly a little surprised when I ran the numbers and saw that the equity difference between AQo and KJs vs a range of TT+ and AK (in answer to the first question, it depends on the spot, but in general my 4-bets aren’t getting called by 77-99) was less than 1%.  Read the complete post...