Double Barrelling

Apparently I have a reader or two here lol. So I'm gonna post some content more often and put up an article like this from time to time.

Note on this article: It mostly applies to NL100 and above where people know where the fold button is a little more. It applies to NL25 and NL50 somewhat also, but if you are a nano stakes player, NL10/NL5/NL2, don't use this technique.

Scenario: NL200 FR (applies to 6max also). Folded to us in MP. We have 77 and raise it to $7. We get called by the button, who is a fairly standard (in today's games) weak tightish 18/5/2 type player. Flop is Q84r. This is a pretty standard Cbet spot. So we will bet 12$ into 17$ (roughly 70% of the pot). Turn comes an Ace. What should we do now?

Answer: Bet Again! There is 41$ in the pot on the turn and we bet 27$. (roughly 65% of the pot)

Reasoning: By the turn we don't really have a great hand. Just a middle pair. But it doesn't matter what our hand is anymore b/c we are going to turn our hand into a bluff. We bet the flop for value. We started with a pair and most of the time our hand is still going to be good after the flop. But when we got called on such a dry board, there is a pretty decent chance that we are behind to Qx or JJ, TT type hands, or even some SC like 98. But the key thing is here, that the overwhelming majority of the times when we are behind, villain does not have a very strong hand.

The truth about Holdem is that nobody has anything very good the vast majority of the time. The majority of pots are just sitting there, waiting to be had, while a bunch of people with marginal crap or nothing at all check it around. And then whoever has the best crap at the end wins the pot. People who win at poker, take those pots before they ever get to a showdown.

That Ace on the turn is much more scary to him than it is to us, since our hand is basically a bluff now. All those mediocre hands that are listed above in villain's range are very likely to get folded if we bet again. We have only invested 23% of our stack here (after the turn double barrel) and villain will fold almost all the time. The few times that villain flopped a monster like a set here, he will usually raise us on the turn, and sometimes just call. If villain raises, we are done with the hand. If villain calls, we don't put another penny in the pot unless the river is a 7.

ez game :)