A Good Semibluff Against Different Styles of Players

[shipitfish]

A while back I posted about abusive use of the semibluff. As I mentioned, using it too often simply makes your opponents realize that when you raise on a draw-centric board, you usually have the draw and not a strong made hand.

The semibluff is however a powerful poker weapon when used with

Comments

[tmckearney]

That result would definitely bother me. I would understand that I'd done the right thing, but I would have to concentrate to calm myself down after that one :)

[shipitfish]

After a while, you just plain get used to it. You need a big enough
bankroll so that you don't care when you lose as a statistical favorite,
because you know you'll have future spots where you can get your money
in again like that.

[patty_bush]

How long have you been playing?

[shipitfish]

Ah, so often questions in my journal are questions that I'm going to
answer in a “long series” of posts that I'm planning out
for the future. I plan to write eventually my whole historical
introduction to poker from childhood to present day. Meanwhile,
I'll just note that I started playing poker regularly in 1991 for
micro-limits. (These were penny-ante “no limit” home
games where losing $30 in a night was generally considered a
“huge loss”.) I played regularly until late 1997, and
then didn't play again until 2003, when I started playing regularly
on a weekly basis, starting with $2/$4 limit HE and moving up from
there.

BTW, what from this post led you to ask that now?

[patty_bush]

That's pretty much the extent of the answer I was looking for

[shipitfish]

Yes, it is key not to think the way you think on their behalf. Notice
my description how I did “research” about Pappy by listening
to other players describe his hands and what he said after them about how
and why he'd folded two pair or less. Of course, Pappy could have been
lying every time, but I got the impression he wasn't once I confirmed some
with my own eyes.

I watched Mike play many times and got into his head about how he
played, particularly with his attitudes and thoughts about draws. The
most useful datum was when he felt a draw (pair plus flush draw) was
enough for him to choose to raise rather than call. He was folding no
draws at all, but knowing which ones he thought were “raising
draws” and which were “calling draws”. He had a logic
to it, and it frankly wasn't that complicated once I'd seen hundreds of
hands with him.

But, this is something that took time to carefully develop. It sounds

pappy

[anonymous]

I just like that one of the characters is named Pappy.

Re: pappy

[shipitfish]

I should note that this is how I heard his name said. It's well known that I “mishear” people's names, so I should note it could be wrong. :)