Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em

Post edited 11:18 am – February 13, 2010 by WantToLearn

I have a question about the freeze play here.

It is quite essential that the opponent doesn´t figure out what we´re doing. That´s why you tell us the play is not to be used against "smart, tricky players".

So maybe when you read my question, you´ll just tell me "see, don´t use it against smart opponents, we told you, you even found that line!"

Anyway – even players who aren´t precisly "smart" but somewhat experienced will probably exercise some kind of hand reading.

My question here is "what can we ever represent with our freeze raise on the turn"? Because, if they do some basic second level thinking and take into account our image just a little bit, they will see our stats which are probably not extremly tight and not at all passive if we read books like the one you wrote. So… the flop comes with a draw, and they expect us to certainly raise very good hands because the board is wet, and also draws as a balance and a semi-bluff. They should know we are extremly unlikely to just call the flop with any hand that´s worth committing. Why then our turn raise, from their perspective?

I went over this again and again. If the turn comes a relative brick as in your example, I feel like we´re representing only one strong hand, and that is a pocket pair that made a set on the turn. Otherwise, we must have something that doesn´t want to play for the remaining stacks. I feel this must make anybody suspicious, even if they are no experts.

Am I missing something? I mean, in case I´m correct here, maybe our villain who figures this out qualifies as "smart" and my post is pretty pointless. But that would mean the freeze raise is only good against players who don´t do any hand reading that goes beyond "um, that´s a biggish turn raise, which scares me."

Is that so?