I've just read a discussion on betting where several top players were of mixed opinions about why we bet. It came from the following argument:
We should bet when we can either get called by a weaker hand or make a stronger hand fold
I was always of the opinion that this was good advice, especially for river play. The challenge is to find an instance where this is wrong and therefore disprove the argument. I found one such instance that occurs when I was mucking about in pokerazor (as I occasionally do... and should probably do much more judging by the discoveries I often make). Counter bluffing can be profitable and does not fit the previous axiom. I ran a scenario where I wanted to test raising a river against a villain with a range that is largely bluffs. If we have a made hand but one which will never get called by weaker then raising the river is always inferior to flat calling unless villain is bluffing all of the time - when the raise equity is exactly equal to the calling equity. This is pretty obvious, if we have no equity to gain from a weaker hand calling then there's no reason to raise. This is the fundamental principle of value betting, and I knew this already. But often reraising the river still had positive expectation. So if we have no hand at all (no showdown value) then we can reraise bluff profitably. So there are situations where it's profitable to counter bluff. In this case, we're obv not value betting and our bet is not intended to fold out a stronger hand. I still think the argument is good advice though, but it should not be viewed as universal truth.
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