More pseudo game theory talk. Hand from a recent hu video of mine. I open 96o on button and get a flop of 766 rainbow. I bet and get called. Turn is 7, also bringing a flush draw. I checked turn: villain either has a 7/6/straight draw/A-high with occasional small PP or random float. So there's no value in betting turn. Checking lets him hit a pair or bluff river. Whereas there are almost no worse hands that can check/call turn.

Pretty standard I think. But what about the rest of our range. 96 is essentially AA-QQ here. 88 is a bit different because of the risk of free cards. So you can argue betting 88 for protection, but checking big (JJ+?). A 7 isn't too different, but maybe different enough to warrant a bet in a vacuum. The rest of our range is unpaired hands with SD value (say QT+), and hands with no SD value. No SD value hands gain from betting since villain will sometimes fold A high, and certainly straight draw type hands. SD value hands can also bet for protection. But SD hands can also check and try to pick off bluff or give up to a river bet.

In summary, the no SD value hands and occasional 7 gain the most from bets (44 and such). The medium strength hands like 88 A9 are strong enough to check down or pick off a bluff. The strong non-7 hands do fine by checking and betting or calling river unimproved. Should be even be betting here? Our range for betting will be really polarized, and I can't see a way to effectively merge our range (e.g. it's not like he c/c with K high vs our A high).

How do we gain more from bluffs without skewing balance? Solution is to check monsters and raise a proper proportion of our checked air hands as well as monsters. But the problem is that we rarely have a monster. Thus we can't bluff raise river too often.

The hard part is choosing correction action for hands like QJ (marginal SD value vs a river bet and some vs a check). How often do we pick off river bets with these? How often do we bet river when checked to? Playing rivers correctly is pretty tough. But with position it shouldn't be that hard. Does this balance even matter in this spot? This is a pretty rare board texture, but the ideas probably extend to similar spots. What do you think?