<When Republicans talk about parents’ rights, look for the child that is being harmed. This rule of thumb rarely fails. “Parents’ rights” is one of those phrases that sounds good on paper, encouraging people to imagine themselves — loving and protective parents who only want the power to do right by their child. But when conservatives invoke the term, their objective is to trump a child’s rights to be safe and healthy, despite what a toxic or even abusive parent wants to do to them.

That reality was revealed yet again last week, when the Supreme Court blocked a California law preventing teachers from outing trans kids to religious parents. The injunction is temporary, but most legal experts believe it is inevitable that the Christian right-favoring court will eventually rule against a child’s ability to decide when and with whom to share their gender identity — even if they fear being beaten, disowned or thrown out on the streets.

The case, known as Mirabelli v. Bonta, centers around a family who is refusing to accept their high school child’s self-identification as a boy, which, by their own account, began when he was in fifth grade. The teenager has attempted suicide, but still the plaintiffs argue that their right “to raise their child in accordance” with their “sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender” should prevail over a law protecting the child’s right to call himself by the name and pronouns of his choice at school.

For decades, Republicans have resisted efforts, both domestic and international, to favor children in conflict with parents who threaten their safety and wellbeing.

For decades, Republicans have resisted efforts, both domestic and international, to favor children in conflict with parents who threaten their safety and wellbeing. Efforts to ban physical violence against children, protect children from spiritual abuse or ensure children’s right to education are routinely undermined by Republicans in the name of parents’ rights. Now, the issue of trans rights is giving conservatives a perfect opportunity to go even further in prioritizing parental control over children’s safety.

There’s a lot of confusion around the issue, which has been aided by mainstream media outlets like the New York Times or The Atlantic giving voice to false claims that being trans is just a trend, or that it is somehow being imposed on non-consenting children. This anti-trans panic gives cover to a larger conservative effort to deprive children of basic rights.

“Schools have a duty to care,” said Imara Jones, a journalist and founder of TransLash Media. “They have to put the best interest of the child first.” As she explained to Salon, the kids protected by California’s nondisclosure law are only socially transitioning, which means using a different name and pronouns in school. It remains true that medical interventions like hormone therapy still require parental consent.

Resistance moms will save us

Conservatives are trying to reframe being trans as “a form of mental illness that is not acceptable,” Jones explained. The explicit goal of the plaintiffs in this suit is to give conservative parents the ability to compel a minor to use a name, pronouns and mode of dress the child doesn’t accept — to essentially force them back into the closet. But research is quite clear, she noted: When trans people are not allowed to openly live their gender identity, “there’s a big impact on mental health,” including increased rates of suicidality and dropping out of school.

Religious conservatives are unlikely to stop at denying trans kids the right to self-determination. As feminist journalist Jessica Valenti recently wrote in her newsletter, “it’s only a matter of time before Republicans argue teens shouldn’t have birth control at all.” The same forces opposing the rights of trans minors are pushing litigation to cut off contraception access in the name of parents’ rights, a move that would make it harder for all kids to retain access, even those that have parental approval. The Supreme Court recently went so far as to back parents who use “sincere religious beliefs” to abuse “opt-out” policies that make it impossible for teachers to use classroom books the parents don’t like.

That case especially gives the game away. When conservative parents assert a right to censor their child’s education, they are also affecting what all the other kids in the classroom are able to read. Under their logic, the views of parents who take a more accepting, expansive view of child-rearing don’t matter. In the GOP universe, the only parents who have rights are conservatives. There is no Republican support for parents who assert the right to help a trans kid get health care, take a pregnant child to an abortion clinic or stock the local library with a variety of books so a child can learn and explore on their own....>

<....On the same day the Supreme Court enjoined California’s law protecting trans kids from oppressive parents, Texas’ Republican attorney general — and a GOP candidate for Senate — Ken Paxton, insisted parents have no right to provide evidence-based mental health care for a child experiencing gender dysphoria. This came after Texas, against the advice of the medical establishment, banned doctors from prescribing physical interventions like puberty blockers for trans kids. Now Paxton has denied the rights of parents to get mental health help if the therapist follows standard psychological guidelines — which advise supporting trans youth care — in treating trans patients.

Paxton’s overheated legal opinion insists that it’s “indoctrination” and “child abuse” for a mental health professional to ever affirm a child’s trans identity. His accusation, Jones told Salon, is flat-out false.

“There are actually protocols in place for therapists to be able to walk through,” she explained. They “ask questions systematically [to] observe over time whether or not a person actually does have gender dysphoria.” Parents who offer this care and support to their children are doing the right thing. But because it offends the right, they may not be allowed to properly care for their children while living in Texas.

Even parents who don’t have a trans child should be concerned. Republicans are using the confusion around trans issues to build up case law that regards only right-wing, authoritarian parenting styles as legitimate. Children have no rights under this model. Parents who believe that children should be raised in open, accepting, inclusive homes would face serious restrictions on their ability to support their kids in their individuality, whether it’s in the books they want to read or their gender expression.

Republicans only seem to care about “religious freedom” when conservative Christians flout laws or impose their beliefs on others. But they show no concern about policies that harm other religious groups, including liberal Christians. As we’ve seen with their attacks on schools and libraries, for instance, the GOP doesn’t hold much regard for parents who believe children should have freedom to think and learn beyond what the boundaries of the right’s narrow agenda for them.

The phrase “parents’ rights” sounds good in practice. In reality, it means taking away rights from kids and parents alike who don’t agree with conservative beliefs on child-rearing.>

<Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) assured CNN host Kasie Hunt that Americans know “we can live with” higher gas prices for a time due to the Iran War.

In an interview Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) revealed that President Donald Trump had said he expects the “operation in Iran to come to a close soon.”

Hunt then pressed Jordan on the timeline.

“What does soon mean to you?” she asked.

Jordan responded with a catch-all answer evading the definition of “soon” and calling on Americans’ “common sense.”

“I don’t know for sure, but, look, we want all of the above: We want low gas prices, we want Iran not to have nuclear capability, we want this thing resolved as soon as possible,” he said. “But I think the American people have common sense, and I think they understand that to stop this regime that for 47 years has killed Americans, killed Israelis, killed others and killed a number of their own people — to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon is a worthwhile objective. And, President Trump is committed to achieving that goal, and if that means prices go up for a time, I think Americans understand, we can live with that. But in the end, we want all that to happen, and we want it all to happen in as quick a time as it possibly can.”

The price of oil increased by 10 percent on Thursday alone, with Brent crude oil reaching $100 per barrel and U.S. crude oil skyrocketing above $96.

Trump took to Truth Social to brag about the increased gas prices and reassert his objectives.

“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote. “BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping [sic] an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen!”>

What. A. Pussy.

<My hearing is lousy, so I recently decided to buy some hearing aids — very special advanced AI hearing aids that let me hear compliments extremely clearly but screen out all negative criticisms.

I’m joking, of course, to make the point that if such hearing aids were ever available, the people who bought them would discover they’re more disabled than they were when they couldn’t hear well. That’s because while we all love praise, the most important feedback we get tells us what we’re doing wrong.

Without this critical feedback, we might inadvertently insult friends, drive into oncoming traffic, walk off cliffs, make dumb mistakes on the job, or even (if we’re President), get the United States into a war without obvious end.

In other words, without critical feedback, we would totally f*** up.

But critical feedback is difficult to get even under the best of circumstances. You’re lucky if your best friend or spouse tells you your breath smells or you need a shower or you’ve got snot hanging out your nose, because almost no one else will.

The higher you go in any hierarchy or power structure, the more difficult it is to get critical feedback because you’re surrounded by people who want to please you and dare not displease.

When you have power to promote or fire them, make their lives happy or miserable, give them their heart’s desire or cast them into living hell, they’re not going to tell you that you just made a fool of yourself with a client or that your joke was tasteless or you’re behaving like an ass****. They’ll tell you that you’re wonderfully clever, funny, charming, and perfect.

This is why many people in positions of authority in effect wear my advanced AI hearing aids that amplify compliments and screen out criticisms — which makes them vulnerable to making big mistakes.

So, if you’re a CEO or chairman or director or president of anything, you need to make a special effort to get critical feedback — soliciting it, rewarding it, showing that you value it by changing your mistaken views or asinine behavior.

When I was secretary of labor, I made a point of promoting staff who gave me constructive criticism. Even so, it was still hard to get honest feedback.

One day after a television interview, when I was heading back to the office surrounded by people telling me how well I looked and how cogent and thoughtful I sounded, one young staff member said very quietly, “Mr. Secretary, you used your hands so much that you blocked your face.”

I stopped. The others seemed horrified. I asked the young staffer, “what else did you notice?”

“Well,” she said, hesitatingly, “you kept using terms like ‘Earned Income Tax Credit’ and ‘discretionary budget’ that no one outside official Washington understands. You need to use everyday English.”

“Thank you!” I said, and a few days later made her a special assistant for communications. For the next several years, she gave me some of the most valuable feedback I’ve ever received.

Which brings me to Trump.

Not only does he love and solicit praise — if you can bear them, watch his sycophantic cabinet meetings — he absolutely, utterly, passionately, hates criticism.

He goes ballistic on anyone who gives him negative feedback. He punishes journalists who write bad stories about him. He fired the then head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who told him and the rest of the world how badly the economy was doing.

He explodes in fury at staffers who give him bad news. When former Attorney General William P. Barr said there was no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump flung his lunch across the room and smashed his plate in a fit of anger as ketchup dripped down the wall. “I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality,” Barr testified to the January 6 committee.

All this may explain his decision to go to war in Iran, without a clear objective or an exit strategy.

According to the New York Times, White House officials have become pessimistic about the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war, but “they have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.”

If they’re careful not to express their pessimism to Trump, how the hell is he going to see the depth of the hole he’s dug for himself and the United States?

Privately, aides say they’re “frustrated over Trump’s lack of discipline in communicating the objectives of the military campaign to the public.”

But there’s no chance in hell they’ve expressed their frustration to Trump.

<Donald Trump went into his second term, according to widespread reporting, with what sources called a “no scalps” policy. No matter how incompetent, politically disastrous or just plain annoying a prominent appointee became, the president would not be firing anyone. The intent was to avoid giving his political opponents the satisfaction, or to make it appear that he had ever experienced an emotion as distasteful as regret. But Trump finally cracked on Thursday and fired one of the most famous members of his Cabinet, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

For the administration’s critics, Noem’s dismissal will be especially pleasing. Since she was confirmed by the Senate in January 2025, the former secretary, even by the low standards set by a Cabinet filled with toadies, has excelled in debasing herself to please her boss. To meet the eye-popping deportation numbers set as goals by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, she turned the Department of Homeland Security into a disaster zone that was as inept as it was lawless.

Noem transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to function as an authoritarian secret police, but without the sleek, efficient evil a Hollywood rendering would bestow on the SS.

Noem transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to function as an authoritarian secret police, but without the sleek, efficient evil a Hollywood rendering would bestow on the SS. Federal immigration agents were instead slipping on ice or shooting unarmed protesters, all while whining about how persecuted they were. She herself became a public joke because of her over-the-top portrayal of a corrupt apparatchik, complete with her vicious dog-shooting story, ridiculous flattery of Trump and demands for ever-fancier private jets to share with her partner in repression — and adultery, if credible reports are to be believed — Corey Lewandowski.

But if there was one symbol that resonated the most for Noem’s grasps for power, it was her face. The 54-year-old appears to have undergone such extensive plastic surgery in an attempt to mimic Trump’s cartoonish ideas of what is “hot” in a woman that she is both hard to look at and impossible to match to photos of her younger, normal-looking self. Many women in the president’s orbit have adopted what has become known as “Mar-a-Lago face,” a look that includes heavy fillers, cosmetic procedures and caked-on makeup to be visibly appealing to a man who apparently avoids wearing his glasses in public. When a Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was published in December, it became notorious for, among other revelations, a photograph of press secretary Karoline Leavitt that appeared to show extensive injection spots for lip filler. (The president, unbothered by the appearance, keeps openly lusting over Leavitt’s “machine gun lips” that “don’t stop.”) But no one has gotten more attention for her dramatic visual transformation than Noem.

In the end, though, Noem could not save herself, and for reasons that are related to why she likely felt the pressure and need to have plastic surgery that most men in her position don’t reckon with: gender. As a woman, the former secretary was far more disposable to Trump than a man in her position. It’s a lesson she should have learned when he passed her over as a potential running mate for the charisma-free JD Vance. The same president who was found civilly liable by a jury for sexual assault, who calls female reporters “piggy” or scolds them for not smiling, who spent over a decade partying with Jeffrey Epstein will be pleased to have a woman to blame for his administration’s hemorrhaging of public support on what was once his biggest issue, immigration.

It would be one thing if Noem were uniquely incompetent. But as bad as her press coverage has been, it is no worse than what many of the men occupying top spots in the administration are facing.

Pete Hegseth has repeatedly confirmed suspicions that he, as a former Fox News host with a rumored drinking problem, isn’t up for the job of defense secretary, from the time his team accidentally leaked confidential battle plans to an Atlantic reporter to his recent tantrum when news outlets published the names and photos of service members killed in the Iran war.

Kristi Noem’s law-and-order pitch is collapsing

FBI Director Kash Patel is just as comically corrupt as Noem, whether abusing his private jet privileges to hang out with the U.S. men’s hockey team at the Olympics or reportedly diverting agency resources to surround his girlfriend with security like she’s a princess.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick got caught in an obvious lie about his relationship with Epstein, insisting he barely knew the man, when in reality they were business partners who were photographed on vacation together.....>

<....Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to be beloved by Trump, even as he has made dubious claims about childhood diseases, oversaw a purge of medical and science professionals at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested that bird flu be allowed to spread unimpeded, falsely linked Tylenol to autism and continues to pursue dangerous and unpopular anti-vaccine policies, despite promising he would leave vaccines alone during his Senate confirmation hearing.

A telling detail showing the role gender played in Noem’s dismissal is reports of Trump’s dislike of her rumored affair with Lewandowski. It’s unlikely that the president, with his long list of confirmed and rumored adulteries, is experiencing a newfound moral disapproval of infidelity. And despite reports of a tense confrontation following Noem’s congressional hearing on Tuesday, he also seems to like Lewandowski personally. After all, Trump has kept him around for over a decade. But the widespread coverage of Noem and Lewandowski’s relationship in reputable outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic paints the adviser as the secondary person in the relationship. Lewandowski is portrayed in a role that, on the right, is usually reserved for women: as Noem’s support staff, cheering on her presidential ambitions and making sure she has her favorite blanket on the plane. To Trump, who has rigidly hierarchical notions of gender, that probably seems emasculating.

But more than anything else, Noem is in many ways taking the fall for Stephen Miller. While she is morally and professionally responsible for her blunders as secretary, she was also reportedly acting on direct orders from the White House deputy chief of staff, who appears to be the most powerful person in the administration besides Trump.

It’s Miller who set impossibly high arrest quotas for ICE that could only be met with policies Noem enacted, such as targeting people with legal asylum status for deportation or encouraging mass detentions on flimsy grounds that are usually overturned by courts. The blatant white supremacist imagery and rhetoric coming from DHS sounds far closer to Miller’s overheated rhetoric about the evils of diversity than Noem’s more careful language. And it’s Miller who was seen dancing with Noem to “Ice, Ice Baby” at the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party.

The Department of Homeland Security’s failures are objectively as much, if not more, the fault of Miller than Noem, but there is no evidence he is paying any price for setting an agenda that was bound to go as badly as it has. To the contrary, the simultaneous announcement of GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as Noem’s replacement, suggests there will be no scaling back from Miller’s demands on the department should he be confirmed by the Senate. He is a belligerent MAGA foot soldier who has drawn headlines in the past by complaining that teaching kids anti-racism impedes on lessons about Jesus.

Swapping Noem for the Mullin is an even trade, with one notable exception: He’s a man, and she’s not. Like a lot of men who please Trump, Mullin pretends to be a tough guy without actually backing it up. That was always where this was headed, no matter how much Trump-pleasing work Noem did — or had done.>

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.07.01"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Karklins, Andrew"]
[Black "Pace, Broxie"]
[ECO "B18"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "1696"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 6.Be3 e6 7.Qd2 Nd4 8.Nge2 Ne7 9.O-O O-O 10.Nd1 e5 11.c3 Nxe2+ 12.Qxe2 f5 13.f4 Nc6 14.Nf2 Qe7 15.Rae1 Be6 16.Qc2 Rae8 17.Kh1 Qd7 18.Bc1 Kh8 19.exf5 Bxf5 20.Qa4 exf4 21.Bxf4 h6 22.Ne4 Bxe4 23.Bxe4 g5 24.Bd2 Be5 25.Bg2 Bg7 1/2-1/2>

<In poker, particularly online, where blind-versus-blind (BVB) situations arise frequently, developing a strong BVB strategy is essential to maintaining a healthy win rate.

In this article, I am going to break down five core strategies that you should implement to set yourself apart from the field.

Let’s dive into it!

Core Strategy #1 – 3-Betting Aggressively Against Steals

Stealing the blinds is the core incentive behind poker strategies. If there were no forced bets preflop (posting the Big Blind and the Small Blind), then the optimal strategy would be something akin to waiting for Aces and hoping that someone is foolish enough to put money into the pot with a weaker hand. That would make for a terribly uninteresting game.

When you are in the Small Blind, only one guy is standing between you and taking down the blinds. This makes the optimal strategy for open-raising a highly aggressive one, especially because you’ve already invested half a big blind.

When you’re on the other side of it, however, you should be fighting tooth and nail for your investment. Your opponent is attempting to steal with a loose range, so your response should be to defend with a loose range yourself.

Now, when it comes to defending, I am not talking only about calling, which is like blocking a sword attack with your shield. When I am talking about defending, I mean both:

Blocking with your shield (calling) and
Counter-attacking with your own sword (3-betting) 3-betting is paramount for optimal defense because it doesn’t allow the opponent free attempts at denying your equity. Your opponent must understand that attacking (trying to deny your equity in the pot) comes with a decently sized risk/cost, and that cost is getting their own equity denied.

Should you not do this properly, the Small Blind could easily expand their raising range way beyond the theoretical equilibrium and thus increase their win-rate considerably.

An optimal 3-betting strategy in this spot is a loose one, and that has everything to do with the opponent’s looseness, which makes more hands in your range become value-worthy. With more value hands, more bluffs are required to create a balanced 3-betting range.

In the end, the resulting 3-betting range should be comprised of 19% of all starting hands.

Core Strategy #2 – Polarized 3-Betting

If you left the previous section wondering why there was no visual representation of that range, it was because I wanted to touch on the topic of range composition first.

While I advocate for a 3-bet-only linear defending strategy from every position outside of the Big Blind when faced with open-raises, this shifts completely when it comes to defending the Big Blind. This becomes even more accentuated against the Small Blind.

So why is linear the optimal response in one situation and highly sub-optimal in this one?

It has everything to do with the fact that when there are players who have not yet acted (uncapped), your strategy has a very large impact on their strategy. If you were to attempt to create a polarized 3-betting strategy from, say, the Cutoff against a Lojack raise, that would:

Create an incentive to cold-call and to 4-bet more aggressively against your re-raise (as it is, relatively speaking, a weaker range)

Create an incentive to squeeze much more aggressively against your capped cold-calling range

Ultimately, both these strategic adjustments end up hurting your equity realization.

When you are in the Big Blind, however, there are no players that have yet to act, so there’s no need to protect your calling range from squeezes.

This means that you now have the opportunity to expand your defending range by 3-betting with hands that would otherwise not be able to call, ultimately increasing your overall equity realization (and inextricably minimizing your opponent’s).

In the end, this is what a theoretically impregnable defense strategy looks like when faced with a Small Blind open-raise:

You have a top region of hands (99+, AQ), a medium region (suited connectors, suited broadways, A5s-A4s, AJo, and KQo), and the bluff region (A2o, A3o, A6o, K7o, K8o, T8o, T3s, T5s, J2s, etc.), which will fold against a 4-bet from the Small Blind....>

<....Core Strategy #3 – Mindfully Protecting Your Checking Range on Low Boards (as Small Blind)

Low boards are notoriously bad for your range. Not because you don’t have the range advantage (because you often do), but rather because you have a ton of non-made hands with decent equity, but simply too many compared to your value range.

Since betting all of your value hands and balancing them with an unexploitable amount of bluffs leaves a bunch of your non-made hands unprotected, and since these hands still have a good amount of equity (they will have at least an overcard to the board), the Big Blind could exploit this strategy by range-betting, denying the equity of those hands 100% of the time without any counter-play available on your end.

It then becomes higher EV to start checking with your better hands so that you may trap the Big Blind’s over-aggressiveness.

If you start always trapping, the Big Blind could exploit you by checking back with all but his strongest hands and some bluffs, effectively realizing equity for free all the time.

All of this back-and-forth leads to an equilibrium point where both players are handcuffed from being too aggressive or too trappy.

On low boards, this equilibrium point is one that has the Small Blind c-betting at low frequencies. This strategy includes a lot of trapping, but also some betting to prevent too frequent free equity realization.

The key point that I want you to understand is that when you look at a board such as 9c 7c 3d, and you hold:

Ah Qc

9s Kd

9h Ts

Th Qd

Your thought process is not: “I have a good hand, I should bet now”.

Rather, go one level above that and think: “This board is not favorable for my range, the equilibrium strategy would check at a high frequency with my hand. Let me think about how likely it is that my opponent is going to over- or undershoot his aggression frequency and how he may mis-construct his betting range.”

And then, if you cannot come up with an answer that has a high degree of certainty, you can either mix between betting and checking, or simply go with the action that you feel like you can execute better down the game tree.

It may feel safe to always take the beaten path, but as you progress through the stakes, your biases towards one line or the other will be exposed more and more frequently against better competition.

For reference, here’s how the solver would approach this c-betting scenario:

Core Strategy #4 – Simplify Your Strategy On Certain Textures

Mixing between lines definitely has its place in your execution, but it should be done as little as possible, especially as more information is exchanged in the duration of the hand.

Having said that, even when there hasn’t been a lot of information exchange (like on the flop), you can still opt to eliminate mixing from your strategy if that:

Massively simplifies your cognitive load

Doesn’t create major exploitative avenues for your opponent, or the exploitative strategy is not easy to implement for people (think high raising frequencies with weak and medium hands)

Puts the opponent in a tough spot or takes advantage of a common leak found in the population

This is a recommendation that I have for boards where the game theory optimal strategy is already a somewhat aggressive one, where you should now start range-betting for a small size.

The boards that I suggest simplifying follow these templates:

Non Ace-high, double broadway, rainbow, with disconnected bottom cards – think boards such as Kd Jh 6c, Ks Td 5c, Qs Jc 4d

Non Ace-high, single broadway, rainbow, with disconnected top cards – think boards such as Kd 8s 5d, Qs 7d 4h, Jh 6c 4s

High paired, rainbow boards – think
Jd Js 6h, Qs Qd 8c, Ks Kh 5c, Ad Ac 8h

Simplifying to range-betting on these textures only leads to a maximum expected value (EV) loss of ~0.5% of the pot*. That is an insignificant amount of EV to put at risk for two reasons:

The counter-strategy necessary to take advantage of this deviation is highly unintuitive, as it goes against the normal human biases (folding less and raising more with weaker hands)

The amount and size of the exploitative opportunities that are to be found on the turn and especially on the river.

* This implies an unexploitable strategy on the flop against the raise, as well as on the turn and river.

Core Strategy #5 – Expanding Your Value Range With Creative Bet Sizing

Let’s take a look at the following scenario:

You open-raised from the Small Blind with Kh 8d, the Big Blind called, the flop came Kc Jd 6h, you c-bet 33% pot, your opponent called, and the turn is the Qd....>

<....Your hand was very strong on the flop, but the Qd turn brought in two straights: the AT and the T9 (both present in suited and offsuited forms in Big Blind’s range). Your hand has decreased significantly in value. Definitely not strong enough to bet your typical 75% pot size.

So, is checking really the only option?

It’s not.

Block-betting is a superpower when out of position. It allows you to expand both your value and bluffing range, minimizing your opponent’s equity realization while creating difficult, bias-pressuring, defense strategies for your opponent.

What do you achieve by betting small here?

You get to value bet against Big Blind’s many weaker top pairs, Qx, 6x, open-enders, flush draws, etc. You also get to deny a bit of equity from hands such as gutshots (which should be mixing between calling and folding) and pocket pairs (which still have about 4-5% equity against your hand).

Not only that, but you create a situation for Big Blind where he has to be very careful as to how often he raises his straights and how carefully he balances that raising range. In practice, you will find that your opponents will always raise with the nuts but will tend to call too often with hands that should be raising as a bluff, in which case you manage to escape with a minimal loss on the turn while getting your equity denied less frequently by worse hands.

That’s a damn good deal. I like to call this play info-betting.

Here is how I define it:

An info-bet is a bet that performs in a mathematically sound way* that also creates a massive informational exchange about the opponent’s range.

This is a practical (rather than a theoretical) concept as it exploits the intuitive response of us humans. A machine will cloak its strategy with sufficient deception, as it doesn’t have any biases; rather, it’s an EV calculator.

* Meaning it either extracts enough value (in the case of made hands) or denies enough equity (in the case of semi-bluffs)

Now, is this exploitable? Absolutely not! That’s because you will put all of your stronger hands in this bet size too. Take a look:

So why is it optimal to bet so small with hands such as AT, T9, KK, etc.? It’s because this is No Limit Hold’em. This means that you can re-raise to any size should you face a raise on the turn, and you can bet any size, should you face only a call on the turn.

<For many observers, Donald Trump’s prosecution of the war against Iran has been nothing short of confounding — contradictory remarks, a seemingly improvisational strategy, and a nonchalance toward risks and costs that would paralyze a traditional commander-in-chief.

A century and a half ago, author John Churton Collins advised, “In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.” America’s allies are confused. Pundits are reeling. But the surprise is misplaced.

Trump’s approach to the Iranian conflict is not an anomaly. It is lifted directly from a consistent playbook he has relied on for decades. The president’s actions are rarely the random impulses they appear to be. Instead, they follow consistent, discernible patterns of behavior. Here are five of what we call Trump’s Ten Commandments, as we lay out in our new book of the same title. He’s exhibited them throughout his career, and he’s displaying them again in his conduct of this war.

1. Centralizing All Power

Unlike previous military engagements — which typically followed careful interagency planning with input from domain experts — Trump has bypassed the traditional national security apparatus entirely. Instead, he is managing the entire war through his signature “hub-and-spokes” leadership model. In Trump’s universe, he must be the sun around which everything revolves. Rather than deferring to seasoned military leaders, the intelligence community, or veteran foreign service officers, Trump has centralized war-making authority squarely in his own hands, relying on a tight circle of close advisors while other high-ranking officials — in his own administration and across foreign governments — learn what is happening by watching the news.

Freed of institutional constraints, the result is a war directed not by consensus but by singular, unconstrained instinct of Trump and Trump alone — limited, arguably, only by what financial markets will tolerate and how long the munitions stockpile will last.

2. The Punch in the Face

Where traditional diplomacy builds trust incrementally, Trump starts by striking the first blow and staking out the most maximalist position imaginable to create immediate leverage. By decapitating Iran’s leadership and neutralizing core infrastructure on day one, Trump bypassed standard diplomatic escalation ladders entirely. It is the geopolitical equivalent of his classic real estate strategy — inflicting maximum blunt trauma as the opening move, not the last resort.

3. Divide and Conquer

Trump has long viewed the traditional coalitions built by his predecessors — NATO, the EU — as constraints on his own authority rather than assets.

It is entirely consistent, then, that Trump went to war without consulting many of America’s historical allies in Europe, who were left in the cold. Eschewing multilateral consensus, he publicly chastised several allies for their “lukewarm” enthusiasm, demanding they deploy warships and police the waterway themselves. At the same time, he has kept Israel and the Gulf nations close, coordinating carefully in what Israeli President Isaac Herzog described as NATO-like in its intimacy, while talking nearly daily with top Gulf leaders according to New York Times reporting. In this way, he treats foreign nations much like he treats his own subordinates — pitting them against one another so that he alone rises above the chaos as the all-powerful arbiter....>

<....4. The Wall of Sound

To control the narrative, Trump relies on what might be called a Perpetual Noise Machine — an overwhelming barrage of sudden moves and (outrageous) statements designed to distract and disorient. The sheer scale of the Iran strikes has dominated news coverage since the conflict began, erasing prior negative news cycles from domestic affordability concerns to foreign policy friction over Venezuela and Greenland.

By feeding contradictory remarks to the press practically hourly and issuing escalating threats against Iran’s oil infrastructure — will he or won’t he strike? — Trump keeps the media and international community focused entirely on his unpredictable next move. This relentless cascade ensures he dominates the news cycle, exhausts opponents, and prevents any cohesive counter-strategy from forming.

5. Donald the Great

Trump views himself in messianic terms — the leader who alone can accomplish what no predecessor could. By framing the 2026 war as the decisive strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the culmination of 40 years of Iranian aggression, he casts himself as a historic savior. Critics and supporters alike note that he appears increasingly convinced there is nothing he cannot do. Where traditional presidents weigh constitutional constraints, congressional approval, and allied consultation, Trump views those guardrails with the same dismissiveness he has applied to institutional limits his entire career, as Gulliver viewed the Lilliputians.

Trump’s war with Iran is not an anomaly. It is the ultimate expression of a leadership style decades in the making. The most useful thing global leaders — and observers — can do right now is stop being surprised. The playbook has always been visible. The only question is whether those on the receiving end are finally willing to read it.>

<President Trump’s push to eliminate voting by mail without excuses such as illness or military duty, a component of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, has put him on a collision course with Republicans from states where absentee voting is widespread and popular.

The SAVE America Act’s core reform would be to require people to show documented proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering to vote. That proposal generally has strong support.

But language to dramatically restrict voting by mail is becoming a sticking point with some Republicans.

Senate Republican sources say that Trump’s last-minute push to strengthen the bill by adding provisions such as eliminating no-excuse absentee voting has “p‑‑‑ed off” some GOP senators to the extent that there may not be enough votes to proceed to the bill on Tuesday.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have already signaled they won’t vote to proceed to the legislation, and GOP aides say there are other senators whose votes are in question, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Curtis (R-Utah).

Republicans from rural states are concerned that eliminating mail-in balloting for people unless they have strong excuses like serious illness, disability, military duty or travel will hurt GOP-leaning voters in remote areas who then would be forced to travel long distances to vote.

A Republican senator who requested anonymity said Trump’s call to eliminate most absentee voting is “problematic.”

“I think it’s problematic because in some of these states, 60 or 70 percent of people vote by mail. You don’t want to disenfranchise them. Some states have really encouraged it over the years,” the senator said, noting that Republican states such as Montana and Utah have promoted absentee voting.

Trump laid out his demands for the SAVE America Act in a Truth Social post on March 9. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) says he will offer Trump’s proposed changes to the bill in an amendment.

Aside from concerns about eliminating no-excuse absentee voting for millions of Americans, some Republicans, such as McConnell, are skeptical about legislation that would strengthen the federal government’s role in managing elections, something the Constitution largely leaves to the states.

The senator said McConnell “doesn’t like the bill at all” but “may vote to get on it.”

“I’m expecting him to be a ‘no.’” the lawmaker added.

“Some Republicans are concerned about this, definitely. That provision is getting a lot of blowback in the conference,” said a Republican source familiar with the internal Senate GOP discussion.

The source warned the vote to proceed to the bill “could fail” despite Trump’s strong push to overhaul voting rules before the midterm elections.

“There’s a real question whether the motion to proceed could get 51,” the source added. “With all this new stuff Trump is trying to add in, it’s p‑‑‑ed off Murkowski, Tillis” and others.

Tillis said last week that he plans to vote against proceeding the SAVE America Act, even though he noted he was a co-sponsor of the bill.

“I’m a no because we don’t have a plan. There’s no path for success. I was a no on the talking filibuster path, and this one is going to produce the same result,” he said of the plan to bring the bill to the floor with a simple-majority vote and debate it as long as possible.

Tillis, who represents a state that allows no-excuse voting by mail, also said the legislation’s mail-in ballot provisions need “work.”

“I’m a co-sponsor of the bill, the bill needs work. Like the mail-in ballot [language]. We need to have absentee ballots,” he added. “I’m against just mailing [absentee ballots] to everybody whether they requested something or not. Maybe we need a best-practice for mail-in voting, that’s one example of what I think is flawed policy in the bill.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) doesn’t want to force Democrats to wage a talking filibuster, which would require them to hold the floor with continuous debate, to block the bill.

So that means there’s no clear path to advance the legislation unless Republicans can somehow convince a group of seven to 10 Democrats to vote for the legislation, which is highly unlikely....>

<....Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Monday announced all Democrats will oppose the bill when it comes to the floor Tuesday.

“Not a single Democrat will support the SAVE Act. It is a radical bill. And if Republicans try to burn time on this legislation here on the floor, we will oppose them for as long as it takes,” he declared.

Schumer highlighted the bill’s effort to narrow voting by mail, a possible attempt to pick off Republican support for the measure.

“Now Donald Trump says he does not even want vote-by-mail. Tell that to seniors. Tell that to disabled Americans. Tell that to Americans who live in rural communities far from an election office,” he said on the Senate floor.

One Republican source said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) has privately raised concerns about eliminating absentee voting because of the impact on voters in large, sparsely populated states.

Republican officials have tried to close the gap with Democrats by promoting vote-by-mail in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania ahead of this year’s midterm election.

Utah, a GOP stronghold, is one of several states with all-mail elections. Its Republican lieutenant governor, Deidre Henderson, is pushing back against the Trump Department of Justice’s effort to obtain Utah’s complete voter database.

Curtis praised voting by mail last year during a discussion at the Sutherland Institute’s 2025 Congressional Series, which was hosted by the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Curtis noted that while voting by mail is controversial on the national level, it’s popular in Utah, adding, “I have just love mail-in ballots” for the convenience they provide for studying candidates and issues with a ballot at the ready, according to a synopsis provided by the Sutherland Institute.

Republican-represented swing states such as Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania allow no-excuse absentee voting, as do a wide swath of GOP states in the Midwest and West, including Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.>

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.07.03"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Herder, David A"]
[Black "Yedidia, Jonathan"]
[ECO "B22"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]