Ten Tips for Improving Your Bubble Play
Why are tournaments so profitable for the knowledgeable player? It’s because you are always getting a giant overlay. In a 180-man Stars tourney, for instance, you are competing against no more than 100 opponents, and quite often less. In other words, there are at most 100 other players trying to win the tournament. The rest are just trying to cash, and might as well be playing a different game altogether. These players are not competing with you for the top prizes.
In the early stages, they are playing to accumulate, just like you are. Their strategy is not intrinsically –EV, though their play may be.
In the money, most of them are happy to be there and will gamble up, and are too short to do anything else anyway. Again, their strategy is not intrinsically –EV here.
On the bubble, however, they are folding much too often and leaving a ton of money on the table. You need to put yourself in a position to scoop up as much of it as possible, as this is far and away the best opportunity you will have to accumulate chips. Here are some tips on how to do that.
1. Raise. Even if you know this already, you probably aren’t doing it enough. Never open limp. Not under the gun, not on the button, not ever. The odds are just too good that you will win it without a showdown. (This point is probably too strongly stated, but you get the idea.)
2. Fold. Just because A9 is ahead of your range when you push over a late position raise doesn’t mean you should call. There are a lot of players on the bubble who know you are stealing but are too afraid to push back, and there are a lot more who think the correct strategy is to wait for big hands and then ‘punish’ your raise. If it starts happening all the time, then you can loosen your calling range (and in fact find yourself in some very +EV spots of a different sort), but the first time someone comes over the top, they’ve probably got a hand. You can steal back the chips you are folding away in a single orbit, whereas one or two thin calls could cripple your stealing ability. There is so much easy money to be had without going to showdown on the bubble that you shouldn’t be eager to get there.
3. Target the Weak. The decision to open raise is determined by three factors, in order of importance: who is in the blind, your position, and your cards. You should start identifying likely play-to-cashers before the bubble even begins, and continue paying attention to who is not defending blinds and who seems to be making big laydowns.
4. Size Up the Competition. The play-to-cashers are not the competition. At this point, they are just giving away free money, and all you have to do is take it. But you still have to play poker with the other play-to-winners, who are also trying to scoop up all that dead money. These players will be a lot more willing to re-steal, steal raise, etc., and you need to adapt accordingly.
5. Look at the Chat Box. The dialogue in the chat box gives you a lot of clues about who is playing to cash and about evolving table dynamics. I’ve seen players say things like “I would have called if it weren’t the bubble”, “I’m folding JJ here”, and “Yes! Yes! Yes!” every time they win a pot. It’s like they want me to run them over.
Players will also comment on how often you’ve been raising, or threaten to call “next time.” Pay attention to these clues, as they can help you to make tough decisions when facing a re-steal.
6. Spread It Around. Most players take it personally when you raise their blinds. If you abuse the same player often enough, he will feel like he has to stand up to you, and you will have baited him into playing correctly. Conversely, many play-to-cashers will recognize that you are stealing but not particularly care as long as they don’t feel singled out. So if you raised weak-tighty #1’s blind the last two orbits, go after the player on his right this time.
7. Protect Your Blinds. If you call or re-raise out of your blind a few times, most aggressive players will back off, as there is usually much easier money to be found. Play-to-cashers will occasionally make weak attempts to steal as well, usually min-raising or open limping from late position. They will often back off of even reasonably strong hands when seemingly pot committed when faced with the prospect of bubbling out.
8. Protect Their Blinds. A good, aggressive bubble player on your right can really cramp your style, as he will always be steal-raising ahead of you. But don’t look at this as a thorn in the side, look at it as an opportunity: he is putting a lot of money into the pot that he can’t defend. His only options are to keep raising and donating to you, or to stop raising and let you get back to picking on the weak players’ blinds; it’s a win-win for you. If the play-to-cashers won’t defend their blinds, you should do it for them.
9. Make the Last Bet. Just because a player decides to see a flop with you does not mean he has a big hand. With so many players stealing, re-stealing, and defending, there are a lot people seeing flops without especially strong hands. More often than not, they are hoping to get a cheap showdown or bully you off of your marginal holding. If you play your draws aggressively, you’ll find that most players are no more willing to go to the felt after the flop than they were before. You just need to structure the betting in such a way that [i]you[/i] are the one pushing all-in, because it is a hell of a lot harder to call a push with a marginal hand than it is to push with a marginal hand.
10. Come Stacked. Although the bubble is a profitable time to push-bot, a 3x big blind raise from the table chipleader has a lot more fold equity than an 8x all-in from a short stack. Ninety percent of the time I choose accumulation over survival, but most tournaments have such juicy bubbles that it can be correct to structure your pre-bubble strategy around getting to the bubble with a stack that will allow you to steal. This may mean taking gambles when you’re short in hopes of doubling up to a healthy stack, or it may mean passing on thin gambles when losing the pot would leave you unable to steal on the bubble.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
BLIND STEALING
You know the guy; he reads the first couple of chapters of Supersystem, which he is now using as a coaster, and he has learnt a dozen poker terms watching WPT. He was at my table last night in a Pokerstars 3 table SNG and spent the entire game telling people what they were doing wrong; "you don't call with that," "you don't raise that much," etc. This weinie made it very clear that he was only going to play the premium hands that were on his premium hands list, and he got crippled by J8o, at which point he reminded everyone how wrong the other guy was because he raised before the flop. Mr. Weinie got busted after he announced he had AQ and went all in "because I don't want anyone to suck out on me," at which point I called with probably the first hand I had got all night, pocket queens, and sent him home. I won the SNG btw, go me.
Its took me a long time to learn and many a reread of the gospel according to Harrington, but in a tournament the cards in my hand are several places down the pecking order whenever I make a decision. I used to 'make to money' a lot in tourneys and SNGs by playing solid and waiting for big hands, nowadays I probably make the money less often, but I make a hell of a lot more money because I am now making final tables in the MTTs and taking first place in the big SNGs (I don't play single table SNGs). The reason? Blind stealing. Blind stealing is my number one tournament tool and most of the time, by the hour mark I will either be the chip leader or I will be busted.
I won a stars 5 table SNG a few weeks ago and I swear I must have played more hands than anyone but barely had to show down any of those hands. I simply slowly built a stack in the early stages with premium hands, started blind stealing in the middle stages and by the time the FT was in session I had enough chips to do as I please. For most of the game I was getting things like 79o and K7s, but nobody else knew that. All they had seen was the few times I had made trips or caught a flop with AK, and I made sure they did see that.
Before I present my blind stealing guidelines let me quickly define it. For it to be a blind steal it is a preflop raise which has no intention of being called. Therefore the only starting requirement is that your hand is a poor one. You might want to start only blind stealing with hands that could potentially get you out of jail, like ace junk, king junk or suited cards (ie, something where you could donk out on somebody). The only other real requirement is that you have enough chips left to damage someone else's stack, because if they dwarf you in chips, they might take a risk to bust you out.
Don't steal until they're worth stealing: Blind stealing becomes very profitable in the middle to late stages of a tournament. There is no point taking any risks at all when you only stand to win 30 chips, people are happy to defend their blinds and see a flop. Wait till the blinds are at least 50/100 and are both something you want to win and something they wont want to lose.
Make sure you are the first to act: Don't try and steal if someone has entered the pot behind you, even if they just limped in they have invested in the pot and must have some conviction in their hand.
Only steal in late position. I personally wont blind steal unless I'm at least one place off the button. Anything earlier than that and you will run into a genuine hand.
Bet a random amount: Don't use the slider to dictate the amount you bet because it only selects a standard number of big blinds, type in a random amount. If the blinds are 100, bet 280 instead of 300. If the blinds are 200, bet 475 instead of 600 etc. This serves several purpose. Firstly it gives the impression that you have really thought about your hand carefully, whereas most people would otherwise think 'ok, he bet x 3 the BB'. Secondly, the chips will visually appear larger than it actually is on most poker rooms because they will be stacked in a different way, 475 on Pokerstars appears like more chips than 500 for example, silly I know but it works. Finally if you are planning on stealing a lot, you can in the long run save a few chips here and there by betting just under the standard x3 x4 bets.
Bet an amount that's big, but looks like it wants a call: Don't put 1000 chips into a 50/100 pot. Its not worth the risk because if you get called you almost certainly will lose. Also, people are sometimes more tempted by a potential all in bet than a smaller bet, figuring they could be in a coin flip and you don't want a call with a huge bet. Don't put a minimum raise in because only an idiot would fold (Therefore it might work on Pacific Poker). I suggest betting between 2.5 and 4 times the big blind, that sort of bet looks like it wants action. If they fold, every now and then tell them they made a good laydown, that suggests you had something like bullets.
Showdown your good hands: When you get AK, AQ, 99 etc make sure you raise them the same way. Then if you get a fold show them down. People are much more inclined to player note what they see than what they think you may have had, and player notes can be very misleading.
Don't stop doing it till you get caught out: Be very careful when you get exposed stealing, because people will start taking a stand against you with anything. When people keep calling or reraising you will have to tighten up and wait for a few hands. This will also pay you off when you do get a hand because you are more likely to get action when they think you have 7 high again. If you flop a monster: Push it all the way but if it gets showdown and cracks a big hand, get ready to change gears or pray to get moved to another table.
Realise when someone else is pot committed. Steal off the big stacks, steal off the medium stacks but avoid the short stacks. Pretty soon they are going to move all with a marginal hand anyway, so wait until you either have a hand or try and see a flop against them.
If you get reraised: Put on a little show, pause, type hmmmmm and eventually tell them that you are laying down KQ, you might improve their confidence against you but you will have kept your table image of playing big hands. Call the reraise if the pot odds are worth it, of course.
If you get called: Don't be afraid to make a continuation bet on the flop. You have after all represented a big hand and they only called you, so the chances are you are ahead in their eyes. If they call or reraise you at this point and you still don't have a hand, don't invest a single chip more and admit defeat (But perhaps type some BS about you think your jack kicker is no good help your table image)
Exploit the bubble: When you are a couple of places away from the money mark, if you have a good stack start raising slightly more than you have been doing, people will start throwing away their coinflip hands hoping you will take out some other sucker instead.
After you make the money: Tighten up a bit, people loosen up when they know they have definitely won something
Its took me a long time to learn and many a reread of the gospel according to Harrington, but in a tournament the cards in my hand are several places down the pecking order whenever I make a decision. I used to 'make to money' a lot in tourneys and SNGs by playing solid and waiting for big hands, nowadays I probably make the money less often, but I make a hell of a lot more money because I am now making final tables in the MTTs and taking first place in the big SNGs (I don't play single table SNGs). The reason? Blind stealing. Blind stealing is my number one tournament tool and most of the time, by the hour mark I will either be the chip leader or I will be busted.
I won a stars 5 table SNG a few weeks ago and I swear I must have played more hands than anyone but barely had to show down any of those hands. I simply slowly built a stack in the early stages with premium hands, started blind stealing in the middle stages and by the time the FT was in session I had enough chips to do as I please. For most of the game I was getting things like 79o and K7s, but nobody else knew that. All they had seen was the few times I had made trips or caught a flop with AK, and I made sure they did see that.
Before I present my blind stealing guidelines let me quickly define it. For it to be a blind steal it is a preflop raise which has no intention of being called. Therefore the only starting requirement is that your hand is a poor one. You might want to start only blind stealing with hands that could potentially get you out of jail, like ace junk, king junk or suited cards (ie, something where you could donk out on somebody). The only other real requirement is that you have enough chips left to damage someone else's stack, because if they dwarf you in chips, they might take a risk to bust you out.
Don't steal until they're worth stealing: Blind stealing becomes very profitable in the middle to late stages of a tournament. There is no point taking any risks at all when you only stand to win 30 chips, people are happy to defend their blinds and see a flop. Wait till the blinds are at least 50/100 and are both something you want to win and something they wont want to lose.
Make sure you are the first to act: Don't try and steal if someone has entered the pot behind you, even if they just limped in they have invested in the pot and must have some conviction in their hand.
Only steal in late position. I personally wont blind steal unless I'm at least one place off the button. Anything earlier than that and you will run into a genuine hand.
Bet a random amount: Don't use the slider to dictate the amount you bet because it only selects a standard number of big blinds, type in a random amount. If the blinds are 100, bet 280 instead of 300. If the blinds are 200, bet 475 instead of 600 etc. This serves several purpose. Firstly it gives the impression that you have really thought about your hand carefully, whereas most people would otherwise think 'ok, he bet x 3 the BB'. Secondly, the chips will visually appear larger than it actually is on most poker rooms because they will be stacked in a different way, 475 on Pokerstars appears like more chips than 500 for example, silly I know but it works. Finally if you are planning on stealing a lot, you can in the long run save a few chips here and there by betting just under the standard x3 x4 bets.
Bet an amount that's big, but looks like it wants a call: Don't put 1000 chips into a 50/100 pot. Its not worth the risk because if you get called you almost certainly will lose. Also, people are sometimes more tempted by a potential all in bet than a smaller bet, figuring they could be in a coin flip and you don't want a call with a huge bet. Don't put a minimum raise in because only an idiot would fold (Therefore it might work on Pacific Poker). I suggest betting between 2.5 and 4 times the big blind, that sort of bet looks like it wants action. If they fold, every now and then tell them they made a good laydown, that suggests you had something like bullets.
Showdown your good hands: When you get AK, AQ, 99 etc make sure you raise them the same way. Then if you get a fold show them down. People are much more inclined to player note what they see than what they think you may have had, and player notes can be very misleading.
Don't stop doing it till you get caught out: Be very careful when you get exposed stealing, because people will start taking a stand against you with anything. When people keep calling or reraising you will have to tighten up and wait for a few hands. This will also pay you off when you do get a hand because you are more likely to get action when they think you have 7 high again. If you flop a monster: Push it all the way but if it gets showdown and cracks a big hand, get ready to change gears or pray to get moved to another table.
Realise when someone else is pot committed. Steal off the big stacks, steal off the medium stacks but avoid the short stacks. Pretty soon they are going to move all with a marginal hand anyway, so wait until you either have a hand or try and see a flop against them.
If you get reraised: Put on a little show, pause, type hmmmmm and eventually tell them that you are laying down KQ, you might improve their confidence against you but you will have kept your table image of playing big hands. Call the reraise if the pot odds are worth it, of course.
If you get called: Don't be afraid to make a continuation bet on the flop. You have after all represented a big hand and they only called you, so the chances are you are ahead in their eyes. If they call or reraise you at this point and you still don't have a hand, don't invest a single chip more and admit defeat (But perhaps type some BS about you think your jack kicker is no good help your table image)
Exploit the bubble: When you are a couple of places away from the money mark, if you have a good stack start raising slightly more than you have been doing, people will start throwing away their coinflip hands hoping you will take out some other sucker instead.
After you make the money: Tighten up a bit, people loosen up when they know they have definitely won something
Saturday, January 17, 2009
how to bluff a callingstation
How to Bluff a Calling Station
The standard advice for playing against players who call too often is both straight-forward and common-sensical: value bet more hands and do not bluff. This is a solid, profitable strategy, and it is not my intention to turn it on its head. However, I do not believe that you will maximize your profits by adhering to a strict rule of “Never bluff a calling station.” In fact, because loose players are more likely than tighter players to hold weak cards, they can sometimes be bluffed profitably in situations where tighter players could not. All it takes is persistence and good timing.
Are You Getting Outplayed?
Players who call too often are generally considered to be bad players with a losing strategy, and in fact, most of them are. However, particularly when they are in position, their tendency to call pre-flop raises and flop continuation bets with almost anything can actually be quite devastating to a player employing the tight-aggressive (TAG) style of play advocated by most poker strategists. Consider that a standard TAG strategy in no-limit hold ‘em is to enter the pot pre-flop with a raise, bet the flop whether you hit or miss, and then give up on the turn if your opponent has not yet folded and you don’t have a strong hand. This strategy, if employed against a loose player who has position on you, will cost you quite a few pots when you either check and fold the best hand on the turn or allow your opponent to show down a weak but winning hand.
Worse, even a loose player who is accustomed to seeing you give up on the turn may eventually get away when you do have a monster and keep betting. Although the TAG will still probably show a profit in the long run even when out of position against a calling station, he will be leaving a lot of money on the table if he does not adapt to his opponent’s loose play.
Exploiting The Calling Station’s Mistakes
As the name implies, the calling station’s exploitability lies in the fact that he calls too much. In other words, he plays too many weak holdings, consistently putting more money into the pot than his hands are worth. This is bad for two reasons, one more obvious than the other.
The obvious reason is that the calling station will put in too much money from behind. That is, he will call bets when he has the worst hand and improper odds to improve. The equally obvious way to exploit this error is to bet more hands for value, confident in the knowledge that your opponent can and often will call you down with worse.
But the risk of already having the worst hand is not the only reason why calling with a weak holding is expensive. It is sometimes correct to fold a weak hand even if you suspect it may be best simply because you have little hope of improving and cannot stand further action. Against players who will not fold these ‘hopeless’ hands to a single bet when they should, firing a second and sometimes a third barrel is going to be profitable.
Illustration
I’ll give you an example from a recent tournament I played. I had just been seated in a weekly $1000 online no limit hold ‘em tournament and was checking my notes on the other players at my table. Most of them, including the player to my immediate left, were fairly strong, well-known tournament players. The notable exception was the player two seats to my right, on whom I had a note that read, “Ridiculous calling station.”
As it happened, the calling station was given the button for the first hand, which meant that I was in the big blind and the strong player to my left was first to act. With blinds at 10/20, he came in for a pot-sized raise of 70 and got four callers, including the loose player on the button. The action was on me in the big blind with AJ.
Ordinarily, I would fold AJ against a first position raise, even coming from a player such as this one who is well-known to be loose and aggressive. Although my hand was too weak to call, I decided that there was a very wide gap between the hands this player would raise in this spot and the hands with which he would continue against a sizeable re-raise. I further suspected that most of the other players at the table would have re-raised when they had the chance if they had a big pair, so it looked like a good spot for a squeeze play.
The only player who I thought might call me would be the loose player on the button, but with AJ, I didn’t figure to be in bad shape against his calling range, especially with so much dead money in the pot. So I re-raised to 420, and sure enough everyone folded except the button, who called. That is, after all, what calling stations do best.
A call from any other player at this table would have frozen me, and I would not have put another penny into the pot without a very favorable flop. My big re-raise against a first position raiser was representing a premium holding, and even though most of these players were savvy enough to realize there was some chance I was making a squeeze play, they would also recognize that I would have a strong hand often enough that they could not call me profitably without a very strong holding of their own.
But the “ridiculous calling station” was a different story. With so many players in the pot already, his first call could be almost anything. When it came to my re-raise, although he was loose, I didn’t think he was calling with just anything. More likely, he had a ‘pretty’ hand like 88 or AQ that he just couldn’t bring himself to fold despite the strength I was representing.
The flop came out K95, all different suits. No help for my AJ, but a good flop to fire at against a player whom I expected to be relatively weak. Because I knew this player could show up with so many hands that were really too weak for the situation, I expected a flop bet to be profitable. I bet 600, and the stubborn SOB called me again!
The turn brought a Q, giving me a gut shot, which was not very much help. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this guy’s hand was not as strong as it should have been to take this much action. Smart, reasonably tight players are not calling a big reraise pre-flop and a big bet on that flop without a monster holding. But this guy was not a smart, reasonably tight player. I knew, from past experience, that he would give more action than his hands were worth.
Obviously, this does not sound like the ideal player to bluff. But on the other hand, I was now looking at a big pot and an opponent who likely did not have a big hand, and that does sound like the ideal situation to bluff. Calling stations need more convincing than other players to fold, but with enough convincing, they can be bluffed in situations where others cannot. For instance, I would not even think of moving all in on this turn against any other player at the table, because any other player could not have gotten to this point without a hand that would happily call my all in.
But in this situation, I moved all in for my (and my opponent’s) last 2000, and he folded.
Making It Work
I speak in very broad terms here, but as with most things in poker, it really comes down to the player. Different players, all of whom could easily be labeled calling stations, call in different situations for different reasons. Some can be bluffed in one way, some in another, and the most stubborn not at all. But there are a few principles to keep in mind when attempting to bluff a calling station:
1. Maximum pressure is important. It is not a coincidence that my example comes from tournament play. There are a great many players who are much too loose in general but much too tight when it comes to the last of their chips in a poker tournament. These players can be bluffed very profitable provided you are willing to put them to the test for everything they have and provided that ‘everything they have’ is enough that they will feel they still have a shot at winning if they fold. This works particularly well in the early stages of major live tournaments where stacks are deep and players have traveled great distances and paid great sums of money to enter.
2. Don’t bluff a short stack. This is the corollary to rule one; you can’t put maximum pressure on a player with very few chips. Players who get short in tournament play are often ready to double up or go home and are not in the mood to fold anything that could be a winner. Similarly, players who buy in short at cash games do so precisely because they do not want to face the difficult decisions that come with deep stack poker. They don’t have enough chips to make a situation tough, so don’t try putting them to one.
3. Use caution in fixed limit games. You can’t apply maximum pressure when your opponent is getting 6:1 on a call. However, there are comparable situations where a player’s willingness to play weak hands creates situations where he can profitably be bluffed. In Razz, for instance, a player who will call 3rd street with a face card showing or will peel when he bricks on 4th can often be bluffed on later streets simply because it will be very obvious to you that he cannot possibly have a hand stronger than, for instance, K-J-x-x-x. As long as your board looks reasonably strong, this player is asking you to keep firing at him even if you’re actually double paired.
4. It’s okay to get caught. But don’t try it again. Calling stations look for excuses to call. Once they’ve seen you bluff, even if it wasn’t against them, don’t expect them to lay anything down. In their minds, you are a bluffer. Now it really is time to tighten up, value bet more hands, and never bluff.
The standard advice for playing against players who call too often is both straight-forward and common-sensical: value bet more hands and do not bluff. This is a solid, profitable strategy, and it is not my intention to turn it on its head. However, I do not believe that you will maximize your profits by adhering to a strict rule of “Never bluff a calling station.” In fact, because loose players are more likely than tighter players to hold weak cards, they can sometimes be bluffed profitably in situations where tighter players could not. All it takes is persistence and good timing.
Are You Getting Outplayed?
Players who call too often are generally considered to be bad players with a losing strategy, and in fact, most of them are. However, particularly when they are in position, their tendency to call pre-flop raises and flop continuation bets with almost anything can actually be quite devastating to a player employing the tight-aggressive (TAG) style of play advocated by most poker strategists. Consider that a standard TAG strategy in no-limit hold ‘em is to enter the pot pre-flop with a raise, bet the flop whether you hit or miss, and then give up on the turn if your opponent has not yet folded and you don’t have a strong hand. This strategy, if employed against a loose player who has position on you, will cost you quite a few pots when you either check and fold the best hand on the turn or allow your opponent to show down a weak but winning hand.
Worse, even a loose player who is accustomed to seeing you give up on the turn may eventually get away when you do have a monster and keep betting. Although the TAG will still probably show a profit in the long run even when out of position against a calling station, he will be leaving a lot of money on the table if he does not adapt to his opponent’s loose play.
Exploiting The Calling Station’s Mistakes
As the name implies, the calling station’s exploitability lies in the fact that he calls too much. In other words, he plays too many weak holdings, consistently putting more money into the pot than his hands are worth. This is bad for two reasons, one more obvious than the other.
The obvious reason is that the calling station will put in too much money from behind. That is, he will call bets when he has the worst hand and improper odds to improve. The equally obvious way to exploit this error is to bet more hands for value, confident in the knowledge that your opponent can and often will call you down with worse.
But the risk of already having the worst hand is not the only reason why calling with a weak holding is expensive. It is sometimes correct to fold a weak hand even if you suspect it may be best simply because you have little hope of improving and cannot stand further action. Against players who will not fold these ‘hopeless’ hands to a single bet when they should, firing a second and sometimes a third barrel is going to be profitable.
Illustration
I’ll give you an example from a recent tournament I played. I had just been seated in a weekly $1000 online no limit hold ‘em tournament and was checking my notes on the other players at my table. Most of them, including the player to my immediate left, were fairly strong, well-known tournament players. The notable exception was the player two seats to my right, on whom I had a note that read, “Ridiculous calling station.”
As it happened, the calling station was given the button for the first hand, which meant that I was in the big blind and the strong player to my left was first to act. With blinds at 10/20, he came in for a pot-sized raise of 70 and got four callers, including the loose player on the button. The action was on me in the big blind with AJ.
Ordinarily, I would fold AJ against a first position raise, even coming from a player such as this one who is well-known to be loose and aggressive. Although my hand was too weak to call, I decided that there was a very wide gap between the hands this player would raise in this spot and the hands with which he would continue against a sizeable re-raise. I further suspected that most of the other players at the table would have re-raised when they had the chance if they had a big pair, so it looked like a good spot for a squeeze play.
The only player who I thought might call me would be the loose player on the button, but with AJ, I didn’t figure to be in bad shape against his calling range, especially with so much dead money in the pot. So I re-raised to 420, and sure enough everyone folded except the button, who called. That is, after all, what calling stations do best.
A call from any other player at this table would have frozen me, and I would not have put another penny into the pot without a very favorable flop. My big re-raise against a first position raiser was representing a premium holding, and even though most of these players were savvy enough to realize there was some chance I was making a squeeze play, they would also recognize that I would have a strong hand often enough that they could not call me profitably without a very strong holding of their own.
But the “ridiculous calling station” was a different story. With so many players in the pot already, his first call could be almost anything. When it came to my re-raise, although he was loose, I didn’t think he was calling with just anything. More likely, he had a ‘pretty’ hand like 88 or AQ that he just couldn’t bring himself to fold despite the strength I was representing.
The flop came out K95, all different suits. No help for my AJ, but a good flop to fire at against a player whom I expected to be relatively weak. Because I knew this player could show up with so many hands that were really too weak for the situation, I expected a flop bet to be profitable. I bet 600, and the stubborn SOB called me again!
The turn brought a Q, giving me a gut shot, which was not very much help. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this guy’s hand was not as strong as it should have been to take this much action. Smart, reasonably tight players are not calling a big reraise pre-flop and a big bet on that flop without a monster holding. But this guy was not a smart, reasonably tight player. I knew, from past experience, that he would give more action than his hands were worth.
Obviously, this does not sound like the ideal player to bluff. But on the other hand, I was now looking at a big pot and an opponent who likely did not have a big hand, and that does sound like the ideal situation to bluff. Calling stations need more convincing than other players to fold, but with enough convincing, they can be bluffed in situations where others cannot. For instance, I would not even think of moving all in on this turn against any other player at the table, because any other player could not have gotten to this point without a hand that would happily call my all in.
But in this situation, I moved all in for my (and my opponent’s) last 2000, and he folded.
Making It Work
I speak in very broad terms here, but as with most things in poker, it really comes down to the player. Different players, all of whom could easily be labeled calling stations, call in different situations for different reasons. Some can be bluffed in one way, some in another, and the most stubborn not at all. But there are a few principles to keep in mind when attempting to bluff a calling station:
1. Maximum pressure is important. It is not a coincidence that my example comes from tournament play. There are a great many players who are much too loose in general but much too tight when it comes to the last of their chips in a poker tournament. These players can be bluffed very profitable provided you are willing to put them to the test for everything they have and provided that ‘everything they have’ is enough that they will feel they still have a shot at winning if they fold. This works particularly well in the early stages of major live tournaments where stacks are deep and players have traveled great distances and paid great sums of money to enter.
2. Don’t bluff a short stack. This is the corollary to rule one; you can’t put maximum pressure on a player with very few chips. Players who get short in tournament play are often ready to double up or go home and are not in the mood to fold anything that could be a winner. Similarly, players who buy in short at cash games do so precisely because they do not want to face the difficult decisions that come with deep stack poker. They don’t have enough chips to make a situation tough, so don’t try putting them to one.
3. Use caution in fixed limit games. You can’t apply maximum pressure when your opponent is getting 6:1 on a call. However, there are comparable situations where a player’s willingness to play weak hands creates situations where he can profitably be bluffed. In Razz, for instance, a player who will call 3rd street with a face card showing or will peel when he bricks on 4th can often be bluffed on later streets simply because it will be very obvious to you that he cannot possibly have a hand stronger than, for instance, K-J-x-x-x. As long as your board looks reasonably strong, this player is asking you to keep firing at him even if you’re actually double paired.
4. It’s okay to get caught. But don’t try it again. Calling stations look for excuses to call. Once they’ve seen you bluff, even if it wasn’t against them, don’t expect them to lay anything down. In their minds, you are a bluffer. Now it really is time to tighten up, value bet more hands, and never bluff.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Profitable Situations
Profitable Situations
How much would you pay for a program that allowed you to see your opponents’ hole cards? Wouldn’t it be even better if you had a program that gave your opponents whatever hole cards you wanted them to have? And if you had such a program, you wouldn’t just give them all garbage so that you could steal their blinds; you would want to give them second best hands and then value bet them to death. In other words, you would want to create situations where your opponents held slightly worse hands than yours, because these are the most profitable situations in poker.
Well here’s the thing: you already have this ability. To some extent, you are in control of the cards that your opponents hold. Whenever an opponent enters the pot, he is doing so with some range of hands that is determined by the action in front of him, his position, his stack size, table conditions, his mood, etc. As the hand progresses, however, you will have the ability to narrow his range depending on the line that you take. Unfortunately, you can’t make him throw away the nuts, and in general it will be hard to get him to pitch any of the hands at the top of his range. This is why you should play your big hands fast most of the time: there is little danger of shaking Villain off of a big but slightly worse hand, which means that you are primed to win a large pot. Conversely, playing a medium strength hand too fast is generally bad because it allows Villain to throw away everything you beat and take your money when he’s got you beat.
Different games have different types of profitable situations, some more obvious than others. In NLHE, there is set over set, set vs. overpair, set vs. top pair, overpair vs. top pair, etc. In Omaha, there is the nuts with redraws vs. the nuts without redraws. In O/8, there is the nut high vs. two opponents going low, the nut low with a flush draw vs. the nut low, etc. In 5 card stud, there is a concealed pair that allows you to beat the open pair your opponent is showing.
The important thing is that a profitable situation is more than having a good hand; it is having a good hand while your opponent has a slightly less good one that he nevertheless has reason to think is best. Ideally, you would want his hand to be exactly one ranking below yours (ie K-high flush when you hold the A-high flush), so that you can apply maximum pressure.
Obviously, there are many other types of profitable situations, such as those where you can bluff Villain off of the best hand a large amount of the time, but right now, I’m concerned only with those where you are trying to get maximum value at showdown.
To cash game regulars, a lot of this may seem obvious, because cash game play is all about creating profitable situations. In tournaments, especially at the lowest buy-ins, you can usually study some starting hand guidelines, memorize a push-bot chart, and get by alright, because a lot of your profit will come from players who fail to adapt to tournament-specific bubble or short-stack situations. But there is a lot more money to be made if you know how to get full value out of your hands and not just how to play an unexploitable short stack game.
Fundamentally, good players make money at poker because they know how to recognize and/or create profitable situations. They win the most from second best hands because they know how to keep those hands in the pot and win bets from them.
Creating profitable situations
Whenever I have a made hand (ie one that could potentially win unimproved at showdown), I consider my opponents’ possible holdings, and then I categorize them into hands I want him to have (because he can/will pay me off), hands I don’t want him to have (hands with a lot of outs that won’t pay me off unless they catch; hands that are already beating me) and hands that don’t matter (those that missed the board completely and are now hopeless; those so good that he will never get away from them, and that I will have to pay off).
The key to making the most of profitable situations is thinking about the hands that are most likely to pay you off and how they will respond to a bet, check, or raise at any given time. In other words, you shouldn’t be betting just because you have a decent hand and there is a flush draw on the board. Your move should have a very deliberate purpose: “I am betting because I expect the following hands to call and the following hands to fold.” Or, “I am checking because if I bet, Villain will fold the following hands that could pay me off later.”
In order to create a profitable situation, you need to take a line that will allow you to win the most from the hands you are beating. If your hand is big enough that it can beat a lot of other hands that Villain may mistakenly think are best (ie I have 77 or AJ on an 7JA flop), you can just bet out. If it’s checked around to you with A5, I recommend checking it through simply because no reasonable opponent is going to make a mistake against you on that board. Checking behind creates a situation where Villain may take a stab with a worse hand, or may be more inclined to check/call middle pair on the next street, as a bet will look more like a steal.
In the first situation, you hand is already disguised, so you can go ahead and play it fast, because Villain is likely to come along with a hand like top pair. In the second, your hand is slightly worse than the one you are representing by betting the flop. It’s not bad enough that you need to bluff, but it is not good enough to bet for value. The only reason to bet (though this is often a sufficient reason) is that the pot is large enough already and/or the board is draw-heavy enough that you want to win it right now, or that you opponent may make the mistake of drawing with bad odds.
There are three key principles at work here:
1. On balance, the more money an opponent puts into the pot, the better his hand is likely to be at that time; however,
2. The larger the pot, the less good an opponent’s hand is likely to be at all future decision points.
3. Betting or raising ranges tend to be wider than calling ranges.
In other words, many players will put 3-4 BB’s in the pot with a wide variety of hands when stacks are deep. Once 12-15 BB’s per player go in pre-flop, many people’s ranges narrow considerably (though it matters how the money goes in). However, once the flop comes out, a player who would check-fold a whiffed AK in a 12 BB pot might semi-bluff all-in at a 40 BB pot. Certainly, he is more likely to semi-bluff push than to call an all in.
Variance and Profitable Situations
Often, you will have a choice about what kind of profitable situation you would like to create. For instance, on the first hand of a NLHE tournament, you are dealt 99 UTG. You could play this fast, hoping to get value from lower pocket pairs or top pair on a rag board or win it with a continuation bet on the flop against overcards. Or, you could limp in, trying to flop a set and win a big pot against two pair or top pair.
In the former case, you’ll win a smaller pot a lot more often, you’ll occasionally win a huge pot when you make a set versus top pair, but you’ll occasionally lose a large pot against a better pair or get bluffed off of the best hand.
When you limp, you let a lot of worse hands outflop you. You might even fold the best hand on the flop to a semi-bluff. When you make your set, it will be harder to win a huge pot, because players are less likely to fall in love with top pair in a limped, multiway pot. However, you rarely lose a big pot, and with more players seeing the flop with you, it is more likely that someone will make something to pay you off.
Raising 99 UTG and limping 99 UTG are both profitable situations, the central difference between them being variance: how often do you want to win/lose the pot and what size pot do you want to play? In my opinion it varies a lot based on the stage of the tournament you are in, but my purpose here isn’t to debate which line to choose. The point is that however you choose to play it, you need to think about what kinds of hands you want your opponent to have and how to win the most when he has them.
I am also suggesting that sometimes it is correct to pass on small edges in order to set a trap and possibly create a profitable (sometimes very profitable) situation down the road. You are undoubtedly giving up some value by limping 9’s UTG, because you are not charging worse hands for the chance to outflop you. However, it is much harder to have a profitable situation after the flop holding 99 out of position in a heads up pot than it is to have one in a multi-way limped pot.
A very similar situation occurs when you limp A5 behind a couple of limpers on your button, and the flop comes A89. If you bet here, the best case scenario is that someone correctly folds their draw and you win a small pot. Someone may “make a mistake” calling a 2/3 pot bet on a draw, except that you are going to have check the turn, giving Villain a free look at the river and turning his call into a good one. A bare 8 or 9 will almost certainly fold, and better Aces will call. Granted, you give up some value by giving someone with middle pair a free chance to catch five outs on the turn, but hopefully this will be compensated for by winning a turn and/or river bet from an unimproved middle pair. If the turn is a scary one like T , then you can get out cheaply, with little harm done. Once again, this line enables you to lower your variance by trading one profitable situation (top pair on a draw-heavy board) for another (a somewhat disguised top pair).
Using Your Reads
Setting up a profitable situation requires estimating an opponent’s range and how he will play various hands within that range. The more you know about an opponent, the more inclined you should be to play pots against him, especially when you are in position. In particular, you should focus on the mistakes different players at your table, especially those to your immediate right and those in the blinds when your are in late position, tend to make. Do they overvalue top pair? Stack off with weak overpairs? Never giver credit when a draw hits? Give up too easily when scare cards hit?
Remember how we agreed that you would pay quite a bit of money for a program that allowed you see your opponent’s hole cards? Well, you should be willing to take some risks anytime you feel you can put Villain on a very narrow range. As long as stacks are deep, make some speculative calls pre-flop with suited connectors, small pairs, etc. You can do the same on the flop with a gut shot, middle pair, etc. if you know that a lot of cards will allow you to take the pot away later or that Villain will pay off big when you hit.
Similarly, if you are confident you are ahead AND you have a very good idea of what Villain has, you should be less inclined to end the hand, even if you are out of position. Building a pot is good when you know about what your opponent has, but fold equity is worth very little.
Reverse Implied Odds
It’s the first hand of a NLHE tournament. You have AA UTG. Villain has 22 on the button. Who’s in a profitable situation? Villain is. You are never going to win a big pot unless you make set over set, but you will lose a big pot virtually every time he makes his set.
This seems obvious, but it’s an important thing to think about when you have a big hand. Just because you have the nuts doesn’t mean you want any and all action. You want to play big pots against second best hands, not against speculative hands that will either lose small pots or win big ones. I see so many players making tiny raises and re-raises with their rockets, seemingly giving little or no thought to what kinds of hands they want in the pot and what kinds they don’t. Conveniently enough, the kinds of hands that will pay you off big on the right flop are also the sort that can take a fair amount of action pre-flop: other big pairs and broadway hands that can make top pair good kicker.
Profitable Strategy
Against decent opposition, you can’t just play medium strength hands slow and big hands fast. This will hurt your ability to make value bets and give up too much in the way of reverse implied odds. As you move up in stakes and face increasingly solid opponents, you need to think about profitable strategy and not just profitable situations. This entails cultivating an image that will enable you to get your big hands paid off and that will make you less predictable, so that calling your UTG raises with 22 will not be such a profitable move for your opponents.
By a strategy, I mean the range of hands that you have in a given situation and your plan for future action. A fairly basic strategy would be raising a wide range from the CO and continuation betting any time you flop big or miss completely but checking behind on especially scary boards or with weak draws.
Naturally you’ll want to adapt your strategy to the opponent you are playing at a given time, because you need a strategy that is a successful counterpoint to the Villain’s counter-strategy. Many players adopt a counter-strategy of calling light against aggressive late position raisers, check-folding when they miss, and check-raising when they hit. Even when they mix in the occasional check-raise semi-bluff, this is not a difficult counter-strategy to circumvent.
Becoming familiar with the types of counter-strategies that players commonly adopt against your strategy will help you make better reads and create more profitable situations.
Conclusion
If had to summarize this novel in one sentence, it would be, “When you have a big hand, think about what could pay you off, why, and how.”
How much would you pay for a program that allowed you to see your opponents’ hole cards? Wouldn’t it be even better if you had a program that gave your opponents whatever hole cards you wanted them to have? And if you had such a program, you wouldn’t just give them all garbage so that you could steal their blinds; you would want to give them second best hands and then value bet them to death. In other words, you would want to create situations where your opponents held slightly worse hands than yours, because these are the most profitable situations in poker.
Well here’s the thing: you already have this ability. To some extent, you are in control of the cards that your opponents hold. Whenever an opponent enters the pot, he is doing so with some range of hands that is determined by the action in front of him, his position, his stack size, table conditions, his mood, etc. As the hand progresses, however, you will have the ability to narrow his range depending on the line that you take. Unfortunately, you can’t make him throw away the nuts, and in general it will be hard to get him to pitch any of the hands at the top of his range. This is why you should play your big hands fast most of the time: there is little danger of shaking Villain off of a big but slightly worse hand, which means that you are primed to win a large pot. Conversely, playing a medium strength hand too fast is generally bad because it allows Villain to throw away everything you beat and take your money when he’s got you beat.
Different games have different types of profitable situations, some more obvious than others. In NLHE, there is set over set, set vs. overpair, set vs. top pair, overpair vs. top pair, etc. In Omaha, there is the nuts with redraws vs. the nuts without redraws. In O/8, there is the nut high vs. two opponents going low, the nut low with a flush draw vs. the nut low, etc. In 5 card stud, there is a concealed pair that allows you to beat the open pair your opponent is showing.
The important thing is that a profitable situation is more than having a good hand; it is having a good hand while your opponent has a slightly less good one that he nevertheless has reason to think is best. Ideally, you would want his hand to be exactly one ranking below yours (ie K-high flush when you hold the A-high flush), so that you can apply maximum pressure.
Obviously, there are many other types of profitable situations, such as those where you can bluff Villain off of the best hand a large amount of the time, but right now, I’m concerned only with those where you are trying to get maximum value at showdown.
To cash game regulars, a lot of this may seem obvious, because cash game play is all about creating profitable situations. In tournaments, especially at the lowest buy-ins, you can usually study some starting hand guidelines, memorize a push-bot chart, and get by alright, because a lot of your profit will come from players who fail to adapt to tournament-specific bubble or short-stack situations. But there is a lot more money to be made if you know how to get full value out of your hands and not just how to play an unexploitable short stack game.
Fundamentally, good players make money at poker because they know how to recognize and/or create profitable situations. They win the most from second best hands because they know how to keep those hands in the pot and win bets from them.
Creating profitable situations
Whenever I have a made hand (ie one that could potentially win unimproved at showdown), I consider my opponents’ possible holdings, and then I categorize them into hands I want him to have (because he can/will pay me off), hands I don’t want him to have (hands with a lot of outs that won’t pay me off unless they catch; hands that are already beating me) and hands that don’t matter (those that missed the board completely and are now hopeless; those so good that he will never get away from them, and that I will have to pay off).
The key to making the most of profitable situations is thinking about the hands that are most likely to pay you off and how they will respond to a bet, check, or raise at any given time. In other words, you shouldn’t be betting just because you have a decent hand and there is a flush draw on the board. Your move should have a very deliberate purpose: “I am betting because I expect the following hands to call and the following hands to fold.” Or, “I am checking because if I bet, Villain will fold the following hands that could pay me off later.”
In order to create a profitable situation, you need to take a line that will allow you to win the most from the hands you are beating. If your hand is big enough that it can beat a lot of other hands that Villain may mistakenly think are best (ie I have 77 or AJ on an 7JA flop), you can just bet out. If it’s checked around to you with A5, I recommend checking it through simply because no reasonable opponent is going to make a mistake against you on that board. Checking behind creates a situation where Villain may take a stab with a worse hand, or may be more inclined to check/call middle pair on the next street, as a bet will look more like a steal.
In the first situation, you hand is already disguised, so you can go ahead and play it fast, because Villain is likely to come along with a hand like top pair. In the second, your hand is slightly worse than the one you are representing by betting the flop. It’s not bad enough that you need to bluff, but it is not good enough to bet for value. The only reason to bet (though this is often a sufficient reason) is that the pot is large enough already and/or the board is draw-heavy enough that you want to win it right now, or that you opponent may make the mistake of drawing with bad odds.
There are three key principles at work here:
1. On balance, the more money an opponent puts into the pot, the better his hand is likely to be at that time; however,
2. The larger the pot, the less good an opponent’s hand is likely to be at all future decision points.
3. Betting or raising ranges tend to be wider than calling ranges.
In other words, many players will put 3-4 BB’s in the pot with a wide variety of hands when stacks are deep. Once 12-15 BB’s per player go in pre-flop, many people’s ranges narrow considerably (though it matters how the money goes in). However, once the flop comes out, a player who would check-fold a whiffed AK in a 12 BB pot might semi-bluff all-in at a 40 BB pot. Certainly, he is more likely to semi-bluff push than to call an all in.
Variance and Profitable Situations
Often, you will have a choice about what kind of profitable situation you would like to create. For instance, on the first hand of a NLHE tournament, you are dealt 99 UTG. You could play this fast, hoping to get value from lower pocket pairs or top pair on a rag board or win it with a continuation bet on the flop against overcards. Or, you could limp in, trying to flop a set and win a big pot against two pair or top pair.
In the former case, you’ll win a smaller pot a lot more often, you’ll occasionally win a huge pot when you make a set versus top pair, but you’ll occasionally lose a large pot against a better pair or get bluffed off of the best hand.
When you limp, you let a lot of worse hands outflop you. You might even fold the best hand on the flop to a semi-bluff. When you make your set, it will be harder to win a huge pot, because players are less likely to fall in love with top pair in a limped, multiway pot. However, you rarely lose a big pot, and with more players seeing the flop with you, it is more likely that someone will make something to pay you off.
Raising 99 UTG and limping 99 UTG are both profitable situations, the central difference between them being variance: how often do you want to win/lose the pot and what size pot do you want to play? In my opinion it varies a lot based on the stage of the tournament you are in, but my purpose here isn’t to debate which line to choose. The point is that however you choose to play it, you need to think about what kinds of hands you want your opponent to have and how to win the most when he has them.
I am also suggesting that sometimes it is correct to pass on small edges in order to set a trap and possibly create a profitable (sometimes very profitable) situation down the road. You are undoubtedly giving up some value by limping 9’s UTG, because you are not charging worse hands for the chance to outflop you. However, it is much harder to have a profitable situation after the flop holding 99 out of position in a heads up pot than it is to have one in a multi-way limped pot.
A very similar situation occurs when you limp A5 behind a couple of limpers on your button, and the flop comes A89. If you bet here, the best case scenario is that someone correctly folds their draw and you win a small pot. Someone may “make a mistake” calling a 2/3 pot bet on a draw, except that you are going to have check the turn, giving Villain a free look at the river and turning his call into a good one. A bare 8 or 9 will almost certainly fold, and better Aces will call. Granted, you give up some value by giving someone with middle pair a free chance to catch five outs on the turn, but hopefully this will be compensated for by winning a turn and/or river bet from an unimproved middle pair. If the turn is a scary one like T , then you can get out cheaply, with little harm done. Once again, this line enables you to lower your variance by trading one profitable situation (top pair on a draw-heavy board) for another (a somewhat disguised top pair).
Using Your Reads
Setting up a profitable situation requires estimating an opponent’s range and how he will play various hands within that range. The more you know about an opponent, the more inclined you should be to play pots against him, especially when you are in position. In particular, you should focus on the mistakes different players at your table, especially those to your immediate right and those in the blinds when your are in late position, tend to make. Do they overvalue top pair? Stack off with weak overpairs? Never giver credit when a draw hits? Give up too easily when scare cards hit?
Remember how we agreed that you would pay quite a bit of money for a program that allowed you see your opponent’s hole cards? Well, you should be willing to take some risks anytime you feel you can put Villain on a very narrow range. As long as stacks are deep, make some speculative calls pre-flop with suited connectors, small pairs, etc. You can do the same on the flop with a gut shot, middle pair, etc. if you know that a lot of cards will allow you to take the pot away later or that Villain will pay off big when you hit.
Similarly, if you are confident you are ahead AND you have a very good idea of what Villain has, you should be less inclined to end the hand, even if you are out of position. Building a pot is good when you know about what your opponent has, but fold equity is worth very little.
Reverse Implied Odds
It’s the first hand of a NLHE tournament. You have AA UTG. Villain has 22 on the button. Who’s in a profitable situation? Villain is. You are never going to win a big pot unless you make set over set, but you will lose a big pot virtually every time he makes his set.
This seems obvious, but it’s an important thing to think about when you have a big hand. Just because you have the nuts doesn’t mean you want any and all action. You want to play big pots against second best hands, not against speculative hands that will either lose small pots or win big ones. I see so many players making tiny raises and re-raises with their rockets, seemingly giving little or no thought to what kinds of hands they want in the pot and what kinds they don’t. Conveniently enough, the kinds of hands that will pay you off big on the right flop are also the sort that can take a fair amount of action pre-flop: other big pairs and broadway hands that can make top pair good kicker.
Profitable Strategy
Against decent opposition, you can’t just play medium strength hands slow and big hands fast. This will hurt your ability to make value bets and give up too much in the way of reverse implied odds. As you move up in stakes and face increasingly solid opponents, you need to think about profitable strategy and not just profitable situations. This entails cultivating an image that will enable you to get your big hands paid off and that will make you less predictable, so that calling your UTG raises with 22 will not be such a profitable move for your opponents.
By a strategy, I mean the range of hands that you have in a given situation and your plan for future action. A fairly basic strategy would be raising a wide range from the CO and continuation betting any time you flop big or miss completely but checking behind on especially scary boards or with weak draws.
Naturally you’ll want to adapt your strategy to the opponent you are playing at a given time, because you need a strategy that is a successful counterpoint to the Villain’s counter-strategy. Many players adopt a counter-strategy of calling light against aggressive late position raisers, check-folding when they miss, and check-raising when they hit. Even when they mix in the occasional check-raise semi-bluff, this is not a difficult counter-strategy to circumvent.
Becoming familiar with the types of counter-strategies that players commonly adopt against your strategy will help you make better reads and create more profitable situations.
Conclusion
If had to summarize this novel in one sentence, it would be, “When you have a big hand, think about what could pay you off, why, and how.”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
profitable mistakes
Profitable Mistakes
I want to begin this month by looking at a few hypothetical situations:
1. You are holding a pair of 7’s on a 799 flop and get all your money in against a single opponent. The turn is a 5 and the river is an Ace. Your opponent tables A9 and drags the pot, having rivered a higher full house.
2. Same situation, but this time your opponent shows you 99 for the flopped nuts.
3. You hold 4[spade] 3[spade] on a 9[diamond] 6[spade] 5[spade] flop. Your opponent, a smart and talented player, checks and calls a ¾ pot bet. The turn is the J[club], and he checks and calls another ¾ pot bet. The river is an offsuit Q, and he checks and calls one more ¾ pot bet, turning over A[spade] Q[spade].
4. You hold KT against an extremely loose, passive, and all around bad player. He checks and calls substantial bets on a T95 flop and a 4 turn. The river is a Q, but you put in a value bet anyway, only to be called by AT and realize that you were behind all along.
What do these situations have in common? I would argue that they are all well-played hands where you had an unlucky result.
This may be more obviously the case for the early examples than for the latter ones. In fact, the first two situations are so commonly recognized as stemming from bad luck rather than bad play that they have earned themselves their own vocabulary: the “bad beat” and the “cold deck”.
Most players learn early in their careers not to take a bad beat or a cold deck as indicative of bad play. When trying to improve your game, you focus on the factors that you can control, and there just isn’t anything you can do about a lucky river card or running the second nuts into the nuts.
What is harder to see, and what I want to argue in this article, is that the latter two situations are every bit as unlucky as a bad beat or a cold deck. The results of hands (3) and (4) should not be taken to mean that your river bet was a mistake. If anything, these results suggest that you are bluffing and value betting well on the river.
Remember that neither your bluffs nor your value bets need to succeed 100% of the time to be successful. If they do succeed that often, then you are probably not doing either often enough.
Thinking in Terms of Ranges
Functionally, whenever you play a hand of poker, you are playing your cards against the entire range of hands that your opponent could have in a given situation. The fact that he happens to turn over 99 for quads instead of T9 for trips is inconsequential if you’re sure that he would have played both in exactly the same way. It’s just as far beyond your control and your concern as the Ace that flops to put that AK way ahead of your KK after the money went in pre-flop.
This is more true when playing online than when playing live. When sitting across the felt from real, live poker players you still need to use your poker and logic skills to deduce their hand ranges. However, physical and verbal tells will sometimes help you to narrow their range even further and determine whether they are bluffing this time.
For the most part, though, that information isn’t available online, and even live it is rarely as easy to use as some books make it seem. You have to make the best decisions that you can against your opponent’s entire range and let the cards fall where they may.
The really tricky thing about this is that it makes it very difficult to evaluate your own play. In example (3), did your bluff get called because your opponent rivered top pair? Or was he going to call with his AQ unimproved anyway? Would your bluff have succeeded against the smaller pairs that likely made up the bulk of his range?
Similarly, in example (4), you can’t conclude that you made a bad value bet just because you turned out not to have the best hand. That’s as absurd as concluding that you should have folded your full house in example (1) because your opponent was lucky enough to improve on the river.
So if you don’t have the results to orient you, how do you know whether you are bluffing and value betting well on the river? The truth is that you really can’t know for sure, but just as KK will show a profit against AK all in preflop over time, regardless of the results of any particular trial, so too can you look at trends in your results over time. The occasional picked-off bluff or backfiring value bet isn’t a mistake, it’s actually a hint that you’re bluffing and value betting well. By definition, playing for thin value means you aren’t going to beat the top of your opponent’s range.
Bluffing
Assuming your hand has no showdown value, a river bluff for ¾ of the pot needs to fold out a better hand approximately 43% of the time to show a profit. Of course, it’s impossible to know an opponent’s exact calling range or frequency, but theoretically, if you knew that this bluff would succeed 50% of the time and you didn’t make it, then you would be costing yourself money as surely as if you took it out of your pocket and gave it to your opponent in cash.
If your bluffs are rarely or never called, then you are undoubtedly missing profitable opportunities and leaving money on the table. Strange as it may seem, you want a ¾ pot bluff to be called about 1/3 of the time. Since you can’t know your opponent’s exact calling range, this is the closest you can get to confirmation that you are in fact bluffing at a good frequency.
In the example above, your opponent backed into top pair, top kicker- a much stronger holding than you would expect to see given the passive line that he took. From your perspective, it looked like he had a draw, possibly with a weak pair to go with it. And in fact that is what he had. He just had a few outs that you weren’t counting on. You can imagine how many other hands he could have played similarly but folded on this river: 7-5, 7-6, 9-7, 9-8, 7-7, 8-8, A[spade] 7[spade], A[spade] T[spade], and maybe even A[spade] K[spade]. His lucky river catch notwithstanding, you made a profitable bluff and the river Q is functionally a ‘bad beat’ for you even though you were behind the entire time.
Value Betting
Value betting is an even trickier art than bluffing. Discounting some rare but substantially complicating factors such as the risk of a check-raise bluff, a value bet on the river shows a profit if it is called by a worse hand more often than it is called by a better hand.
That doesn’t mean that you should be losing money on 40-45% of your value bets. Often, when you value bet the river, you will have a hand that is way ahead of your opponent’s calling range and will rarely if ever run into a stronger holding. However, your thinnest value bets should run into better hands with approximately this frequency. If you never make a bet like the one in example (4), where you find yourself betting for value into a hand that is just barely stronger than yours, then you are probably missing a lot of value by checking when your opponent would have called with many slightly weaker hands.
I deliberately chose an example where you were in position and your opponent had already checked. When you are out of position, deciding whether to fire a thin value bet is more complicated, since you must consider the expected value of your bet relative to checking and either calling or folding. But especially when in position against a non-tricky opponent, you can and should bet for value with anything that might be called by worse.
Following from that, your opponent should be calling your river bets very often, frequently with a hand that’s better than yours. As frustrating as it can be to see him table a hand that had you beat all along, you need to realize that this is actually a good sign. As long as this one of the better hands in his range, you should be happy to ship him the pot. Just think of all the times that he calls with JT, J9, or 98 as your compensation for occasionally running into AT. You should accept this result with the same equanimity that you accept that miracle Ace on the river.
I want to begin this month by looking at a few hypothetical situations:
1. You are holding a pair of 7’s on a 799 flop and get all your money in against a single opponent. The turn is a 5 and the river is an Ace. Your opponent tables A9 and drags the pot, having rivered a higher full house.
2. Same situation, but this time your opponent shows you 99 for the flopped nuts.
3. You hold 4[spade] 3[spade] on a 9[diamond] 6[spade] 5[spade] flop. Your opponent, a smart and talented player, checks and calls a ¾ pot bet. The turn is the J[club], and he checks and calls another ¾ pot bet. The river is an offsuit Q, and he checks and calls one more ¾ pot bet, turning over A[spade] Q[spade].
4. You hold KT against an extremely loose, passive, and all around bad player. He checks and calls substantial bets on a T95 flop and a 4 turn. The river is a Q, but you put in a value bet anyway, only to be called by AT and realize that you were behind all along.
What do these situations have in common? I would argue that they are all well-played hands where you had an unlucky result.
This may be more obviously the case for the early examples than for the latter ones. In fact, the first two situations are so commonly recognized as stemming from bad luck rather than bad play that they have earned themselves their own vocabulary: the “bad beat” and the “cold deck”.
Most players learn early in their careers not to take a bad beat or a cold deck as indicative of bad play. When trying to improve your game, you focus on the factors that you can control, and there just isn’t anything you can do about a lucky river card or running the second nuts into the nuts.
What is harder to see, and what I want to argue in this article, is that the latter two situations are every bit as unlucky as a bad beat or a cold deck. The results of hands (3) and (4) should not be taken to mean that your river bet was a mistake. If anything, these results suggest that you are bluffing and value betting well on the river.
Remember that neither your bluffs nor your value bets need to succeed 100% of the time to be successful. If they do succeed that often, then you are probably not doing either often enough.
Thinking in Terms of Ranges
Functionally, whenever you play a hand of poker, you are playing your cards against the entire range of hands that your opponent could have in a given situation. The fact that he happens to turn over 99 for quads instead of T9 for trips is inconsequential if you’re sure that he would have played both in exactly the same way. It’s just as far beyond your control and your concern as the Ace that flops to put that AK way ahead of your KK after the money went in pre-flop.
This is more true when playing online than when playing live. When sitting across the felt from real, live poker players you still need to use your poker and logic skills to deduce their hand ranges. However, physical and verbal tells will sometimes help you to narrow their range even further and determine whether they are bluffing this time.
For the most part, though, that information isn’t available online, and even live it is rarely as easy to use as some books make it seem. You have to make the best decisions that you can against your opponent’s entire range and let the cards fall where they may.
The really tricky thing about this is that it makes it very difficult to evaluate your own play. In example (3), did your bluff get called because your opponent rivered top pair? Or was he going to call with his AQ unimproved anyway? Would your bluff have succeeded against the smaller pairs that likely made up the bulk of his range?
Similarly, in example (4), you can’t conclude that you made a bad value bet just because you turned out not to have the best hand. That’s as absurd as concluding that you should have folded your full house in example (1) because your opponent was lucky enough to improve on the river.
So if you don’t have the results to orient you, how do you know whether you are bluffing and value betting well on the river? The truth is that you really can’t know for sure, but just as KK will show a profit against AK all in preflop over time, regardless of the results of any particular trial, so too can you look at trends in your results over time. The occasional picked-off bluff or backfiring value bet isn’t a mistake, it’s actually a hint that you’re bluffing and value betting well. By definition, playing for thin value means you aren’t going to beat the top of your opponent’s range.
Bluffing
Assuming your hand has no showdown value, a river bluff for ¾ of the pot needs to fold out a better hand approximately 43% of the time to show a profit. Of course, it’s impossible to know an opponent’s exact calling range or frequency, but theoretically, if you knew that this bluff would succeed 50% of the time and you didn’t make it, then you would be costing yourself money as surely as if you took it out of your pocket and gave it to your opponent in cash.
If your bluffs are rarely or never called, then you are undoubtedly missing profitable opportunities and leaving money on the table. Strange as it may seem, you want a ¾ pot bluff to be called about 1/3 of the time. Since you can’t know your opponent’s exact calling range, this is the closest you can get to confirmation that you are in fact bluffing at a good frequency.
In the example above, your opponent backed into top pair, top kicker- a much stronger holding than you would expect to see given the passive line that he took. From your perspective, it looked like he had a draw, possibly with a weak pair to go with it. And in fact that is what he had. He just had a few outs that you weren’t counting on. You can imagine how many other hands he could have played similarly but folded on this river: 7-5, 7-6, 9-7, 9-8, 7-7, 8-8, A[spade] 7[spade], A[spade] T[spade], and maybe even A[spade] K[spade]. His lucky river catch notwithstanding, you made a profitable bluff and the river Q is functionally a ‘bad beat’ for you even though you were behind the entire time.
Value Betting
Value betting is an even trickier art than bluffing. Discounting some rare but substantially complicating factors such as the risk of a check-raise bluff, a value bet on the river shows a profit if it is called by a worse hand more often than it is called by a better hand.
That doesn’t mean that you should be losing money on 40-45% of your value bets. Often, when you value bet the river, you will have a hand that is way ahead of your opponent’s calling range and will rarely if ever run into a stronger holding. However, your thinnest value bets should run into better hands with approximately this frequency. If you never make a bet like the one in example (4), where you find yourself betting for value into a hand that is just barely stronger than yours, then you are probably missing a lot of value by checking when your opponent would have called with many slightly weaker hands.
I deliberately chose an example where you were in position and your opponent had already checked. When you are out of position, deciding whether to fire a thin value bet is more complicated, since you must consider the expected value of your bet relative to checking and either calling or folding. But especially when in position against a non-tricky opponent, you can and should bet for value with anything that might be called by worse.
Following from that, your opponent should be calling your river bets very often, frequently with a hand that’s better than yours. As frustrating as it can be to see him table a hand that had you beat all along, you need to realize that this is actually a good sign. As long as this one of the better hands in his range, you should be happy to ship him the pot. Just think of all the times that he calls with JT, J9, or 98 as your compensation for occasionally running into AT. You should accept this result with the same equanimity that you accept that miracle Ace on the river.
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