IowaSkinsFan's Poker Strategy Articles

Pocket Pairs

From now on every Friday I will be taking some of the strategy discussion from the forums, sum up some of the cool content in case you missed it, and make my own comments on the issues discussed.

In the high stakes forum this week, there was a hand posted by pocketfours where he called a reraise with 44 UTG and was faced with a decision on an 877 flop.

Seat 3: SB ($919.15 in chips)
Seat 4: BB ($1,013.00 in chips)
Seat 6: HERO [ 4D,4S ] ($974.00 in chips)
Seat 10: BUTTON ($2,603.30 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
SB posts blind ($5), BB posts blind ($10).

PRE-FLOP
HERO bets $35, BUTTON folds, SB folds, BB bets $113, HERO calls $88.

FLOP [board cards 7C,7D,8D ]
BB bets $136, HERO…?

Sauce swiftly came in and said that p4s should have folded preflop, and as played folded flop. Some other posters came in and as a group decided that floating (calling a flop bet to take the pot away on the turn or river) would be better than raising. P4’s disagreed , as well as gabe who thought raising was a better option.

p4's said

There is $387 in the pot. If I raise to $300 I only need to take the pot down 43% of the time, and since my preflop reads (range assessment) tell me that he will fold 65% of the time, this should be profitable with a good margin. Actually my read is that his cbet is weak and I expect to take this pot down 80% of the time.

gabe said

also i like raising alot more than calling

This statement by p4’s is pretty lofty. First off, p4’s raised UTG, and opponents normally don’t threebet someone very much if that’s the case. However, p4’s did also say he was threebetting a ton, which means we can expect a somewhat looser range than most are used to. Maybe something like AQ+, TT+, and KQ, 54s-98s, 22-77, and maybe some junk sometimes. IMO, that is not super tight by any means but still pretty tight. That being said, 877 board with two diamonds isn’t one where our opponent is going to cbet a ton, for a few reasons.

1. We raised UTG and called a raise, which normally signifies a tight and strong range.
2. This is a drawy board so if he bets he is going to get shoved on a lot.

That being said, I wouldn’t expect our opponent to be cbetting a ton, and would likely be mixing in a lot of checks and bets, so when he checks we’re not absolutely positive he has nothing, otherwise we’d take it away from him every time. However, p4’s felt like his opponent was cbetting indiscriminately, so we need to take that into consideration as well.The problem I have with floating is we may get two barreled a lot because calling is such a weak play on this board. It’s vunerable, we like to raise draws on it, and therefore we’re going to want to raise our overpairs and sometimes 7’s on it. When we call a good hand reader is going to put us on a weak hand we don’t want to take to showdown, and be much more aggressive because of it.Back in the thread, the discussion changed when gabe swarmed in and said “I call preflop all day but fold flop.” This, of course, spurred a big argument between posters. Some believe that play is okay, but some believe it is surely –EV. The math has been attempted before.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/calling-a-pre-flop-raise-with-the-smaller-pair-t83.html

This old Fnord thread shows some good math on it, however it makes an assumption that our opponent has an overpair every time, which is impossible to say. Likely threebet ranges often include hands like AK/AQ, KQ, maybe even some suited connectors or junk hands. You may say “Well this makes it better for us doesn’t it? Because we are beating AK/AQ and unpaired hands already!” You may be surprised, as I pointed out in the thread, that isn’t the case. The explanation only requires a brief explanation of game theory.So let us say for some reason we are playing HU with 36bb stacks. We raise preflop with 44 3.5bb, and get reraised to 12bb by our opponent. We decide to call. Pot is now 24bb and the flop comes an innocuous 952 rainbow and our opponent shoves the rest of his stack of 24bb, exactly the size of the pot. We think he is shoving every hand he reraises.Now let us consider a few ranges. First, we consider that our opponent is only reraising TT+. If that’s the case we want to fold, we are never ahead and are about 8% to win if we call. We need 33% to make it a call. Now let us add AK to that range. Well now we are ahead about 1/4^th the time (There are more combinations of AK than pocket pairs) but when we are ahead AK is 25% to win, while when we are behind we are 8% to win. So given an equity estimate, we still should fold, just barely, even though we are ahead sometimes. Now if we add AQ to the range, we should call that shove. But as we add deeper stacks, say 100bb, we are much worse off, as if we call the flop bet, he can draw us out, but he can also mix in another barrel a small % of the time so we still need to fold, using the same technique he used when we had 36bb stacks. Also, now when we hit our sets we have worse implied odds, as most of the time when we put our chips in, our opponent is going to fold with an unpaired hand.So we are worse off in the sense that villain is successfully bluffing us with more hands he is playing, as if even if he bluffed less it would not make a difference! This may be somewhat confusing, but if you would like it explained better read the game theory section of Theory of Poker.Okay, so now we know why even though our opponent has a somewhat loose threebet range, it still isn’t a strong factor to make us want to call. Yet, another argument people make for calling pocket pairs preflop to this raise is the idea that “I can bluff them postflop to make up for it.” Well, again, this thought process is also flawed.Some of you may have read this post by Sauce

P4s- if u wanna slow this guy and his absurd cbetting % down, dont pick 44 to do it with. you are flopping "big" like 1/7 of the time and id assume that leaves u move making 3/7 of the time or so. this seems kinda gross as id imagine that if this guy is cbetting so often hes going to get it in mid-pair/gutterball type light in the attempt to compensate for his mistake at least partially (tho he of course wont think of it like this). So call his 3bets with hands like 54s-AKs, KQo+, 68s-T8s and various suited broadway combos. you are going to flop big enough to get the last 1.5 PSB after his auto-cbet way more than often enough to be profitable. playing against his ranges with 44 is just letting his unsound strategy exploit you a large % of the time under the guise of "playing back".

And this post by me.

The problem with pocket pairs is the great disparity in equity versus made hands they have when they hit versus when they don't hit.

As Sauce and I both wanted to point out, playing back with a hand like 44 is going to be very tough for a few reasons.

1. You don’t flop big enough.

The only way to flop big with a hand like 44 is to hit a set or flop a straight draw. However, with a hand like 76s we flop a big made hand about 5% of the time, about half as much as pocket pairs, yet we also hit a flush draw or open ended straight draw 20% of the time. With both of those draws we are happy to raise and call a shove for just a bit more. So when we do play back with 44, it is going to have to be on a board that likely missed out opponent, which brings up another point.

2. When you don’t flop a set and want to bluff, you are close to drawing dead against villains calling range.

If we choose to raise (and in threebet pots if we do we are going to be very close to committed), and we call a shove we have horrible equity. It’s a pretty self explanatory concept but it’s very hard to make close to pure bluffs profitable, as they have to work very high percentages of the time to be good. And in spots where our opponent expects us to be bluffing sometimes, such as raising a cbet in a threebet pot, achieving those high percentages are very unlikely.So, in conclusion, I believe that 44 is a fold preflop. Now, gabe is a superb hand reader and player, and also has a much looser and aggressive image than most. Given his game and skills, calling with 44 here may be good. But for most it is likely not. However, I think most agreed that folding the flop is better than floating or raising. Hopefully now you can understand a little more why that is!

Adjusting

When I interviewed Kingsofcards for my weekly interview, one comment he made about heads up changing his game rung a bell with me.

Until after playing HU, when playing 6 max I never really took into account bet sizing, timing tells or things like that nearly as much so I guess playing HU just made me more aware of the flaws in my game and the flaws of playing sessions in “robot mode” and just defining people at a 21/16 who 3-bets light. Rather than a tricky tag who 3-bets light; a tricky tagg who calls 3-bets a little too wide, gives up in 3-bet pots easily and likes to float dry boards in position.

What KOC meant by this is instead of just generalizing his opponents and saying “tag” or “lagg” and basing his decisions off of that estimation, he instead began to be more specific. He began to note every facet of his opponent’s game (something that really only can be done when playing few tables, which KOC noted helped him breakthrough). Even more specifically, he began to note his opponents frequencies in every decision. So what I do, and I recommend you do, is make adjustments to your opponents based on high frequency moves and low frequency moves.

For example if my opponent doesn’t c/r on the flop much, an adjustment I would make is to cbet nearly 100% of flops. Let’s say an opponent doesn’t threebet very much, an adjustment I would make would be to open preflop with more hands. These adjustments are based on low frequency of opponents decisions.

With high frequency, adjustments are a little different and harder. Let’s say instead of c/r a flop very little, our opponent spastically c/r the flop, maybe 50% of the time when we cbet. Well, there are a few adjustments we can make here. The first one is essentially a must: cbet less. But the other two take a lot more thinking.

1. Threebet a wider range of the flop
2. Call a wider range on the flop to the c/r

What we decide to do is dependent on a lot of variables. One would be after opp c/r the flop, does he follow through on the turn a lot? If he doesn’t, calling may be the better option, as we can either take the pot away with a bet on the turn, or play a mid-pair type hand fairly easily. Another could be the skill of our opponent; he bluffs but not too much, thin value bets well, and makes solid laydowns. This would be an argument for threebetting, as the only place in this scenario which our opponent is doing something too frequently is on the flop. One thing you may want to note is doing something too much makes life much harder for your opponent than doing something too little

When you move to higher levels, or when you want to try some heads up, you absolutely cannot win without adjusting. Hopefully this article will lead you on the right track to adjusting mastery!

There's No Such Thing As a Made Hand

There are many names of hands in poker. For example we often call pocket Ace’s pocket rockets, or Ace-King off suit big slick. There are also names for the type of hands we get. A pair is normally referred to as a “made hand,” and four cards to a flush or straight are often called draws. Yet, in their essence, the names of the previous are incorrect, as when it comes down to it, there is no such thing as a made hand, or a draw.

In their core, hands referred to as made and hands referred to as draws are something completely different than you may have thought. Made hands often have the connotation of being "better" than draws. For some weak players, draws are consider worthless, they are hands only "chasers" play. However, getting down to the bare bones, these hands deserve different names and connotations.

Draws:

1. A hand with variable equity with progressing streets.
A common flush draw is about 35% to hit on the flop. Yet, on the turn you either hit your flush, in which your equity is technically 100%, or you miss, which means your equity is instead 20% to hit. So flush draws become significantly stronger or weaker as the streets progress, and the same goes for any type of draws.

2. A hand with stable equity across ranges.
Let me quickly show you a few flop ranges against a flush draw.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

38,610 games 0.406 secs 95,098 games/sec

Board: Td 9d 5c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 37.641% 37.64% 00.00% 14533 0.00 { Ad4d }
Hand 1: 62.359% 62.36% 00.00% 24077 0.00 { 99+, 55, T9s, T9o }

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

62,370 games 0.005 secs 12,474,000 games/sec

Board: Td 9d 5c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 45.142% 45.14% 00.00% 28155 0.00 { Ad4d }
Hand 1: 54.858% 54.86% 00.00% 34215 0.00 { JJ+, KdQd, Q9s, J9s, T8s, 7d6d, 75s, 6d5d, 5d4d, Q9o, J9o, 75o }

The First range is super strong, it only consists of over overpairs and sets. Yet, the second range is very, very weak. But look at the change in equity our flush draw has against those ranges. It’s only 8%! As your opponents strength of range changes, our equity barely changes at all.

Made Hands:

1. A hand with stable equity with progressing streets.
Made hands are essentially the exact opposite of draws. Let’s say we have KTo on a T95 rainbow flop. With any turn but a T or K, our hand doesn’t get significantly stronger or weaker. Therefore, our equity stays about the same.

2. A hand with variable equity across ranges.
Now here are some ranges varying in strength in a similar scenario with a made hand.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

558,360 games 0.031 secs 18,011,612 games/sec

Board: Td 9d 5c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 56.214% 56.12% 00.10% 313324 550.50 { KTo }
Hand 1: 43.786% 43.69% 00.10% 243935 550.50 { JJ+, KdQd, Q9s, J9s, T8s, 7d6d, 75s, 6d5d, 5d4d, Q9o, J9o, 75o }

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

374,220 games 0.015 secs 24,948,000 games/sec

Board: Td 9d 5c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 15.771% 15.56% 00.21% 58245 772.50 { KTo }
Hand 1: 84.229% 84.02% 00.21% 314430 772.50 { 99+, 55, ATs, T9s, ATo, T9o }

As the ranges significantly changed in strength, our equity decreased an enormous 40.5%! As you can see, made hands play much better versus ranges that are worse than them, but draws play well regardless of the range they are against.

Now that we have made the distinction between what a made hand really is, and what a draw really is, we can rename both.

Draw = Hand with variable equity with progression of streets and stable equity across ranges
Made Hand = Hand with stable equity with progression of streets and variable equity across ranges

But why does it all matter? That’s for you to figure out. Hopefully this article stirred your mind so I don’t have to tell you. :)

Manipulation 202 and Questions

If you read my posts in the forums, you’ll notice I’ll throw around this word manipulation without too much explanation. In my earlier blog, I did write an article about manipulation where I talked about it in terms of bet sizing. Well, my old blog is gone now, and as I improved as a player I can now write a lot more about it, so this week I’m going to rehash the topic, as well as answer some questions that were asked in my discussion thread.

The easiest way to manipulate your opponent is bet sizing. And there are really only three types of bets you can throw out there: A small bet, a standard size bet, and a large bet.

Standard bet sizes normally aren’t thought of too much, but can be great to use. Let’s say standard tag raises in the CO to $7 in a 1 / 2 game, and I call with 76ss from the SB. Pot is now $16 and the flop comes Jc4h3s, we check and opp cbets $14. Here can be a great place to c/r a standard amount, say $42-46. Why? Well first off the flop really didn’t hit us that well, the only nut hands we can possibly have are 33,44, and 43s (unlikely). When we don’t hit a flop hard like this we need to either call most of our range, or we need a raise size that is inclusive to more hands such as QJ, JT, KJ, AJ, J9. If we raise too big those hands make much less sense, and opp is likely to look us up. If we raise too small we risk it looking too much like KJ, QJ, JT, and J9 and we may see opp try to blow us off our draw (but what he thinks is a weak jack) with a relatively balanced range.

Big bet sizes are my favorite to use, as bigger bet sizes creates fear and passive behavior from our opponent. Let’s consider the same situation as above except I’m on the BU this time. Flop comes the same, Jc4h3s, and we have the same hand. Opp again cbets $14. Here is a place where I like to raise big, something like $52. Why? Well the biggest reason is that when opp sees a big raise like this and suspects I have a draw, they often make the mistake of flatting it to “Trap” me, when in reality when he calls this raise I’m checking behind the turn most of the time and folding to a river bet. Also, it makes it a lot harder for my opponent to float or call light, because larger bets simply scare people. I throw out a bet of $42 and you may see a ton of playing back. I don’t know why this is the case, it’s probably fear, but it is in my experience.

(Note: I said earlier opp makes a mistake of calling a raise because he suspects I have a lot of air. Because in reality I’m showing up with draws and made hands, rather than total air, the better move is to threebet this flop with a wider range than just J9+, 33,44,JJ+. We can actually bluff a lot here because of our range gerth. If someone actually is bluffing total air here a lot, our equity is so good against his range it’s not necessarily the best play to threebet rather than call)

Small sizes are the opposite of big sizes, we like doing them to have our opponent put in a raise that is going to commit him versus our nut hands. But small raise sizes also factor into another category of manipulation, a much more interesting category called range manipulation.

Range Manipulation:

I’m excited to talk about range manipulation, as it is a facet of poker most probably don’t think about or even know about, but its one of the most fun and intriguing areas. Now back to small raise sizing as range manipulation. Consider the same situation as before up to our opponents cbet to $14, but instead we have a flop Jx4s3s, an active board indeed. This time we have a fd and a straight draw. Now if we raise his cbet to say, $36, that’s going to put our opponent into a dilemma. He knows we can have a fd a lot here, and if he calls he is just going to let us hit it. So he is likely going to threebet his KJ+,33,44,JJ+ at least. But look what we did here, we made him play his range in a completely transparent fashion. So consider he calls the raise rather than threebets it, we can be pretty sure his range contains very little of his strong hands, and therefore, we can be much more aggressive as he’s likely to fold to a bet or two. Since his likely range is 55-TT, QJ, JT, J9, fd’s and straight draws, two barreling or an over-shove on the turn could fold them all out. By forcing him to play his strong hands and his weaker ones in two different ways, we made life much easier.

While range manipulation, like in the previous example, can be good, it is not just range unbalancing form of manipulation, like seen here, but also range balancing. Range balancing can be shown easily through the example of a big raise in this same situation. With a big raise, we allow him to call with all his hands here. And while it makes it hard for us to bluff a turn well or call down his missed draw on the river, it does allow us to see our weak draws on the turn and river without having to call another bet!

The interesting part is we all do range manipulation, whether we know it or not. In fact, anytime we bet we manipulate a response from our opponent. When we check or call we allow our opponent to choose his decisions with no impediment from us, but when we bet he is forced to respond rather than act. A simple example of this is a simple cbet. When we cbet we often cause our opponents to fold his weak hands, call with medium strength hands, and raise his strong ones. If we instead check behind, our opponent could very well do any option, check or bet, with any type of hand (not to say we should cbet 100% of the time, checking is often the better move). Simple betting range manipulation can also come in the form of a lead, where we call preflop but bet out first to act. Leads look much more complicated, but it’s really the same concept. We force our opponent to fold his weak hands, call his medium strength hands, and raise his strong ones. But the beauty of a lead is our opponents don’t see it very often, and therefore don’t know how to react to them. So, they often play them as straightforward as they can.

There is another facet of range manipulation, often more unknown than the previous; we can call it threat manipulation. Consider in the previous situation our we and our opponent switch roles. We are now the one who cbet to $14, with the hand XxYx, and this time our opponent calls this bet. Turn is another 3h, making the board now Jx4s3s3h. We now decide to check, and our opponent comes out firing $26 into a $42. To his surprise, we reraise his bet to $78. Our opponent tanks and he mucks his hand. We could have very well had a set, an overpair, a fd, maybe a straight draw or A3s even, but that’s not important. What’s important is now when that situation comes up again, our opponent is in trouble. Let’s say we check to him again in this exact same board and same situation, and our opponent has 54. He can’t bet since even though he knows he’s ahead a lot, because there is a threat he will get c/r’s off his hand. You could argue “Well if he thinks your bluffing a lot than he can just bet and call your raise.” Game Theory tells us the contrary, as since our range is so strong and draws so well against 54 when we are bluffing, pot odds are going to be greater than your equity and you would be making a bad call. So this time, our opponent checks behind. Using that same thought process however, our opponent could very well bet his sets and quads, KJ/AJ/QJ, hoping to get c/r when he has good equity to win. Look what just happened, we again forced our opponent not only to play passively, but unbalance his range. Now if we have air and the river comes a blank, such as a 2x, we can bet our air a lot of the time, and force our opponent to fold his medium strength hand that has become so obvious. Considering he could be checking behind the turn with a medium strength hand or draw, we can also check a hand like AQ, and often show it down and win. Even if he tries to bet his missed draw to take us off a hand here, we won’t be fooled. Unless he’s betting many of his medium strength hands for value, a majority of the time we can call a bet and take it down with our 55/AQ versus a missed draw.

Now there are other ways to manipulate our opponents, but as usual I’ll leave that for you to experiment and figure out! So next session get out there and try some new manipulation tactics.

However, before I go I wanted to quickly answer a question a poster named DaGoat asked me about in my discussion thread you can find in the FTR Blogs and Operation section of the forum. He asked me to talk about floating in threebet pots in position.

Playing threebet pots with air can be one of the most difficult parts of poker. With draws threebet pots can be made easy by simply shoving over any cbet. But there are a lot of boards we come across with very little draws on it, and there are opponents who often cbet a lot but give up on the turn and river. Often times when those two factors are the case, you’d be better off floating.

When floating the most important factor is you have an opponent who often gives up on the turn and river. If you’re dealing with an aggressive opponent, you may actually be helping him our rather than hurting his game. Consider we called a threebet in position with 75s against our opponents AJ on a K63 rainbow board. We decide to call a cbet to float. Turn comes a 9 and our opponent comes out firing again. Yes, he is bluffing, but there is nothing we can really do about it. In fact, we actually allowed his aggressive two barrel to become an even better play.

The second most important factor is what we can represent. If we get threebet and call in position, the flop comes AJ4 rainbow and our opponent cbets and we call, we can represent a lot of strong hands, hands that we can vbet with, and hands we aren’t folding. Rainbow boards with two broadways in them are superb floating boards. On the AJ4 board we can rep AJ+, any Ax, AA, JJ,44, even KK-QQ for a river value bet. When we call we still have nut hands in our range and we still have hands we would value bet, which is going to make a bet on the turn or river more believable. On a board like Jx5s4s, if we call a flop cbet we screw ourselves. Calling represents a lot of hands that we would check down, like 65,64, or 66-TT, so if we throw in a bet if we decide to float we can get looked up very light (which is why if you decide to float a board like this you may want to vbet those hands!). Also, if an overcard comes, we can get Game-Theory-Owned. Finally, a board like T88, T77, 966, something like that can be a good board to float a gutshot or air on, as we are unlikely to reraise the flop with trips, a boat, JJ+, or top pair; all of which we are very unlikely to fold.

The final factor I consider is if the board is likely to get two barreled. A board like K32 is often going to get two barreled, as you are forced to fold a hand like QQ-44 (pocket pairs are likely hands that call a threebet). Boards like K54 also. Even drawy boards like Tx7s4s, as he is going to have draws a lot and note that you are likely to raise the flop with draws and nut hands.

That’s it for this week, I hope that answered your question DaGoat!

Forming Ranges

Something I like to do, and what I always advocate people who seek poker help from me, is to break down the elements of poker so we can understand concepts behind them and further apply them. I feel like most of the problems with people stuck at low and midstakes is they have tirelessly listened and applied the advice of players who are better then them, but they have no idea why they are doing what they are doing and therefore start having giant leaks in their game, while those who understand can self repair their leaks. Poker is a complex game that very few understand even a little bit. In this article, I’ll breakdown raising preflop, I’ll answer some questions I received in my comment thread.

Preflop we’re going to start from scratch. It’s a simple scenario to breakdown really and all we need is Poker Tracker; we’re UTG, what hands do we want to raise? AA? Sure, it’s the biggest winner in my database UTG. KK-TT? Yeah of course, they are winners as well. AK and AQ/KQ, AJs? 66-99? They are winners too. It sounds simple, but the first step of deciding what hands we want to play preflop is what hands are winning money. However, what surprises me about my database is that UTG I am losing money with AJo and 55-22. This is not an anomaly either, in most PT databases these hands will be losers UTG. So that brings us to our second reason for playing hands preflop: To get action on our bigger hands, in other words metagame. Yet, this is pretty irrelevant at many who are reading this article’s stakes, so you may just want to consider dumping them preflop. Rarely do we see someone have stats on UTG raising % on their PAHUD anyways, so it’s going to be almost impossible to tell how tight we are UTG.

But in many aspects of the game being too tight or too loose in certain spots can be much more obvious, which brings me to the last and less talked about aspects of decision making: To benefit our range. This is very complicated, so I’ll try to simplify it, and there are a few parts of it as well. One of the aspects is simply the second point noted earlier, metagame. We add weaker hands to our range to get action on our bigger hands. We want to choose hands that will play similar to our big hands that are weaker but not too much so. Suited connectors are one of the best options. We can play draws we flop, which in my previous article we saw have stable equity across ranges, fast like our overpairs and sets. The final aspect is to fix holes in our range. This has to do with ISF theorem.

What I just did was forming a range. You can do this process for any part of the game. For those who feel they have significant leaks in their game, try forming a range for yourself in every spot and see where you are making mistakes.

Now to questions asked in my thread.

maybe something about getting reraised on flop/turn/river and what you can extract from betting sizes from your opponents?

Timing tells and bet sizing are extremely underused in poker but can be the best information of all. A simple timing tell is taking time to make a decision, rather than instantly acting. For example our LAGG opponent raises on the BU and we threebet from the blinds with AK. We have been threebetting a lot. Our opponent calls, but we note that he took longer than he normally does to do so. This is pretty obvious strength. He was taking time because he was deciding whether he was going to fourbet or call. So if I flop air, I’m probably not going to continue.

Bet sizing can be a great tool as well. One that comes up for me a lot is when I’m playing HU. Let’s say in a ½ game I raise preflop on the BU to 6 with 444, and a Tagg OOP who is calling OOP about 20% of the time calls (I often have this stat up on PAHUD). The flop comes QT3, two diamonds, he checks, I cbet 8 and he decides to call. Turn is a T spades, which is a bad card for me as a ten is a likely holding for him. We check through. River is a 7, not a diamond and the pot is now 27. Often with a T or a Q you’ll see someone lead here for close to pot, because they don’t feel like a weaker Q is folding so they want to extract maximum. So when your opponent bets something like 18 or 20, I often look them up. In fact, this hand happened to me today and he ended up showing me 65.

In the scenario you mentioned though, getting raised on the flop, turn or river, it’s a lot harder to extract information from bet sizing. What you need to do is make sure you put your opponent on a detailed range every street, and see if that bet size makes sense. When you do this well, you’ll be amazed to what kind There are a few scenarios I can mention as tips though.

Simple scenario of we raised preflop in late position to 8 in a 1/2 game and got called from a LAGG in the blinds. The flop comes J52 two diamonds, we cbet 12. Much of the time if I see a small raise, like to 30, it likely means a hand like J9/JT or air. If you have a tight image, since that range is very weak its exploitable. Simple ISF theorem: We can have JJ-AA, AJ, 55, 22, and he likely doesn’t. Sometimes though this doesn’t mean flush draw, so if you see that same player reraise to 36-40, the likely hood of a flush draw is extremely high, as the only other hands he’s repping is 55 or 22, a small range indeed.

One random bet sizing tell that my friend kingsofcards told me is that if someone raises you but doesn’t leave any room in his stack for a turn or river bet they are often bluffing. I’ve found this to be a very successful tell, so try it out.

On to the next question:

One simple situation that comes up so often that I’ve been thinking about is SB vs BB. We are in BB and SB open raises 3xBB usually.

I think ppl are CALLING way too much and instead should 3bet a huge % of hands bcoz we get inititive and position, 3betting works great against multitabling players, postflop is easy. i dunno whats your most used play since ppl steal % in this spot must be higher than on button.

Position threebetting one of the best moves and hardest move to deal with in poker. Reason being is calling threebets OOP is very often a –EV play, and also simple equity calculations put you at a huge advantage. I won’t go through it all, but I’ll put it simply. We are at 1/2. Many people raise in the CO with anywhere from 28-40% of their hands, which the LAGG in the CO does. We reraise his $8 raise to $25. Let’s say we threebet 15% (Which is no small number) of our hands from the BU to a CO raise. We decide we will reraise over a fourbet with AK, JJ+, which is 3% of hands. That means 1/5th of the time we will stack off to a fourbet. For someone who is raising 30% in the CO, even if he folds 3/4ths the time, which he should be, we are +EV simply on FE. If he decides to call too much we will win money because we have position and equity.

Yet, even if he decides to fourbet light, we still have 8 times our raise left in our stack, and considering we are stacking off 1 in 5 times, even if we’re a slight underdog to his fourbet range we are still +EV. So really the only way to combat this is to raise less hands in the CO. If you didn’t understand the math, it’s not too hard, it may be good for you to try it out for yourself.

(Note: It is extremely +EV in poker to force your opponent to put in a committing bet rather than you, as shown by position threebetting)

As far as SB vs BB goes, it all depends on your opponent. I don’t tend to raise a lot in the SB when folded to unless my opponent is on auto pilot fold. But if your opponent is raising a lot in the SB you can own him by position fourbetting. It is much, much better to raise a ton of hands on the BU rather than the SB.

That’s it for this week, hope it was enjoyable.

Making Your Opponent Uncomfortable

Often in HU matches, I’ll come across a player who doesn’t seem to have many leaks. He’ll raise a solid range from the BU, not play too loose OOP, and have a good mix of cbets and two barrels, as well as balanced ranges in other areas. Many when playing, whether it’s six max or HU, will play “their game.” By this I mean that they will always use the same preflop bet size, same flop bet size, same turn bet size, same lines, etc. This is fine versus mindless fish, but versus good players you’re allowing them to get comfortable and to easily balance their ranges. So instead of playing a “standard” game, to beat solid regulars you have to get them uncomfortable. You win at poker when you play against unbalanced play.

The first step to getting your opponent uncomfortable is identifying where his game is strong. I remember in one match I had versus a regular. This certain reg was normally tight/passive, which with patience can be very easy to beat. However, when I threebet him and he called in position, he would always raise my flop cbets with a balanced range: Any draws, top pair or better, some air. If I were to continue threebetting him light, general poker knowledge would tell me that I would lose: I have a weak range facing a balanced range OOP. Many others will have balanced ranges in other areas of their game. Preflop and flop cbetting is usually balanced, as well as double barreling frequency.

So the second thing you have to do is stop playing against these players in spots where there game is solid. If someone is double barreling a solid frequency, DON’T c/c the flop with weakish hands likely to get double barreled off. If someone is shoving a solid range to your cbets in threebet pots, DON’T threebet light.

But this is about as far as many go, they make the “I’ll play tighter” adjustment. Yet, there is another important step is to make your opponent uncomfortable; take him out of his game. How do you do this? Play your ranges in such a way that forces him to make thin calls or make big bluffs.

So lets go back to the opponent who is shoving over my cbets in threebet pots with a balanced range. Well what if instead of cbetting 3/4ths to pot when I threebet, I start betting 1/4th pot or check? Let’s put ourselves in our opponents shoes. We are getting threebet light by ISF, and he checks the flop on a J74 board. With midpair, I’m afraid that he is going for a possible c/r, which I can’t call, so I check behind. Maybe I’ll even check behind top pair weak kicker. I don’t want to get blown off my draw, so I’ll check behind that. But I’ll bet my sets, overpairs, and AJ/KJ hands because maybe he’ll c/r with air and I’ll scoop a nice pot! Maybe I’ll bet air sometimes too to steal the pot.

I don’t think this is an unreasonable assessment of what our opponent may be thinking, but look at what just happened! We successfully unbalanced his range. While his betting range is balanced (He’s betting his good hands, but his checking range only contains medium strength and weak hands. So now lets say our opponent does check behind, if we bet the turn and river with a semi balanced range of air and solid hands, he is going to have to make a huge call with either mid pair or bottom pair, which much of the time is going to be incorrect!

Yet this is only one way to go about it. There are many ways so make sure to experiment.

So in summary
1. Find where your opponent’s play is strong.
2. Stop putting yourself in spots where his play is strong.
3. Take different/odd lines to unbalance his range.
4. Play super aggressive with semi balanced ranges in those spots.

Eventually, a good opponent will have to start adjusting where he checks behind some strong hands. But that’s what poker is all about! All we have to do is make another adjustment, and we have him on his heels yet again.

I know this week is complicated, but if you really get it, it’ll improve your game ten fold! If you have any questions make sure to visit my comment thread in the FTR Blogs and Operations forum.

ISF's Five Rules To Beating Low Stakes

I have to admit, most of my articles give advice that is hard to understand. When you don’t understand preliminary concepts to the ideas of talking about, it’s almost impossible to truly understand anything I or high stakes players talk about. In later articles I’m going to try to use examples where the opponents are similar to the donks and fish you encounter when you’re playing 25nl, 50nl… at any stakes really, and hopefully that will help you understand. But poker isn’t a ladder; you don’t have to climb it from the bottom to the top. However, often people start at the bottom of the ladder, when really the best way to learn the game is to start at the top and work your way down.

What do I mean by this? Well, often I talk about abstract concepts such as ranges, exploiting, frequencies, etc. Yet, people think of these concepts as “Advanced” or “For high stakes,” just because it can’t be told to you in a rule or in a sentence, when really all these concepts are fundamental components of the game. Think of poker like a tree. Yes, we have branches, such as betting the turn and raising preflop with 97s, but those branches are based on the trunk and roots. If you understand how the roots and trunk work, such as the “advanced” concepts I stated in the beginning, you can easily understand correct moves in the branches. Nevertheless, learning is not a quick process.

But being a low stakes player is much like being stuck with high interest credit card debt. The unskilled player base often is generalized by two leaks in every facet of their game. They call too much and they are too passive. This means certain plays such as bluffing, which is best versus aggressive players who can fold, are completely disregarded. And because these concepts are disregarded, important knowledge about the game is lost. Even worse, a player completely lost in essential knowledge of the game can only improve when they are given advice by better players and through trial and error of their results.

So when you read my articles, no matter how much you think its not applicable to fish, donks, or whatever you like calling them, it is applicable. Try to understand how to apply it to the people you play with. It’s like online poker professional Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky told me in my interview with him: It’s like if Michael Jordan came up to you to teach you the art of the jump shot and advocated lifting the ball over your head. It would be stupid to tell him “Well, everyone in my game shoots underhanded, so I should stick with that.” It’s the same game guys.

Nonetheless, it can be helpful to follow rules to give you an immediate boost in your winrate. Sometimes players are so lost they need to be pointed in the right direction. And sometimes your just doing 1 or 2 things wrong, and you need a check up. So I have made ISF’s five rules to beating low stakes, which I guarantee if you follow you will be a winner all the way up to 200nl!

Rule #1: Play tight preflop

When playing loose and passive players, much of the time we find ourselves versus ranges that are surprisingly balanced. The opponent isn’t raising with his semi strong hands, medium, or weak hands. Because of this, bluffing becomes tough, as it always is versus a balanced range. Therefore, you don’t want to find yourself without a hand versus these opponents. And what’s the best way to always find yourself with a hand? Playing tight preflop. Like, really tight. In a datamine of 100nl this month, guess what the stats were for the two biggest winners in the game? 12/10 and 12/6. You don’t have to play that tight, but there’s really no reason to play a lot of hands versus players who have no clue.

Rule #2: Play tight Out of Postion (OOP)

This may be the biggest leak among starting players. They call raises from the blinds with anything suited, and any face cards. But even calling with a hand like ATo, 22, KJo, or a suited connector can be a huge leak. In the games I play in, it often isn’t, so good players will pass down this knowledge, but in your games it likely is a big leak. Remember my article on preflop? Even with very good players AJo is a losing hand UTG.

Rule #3: If you have a hand you are planning on calling a bet with, you should bet rather than check.

For more on this look here.

The rest are self explanatory.

Rule #4: Bet/Bet/Raise/Bet/Bet/Raise/Raise….. you get the picture. Do that with your nut hands. Don’t get tricky unless you have quads or the deck completely crippled.

Rule #5: If you aren’t at a table with at least 3 donks find another table.

That’s it for this week!

Revision Of ISF Theorem

For the original ISF theorem post go here: ISF Theorem

When I wrote ISF Theorem a half year ago, I was at a very frustrating point in my game. I was a very marginal winner at 200nl and was going on two straight losing months, which was absolutely devastating to my bankroll. Then one day, I stumbled upon one of the most fundamental concepts of poker, and my game completely changed. That fundamental concept I named ISF theorem. After that moment, my game had completely changed, and the following month I made 20k. Finishing January with another 20k month made me look back onto my old post ISF Theorem and saw that there were a lot of issues in clarity and simplification. Many were reading it and still could not apply it correctly. So today I’m going to revise it.

The process of learning poker is a funny and disappointing process for beginners. Overwhelmed subconsciously by the massive amounts of information that needs to be processed, beginners hold on to the most outwards expressions of poker and begin to memorize them, i.e. should I cbet when I raise AA preflop on a K62 board? They answer these questions through self referral and advice of better players. They rinse and repeat this process until they have memorized nearly all they can and bam, they’ve peaked out at whatever amount of information their brain can hold, whether that be beating 50, 100 or 200 NL.

I will tell you right now, this process of learning is the worst way to learn poker, yet 99.9999% of poker players have done this at one point in their career. Why is this process of learning so bad? It’s like learning math by someone telling you the answer to every addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction problem without you actually knowing how to come to those answers. But there are infinite problems and answers in math, so this seems silly doesn’t it? You’d want to be taught how to add, subtract, divide and multiply and then you could know every answer when presented a problem. This is how I want to teach you poker: Rather than simply testing how well you can memorize decisions, tell you what concepts go behind actions so you can know millions of answers to problems rather thank just one. On another note, people tend not to look at poker this way. They think complicated is simple, and simple is complicated. The highest concepts of poker are not “higher thinking” at all, but rather simplified forms of poker knowledge. The specific decisions, the “simple,” is by far the most complicated, as you have to know all the more fundamental concepts to that decision to make a 100% correct one.

So then it would make the most sense to learn the most fundamental concepts first. At an extremely basic level poker is simply this: You have a range and your opponent has a range. Right below this, branching off is how ranges relate to each other. One of those relationships is this: Your range has strength and your opponents range has strength. Strength is defined by a term called equity, which itself is dependent on range gerth (amount of hands), board textures, type of hand (made hand or draw), as well as a few others.

Right below this level is ISF theorem. When your range is strong your inclined to play your range more aggressively, and when it’s weak you are inclined to play your range more passively. In the same way, when your opponents range is weak, you’re inclined to play your range more aggressively, and when your opponents range is strong, you’re more inclined to play your range passively.

Now when I wrote about this months ago, the idea of strength of range still eluded me. I felt like the best definition involved the amount of nut hands you had. For example, in my original post I made the assertion that our range was stronger than our tagg opponents when we raise in the CO and get called in the BB on an 852 rainbow flop. But is it really? Well in some ways it is and in some ways it isn’t. Focusing only on the flop, it surely isn’t. Although we have more nut hands on this board (22,55,88+, 85s, A8s, compared to 88,55,22 only), our range surely isn’t stronger. Almost all good players will raise 20%+ of hands in the CO. But people don’t tend to be that loose from the blinds. Calling ranges from the blinds are mostly pocket pairs, with some suited connectors as well as QJ/KJ type hands. On this type of board we can only expect a very small amount of hands to fold to one bet. Equity wise, on the flop our opponent has better equity than we do.

This was my biggest problem with ISF theorem. Strength of range clearly isn’t exclusive to hands you will stack off with, as when someone decides whether or not to call a flop bet his stack isn’t in mind yet. Explaining how to fix the hole in this logic however is no simple task, but I’ll try my best.

When examining the strength of your opponents range on the flop, you have to group different hands in regard to how they will respond to certain lines. For example in this situation, to a bet flop, check turn, and check river line, our opponents range is strong. To a bet flop, bet turn, check river line, it’s significantly weaker, and to a bet flop, turn, and river line (stack off range). So in general, strength of range applies to many different possible lines that could be taken and how our opponent will respond to those lines. And that’s about as far as I can explain it. In my original post, it seems that people are still confused on how exactly to use ISF theorem in strong range versus weak opponent range situations, hopefully this clarified that a bit.

However, one application of ISF Thorem I see almost no one post on is using it to shore up weak ranges. If the roles are reversed, and we are the BB facing a CO raise and the flop comes 852, we are in quite a predicament. Our range is so weak to turn and river bets we risk being exploited by large aggression from our opponents. He could go as far as playing all flopped overcards, draws, and nut hands with a bet, bet, bet line on good turn and rivers, which is a gigantic amount of bluffing, and still make calling on a turn or river bet –EV for us. Because of this, we may want to manipulate our range strength on later streets. We can do this in a few ways.

1. Cold Call nut hands preflop a small percentage of the time (AA-TT in this situation)
2. Folding weak hands on the flop that still have a good shot at being best (44,33 and A2s in this case)
3. Cold calling nut hands on flop and possibly turn some % of the time (sets here).

Number 3 is probably the best way, and 2 and 1 are pretty close to even as far as strengthening your range on versus different lines, in this case involving late street aggression.

I know, I know low stakes players who are reading this. “WTF Danny this doesn’t apply to me at all.” Well the issue with adjustments to shore up strength of range versus certain lines is we sacrifice maximum vacuum EV. For example it may be better for our range facing a turn bet if we cold call 88 to a cbet on an 852 board, but the most +EV decision is almost surely raising the flop. So, what we have to weigh out is whether or not our opponent is going to correctly act against a weak stack off range (which is playing very aggressive). If he isn’t, which is likely, then sacrificing EV to strengthen your range versus different lines is stupid. So even though it may not be best to manipulate your own ranges for this ranges, it’s important to realize that you are making this trade-off.

In fact, when you’re facing a player oblivious to the strength of his range or your range, you should purposely manipulate your range to be super exploitable. For example, for someone who in the scenario previously mentioned is betting one street with air and then giving up. You can call preflop with a ton of hands, float the flop with air, call with super weak draws, severely weakening your range. In spots where they refuse to fold, you can play a super strong range. You could check behind weak to medium strength hands on the flop, but never strong hands, which weakens your flop cbet range as well, knowing your opponent isn’t going to exploit it by aggressively raising your cbets or playing aggressively on the turn and river when you check behind the flop. You probably already do a lot of these things! The concept behind this could be called its own theorem itself, which I will coin as Low Stakes ISF Theorem:

Versus passive lines, you should be inclined to play weaker ranges, and versus aggressive lines you should be inclined to play stronger ranges.

Although this is still an application of ISF Theorem, differentiating may help you understand the concepts better.

That’s it for this week. I know this is a plethora of information but hopefully you can understand it.

Putting Together Ranges: Practice

A great piece of advice Sauce123 gave me is put people on ranges on every street. I tell this to many people and post it in many threads, because it is some of the best advice around. But sometimes you can hear something, try it, and just not get it. So this week, I’m going to give tips on how to put people on ranges on every street.

Preliminary to this you need to know how to read hands. Unfortunately, there is no quick way to learn how to read hands. Getting good at hand reading takes a mix of solid focus and commitment to playing and studying. Although, I’d like to emphasize the focus factor. I remember when I got coaching from Vanessa Selbst one thing I was absolutely amazed at was the precision in which she could read hands. I also remember sessions I have where my hand reading is crystal clear. When it is I start making calls and plays I normally never even touch, but when you know someone’s hand it’s not that hard to play well!

The hand we’re going to practice on is a hand posted by Alexos in the short handed forum:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/blind-battle-with-some-history-t67143.html

So we’re in a “blind battle” (the reason I put this in quotes is people tend to think that aggression is very high in blind versus blind but it’s really not in my experience) and we’re faced with a flop of Td8s2s. From a range perspective this isn’t a great flop to bet on. Much of a cold calling range consists of low sc’s and low pp’s. He may not fold any pp to a bet on this flop, though if I was opp I probably would fold 33-77. You’re just going to get two barreled too much by good scare cards or drawn out too much by the river. But with hands like 76,89,J9,QJ,JT,T9,T8,Q9,87,86,QT,KT, any fd, or any other hand that he wants to float he’s not folding to a cbet. That is a lot of hands. So when we see that we have a hand like top two pair we should be ecstatic. Some newer players may think check on this flop because we have the deck crippled, but don’t be fooled.

Now when he calls I immediately decrease the likely hood of certain hands: sets, two pair, and fd’s. All can still be in his range on the turn but these are hands I’m expecting to be raised on the flop by a fair amount. Every other hand I mentioned is cold calling much more substantially than being raised. So when the turn card comes a Ks, people tend to think “Oh shit that sucks,” mostly if they have a holding like 89 or TJ, JJ, AT, type thing. But note the first range we formed. It has one K in it. The K is actually a great card, and the spade isn’t too bad either. This is a spot where people expect for a very strong range to bet and weaker and medium range to check, yet this exact board doesn’t call for this action at all. You should be betting a lot. If I were Alexos I’d probably bet every hand that we cbet, besides maybe midpair or 99. Yes, it is exploitable but who cares? This guy is going to be folding a ton, and if he doesn’t we can easily fire another on the river expecting a fold.

But we have T8, and we bet of course. If we get raised though, what do we do? Again, at first it seems like we should possibly fold. We are repping such strength, why would he bluff here? It looks exactly like a flush as well. The problem is that he’s repping too thin of a range and we have outs versus a flush. He does have some hands he could turn into bluffs, like a straight draw with a flush draw, or he could’ve floated a hand like KJ/KQ and now wants to get it in. Maybe even a K with a flush draw. It doesn’t sound like much but when someone’s repping that thin of a range we can’t just give up. So we should go for the threebet all in and hope for the best. Do we lose to a flush sometimes? Yeah of course we do. But let’s not be results oriented. We knew it was a possibility from the beginning, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a fine play. You don’t need to be ahead here 100% of the time for this to be good, only about 1/4^th of the time.

Another hand we’re going to do is just made up but nonetheless important.

You are facing a nitty 15/12 type player. Doesn’t bluff much at all. He tends to be on the passive side, and isn’t a good value bettor. You have AA UTG and raise 4xbb, to $8, in a 1 / 2 game. Everyone folds except nitty player in the SB who calls…

BWA BWA BWA, RED TEAM GO, RED TEAM GO!!!

If alarm bells didn’t go off in your head they probably should’ve. Anytime you get a call from a decent player from the blinds when you have raised in UTG or MP, it’s a pocket pair a lot, maybe 90% of the time. So 22-99 probably 87% of the time, TT 3% of the time, and sc’s plus JJ or something random the rest of the time.

So the flop comes 852. We cbet standard amount, and surprisingly get raised about 3 times that much. Since we’re in position I like to call once, as again, they are repping such a thin range, but then I likely fold to a turn bet. I know that you post this type of hand a lot and good players post in the thread and ask you if you’re on PCP. You have to understand, in the games we play in we don’t normally experience play that nitty, so there’s no way we could even think about folding. But I do remember, although it’s hard to, that there is play that nitty at your level. And that it is possible that even though we have AA here we still could fold. But make sure when you do fold in a spot like this you’re doing a correct range analysis. Even if we change the opponent we are facing to a 40/0, I’d never fold here. Even if he shows up with 99-KK sparingly, we still should take it all the way. You have to understand that having 88,55,or 22, even though this is the exact same line we would expect him to take with those hands, is less likely than 99-KK even if we expect him to take this line just some of the time, rather than all the time with a set.

It’s just mathematical probability. If a player played either the hand 76s or 88 only, assuming they are equally likely occurrences preflop, and the flop came 852, he’s much more likely to have 76s than 88. Do the math.

Anyways that’s it for this week. If you ever want to post a hand for me to analyze feel free to go to the FTR forums and post it.

Strategic Bet Sizing

A lot of people don’t think about their bet sizing much. They have a “standard” bet size they use in nearly all situations, in hopes of not giving away further information as well as not wanting to make a mistake by betting too much or too little. However, some go a step further. They change their bet sizing based on how they think their opponent is going to respond. You should do this as well. But it’s important you also adjust your bet sizing based on your own strategy.

(NOTE: Before you read this, I am not writing any rules here. This is simply a minor factor in considering bet size, and should be taken that way)

We will start with preflop. So you’re a really loose/aggressive player preflop, you play 27/22. What kind of raise size preflop will be best for you? Well as with everything, there is no one right answer. Surprisingly to most, different raise sizes could be more profitable than others depending on how many and what type of players are left.. But with a aggressive preflop strategy, we should certainly be more inclined to raise LESS preflop (3xbb or maybe less if your frisky). The reason is pretty easy to explain. If we have a hand like AA, we want to build a pot, as we feel we have the best hand. If we have a hand like 75s, we don’t want to build a pot unless we have the nuts, so we want to keep the pot as cheap as possible, as we are likely not ahead… for now. This same principle goes for strong and weak ranges, build a pot with strong ranges, keep it cheap with weak ones. You don’t want to be playing in a huge pot with a weak range, it’s like throwing money away. Think about it, would you think raising 50bb preflop with 76s is good? Of course not, so why is 3xBB often considered good (Hint, I just told you!).

For you 100nl and above players, This principle is likely easier to understand with threebetting, as when we raise we get closer to that 50bb… well not quite, many threebet sizes are 12-16bb. If we are threebetting a light range we want to threebet a smaller size. If we threebet too light a range, or have too large a threebet size with a light range, we are too easy to play against. To beat us, our opponent likely doesn’t have to do anything, and someone who is good will kill us with light fourbetting. With a strong range, we are more inclined to threebet a larger size. Think about it this way: T9s can play profitably in position against AA if AA raises 3xbb, but it sure as hell can’t versus a 14bb threebet. Therefore, you should be inclined to threebet larger with a strong range.

I’d like to repeat again: There are no hard and fast rules for exactly what bet size you should use in any scenario, you need to way out all the factors and decide which is best.

Postflop is odd. It is somewhat counterintuitive to preflop strategy. Lets say we raise 4xbb preflop with any two cards, and get a call from a loose/passive BB. The flop comes Q43 rainbow, BB checks, we bet 6bb, he called. Pot is now about 20bb. Turn is a King, opponent checks. Should we bet? Let’s assume yes. Okay so what should we bet? This depends on the range we decide to bet. If we are bluffing a lot, and therefore betting a weak range, we should actually be inclined to bet more. Why? Simple pot odds. Bet sizing manipulates the strength of the range our opponent has to have to call. If we bet pot, he needs to be ahead approximately 25-30% of the time (based on suck out probability and implied odds. This is more of an exact science on the river, and this number is smaller if we are talking about the flop). If we bet half pot, that number cuts in half, approximately 12-15% of the time. So betting harder makes it harder for him to call, as he needs to think you have to be bluffing a good amount, while with a smaller bet size you can bluff very little and it still may be a profitable call for our opponent.

Manipulating probabilities is often the reason behind overbetting. Note if you are to bet twice the pot, which is only really viable on the river, our opponent needs to be winning close to 45% of the time to call. Therefore, even if we bluff with nearly half our hands, and our value betting the other half, our opponent still won’t be able to make a profitable call. Because of this, people tend to be very scared of overbets and don’t mess with them.

So should we bet more with our weak ranges and less with our strong ones? NO! More important factors should be consider. But it is important to understand the strategic concepts behind bet sizing.

Hope you enjoyed this week!

General Hand Reading

When it comes to getting better in an early stage of your career, hand reading is a premium. You can understand poker as much as you’d like, but it’s not going to help if you can’t read hands well. It’s hard to know what to do when you have no idea what your opponents hand is, but poker is easy when we can narrow his hand down to 1 or 2. That being said, getting better at hand reading takes experience. The number one way to get better at hand reading it to play, play, play. But you can speed the process of learning up by using the correct philosophies and some useful tips.

The 5 group system

Hand reading isn’t a general process, and it depends on our opponent. However, most of your regularly play with a type of player many call a TAG, a tight aggressive player. This player runs from a 25-15 VPIP, and PFR of 20-10. These type of players tend to group their hands into 5 types. And while the following may apply to many categories of player, I’m only specifically applying it to one.

When evaluating what hand or type of hand our opponent may have, I often think of his range in a few different categories. The first is his strong or his nut hands, such as a set or two pair, and sometimes as weak as an overpair or top pair. These are hands that are playing for stacks, that is, hands that the player is either trying to put 100bb into the pot (by the end of the hand), or is not folding when someone puts their entire stack in (albeit extreme circumstances, maybe if someone open shoved 10 times the pot, they may fold!). The signs we will see if our opponent has a strong hand is first, if he is “playing for stacks” as previously stated, and also when we see him raising and building the pot size.

The next groups is medium strength hands. These are defined as hands that may not be willing to put his entire 100bb+ in with, but are willing to call two streets with. This is a relatively small category of hands. An example of a medium strength hand is something like KJ on a KT6,x,x board. Or maybe JJ on that same board. It’s a hand that our opponent is willing to call two bets with, and may bet twice himself, but no farther than that.

Then we have the weak hands. These are one tier down from medium strength. They rarely put money in on more than one street, whether it’s betting or calling a bet. These are hands like bottom pair or mid pair, even a hand like ace high. It’s likely your opponent has this hand if he has called a bet or bet but then proceeded to check twice on the turn and river. He was also likely to have this hand if you fired two barrels and he folded.

Then there are draws. Everyone plays these hands differently, and different spots are likely to have different actions. These hands are flush draws and straight draws, even two pair or set draws. When these draws hit, they become nut hands, and therefore will play like one. When they haven’t or don’t hint you are likely to see some checking and calling. Many good players mimic their moves with nut hands to match their draws though, and that play can be hard to beat.

Bluffs and air are the most random of the categories, and really cannot be defined. Bluffs don’t look like any of the previous. They likely try to represent a strong hand, and sometimes are successful. But sometimes they don’t quite tell the right story, and when you sense that you should be suspicious.

I thought I would add one more category as well, which is the combo draw. These are either super strong draws, like a pair and a flush draw or a straight flush draw. Generally you’ll see your opponents just put as much money in as possible as fast as possible.

Hands with blockers and hands without them

One factor that will sway how your opponent plays a hand is if his hand has a blocker or not. For example if your opponent called a raise out of position with 87s and the flop comes 732 rainbow, he’s going to be uncomfortable checking and calling as you can hit an overcard very easily. But if he has something like A7 on that board, he knows that he has a possible overcard you have in your hand and can extract some extra money if he hits it, so he’s fine with check calling. So in summary, when people have blockers they are more comfortable checking and calling a bet, but when they don’t they are more likely to lead out or even raise. This can be conscious or subconscious.

Timing and Bet sizing

Timing is an all important part of hand reading. I said this in an earlier post, but I remember reading a thread by one of the greatest online poker players of all time, Bldswttrs, and I was amazed about how exact he was being with his reads. He asserted he knew his opponent had a certain exact hand an enormous percentage of the time in many of the hands he posted. This is because he examined his opponents timing and bet sizing tendencies precisely… well that and he is a genius! The best advice I can give you here is to examine what type of bet sizes and timing your opponent is doing with each category of hands. For example, with bluffs you will see some players act very quickly, while with strong hands they will wait for the time bank. Often I see when people time down and then make a bet, that it is often a thin value bet. Although as I said, everyone is different, and you need to pay attention to see what they are doing. Bet sizing is the same thing, however it is likely you will see bigger bets with better hands, and smaller bets with weaker hands. Bluffs will probably be somewhere in between.

Hope this helped!

Forming Ranges: Part 2

In my first strategy post on forming ranges, I mostly touched on preflop. But postflop, as we all know, is where the big money is at. And it’s postflop where forming ranges is the most important, it’s just a whole lot harder!

The basic premise of forming ranges is very simple. You group a hand in a range where it maximizes that hands profit and the other hands in its ranges profit. Notice the latter point. Our hand has value in a range not only by itself, but it also affects the total EV of the range. If this still isn’t clear, it’s obvious if you reraise AA only preflop, you won’t get any action (assuming somewhat attentive opponents), but adding 65s to your preflop reraising range will add a lot more profit to your AA than the profit of 65s. Now, since most ranges consist of several hands, you can imagine how much more profit you can gain from just adding a few bluffs or draws to your range!

I’d like to digress just a bit. One thing I always say is that making a marginal call is infinitely worse than making a semi bad bluff. The idea of ranges should explain this to you. Having a bad hand in your range after checking barely affects the range of hands your opponent will bet with, but having a bad hand in your range when your betting affects the profitability of all the hands in your range. For more on this, check this post. It will blow your mind!

Now that we know why thinking about forming our range is important, we need to think about how to do it. A lot of the time when people start incorporating aggression in their game, they discover that their opponents range is weak in certain spots and they start raising like crazy when they see it. Now that’s not necessarily bad, but you have to think of your game beyond a singular hand.

Think about this situation. We have a Tagg opponent raising from the CO, and we call on the BU with 89dd. The flop comes Ks5c2h. Our opponent comes out betting. We know his range is weak here (however as is ours), so we correctly should be raising a wide range of hands. But raising 98dd here is a mistake. Why? Because if we were to raise 98dd here, we’d be raising with 100% of the hands we would cold call, and we likely do not want to do that. Our opponent could catch on easily or make a spastic bluff, and we’re completely exploitable by a solid player.

What people don’t get is when you decide you are going to raise the flop light, it shouldn’t be random and based on timing and game flow. Generally, you should have an idea of exactly the hands you are going to raise here, and these hands are simply the best hands in our range versus our opponents range. So if we decide to raise this flop 30% of the time, which is reasonable, we’d raise some of the better 30% of our hands in our range.

KQ,KJ,KT,55, 22 are pretty obvious. But how about our bluffs? A3,A4,34,64, Axcc, Axss, Axhh would be a definite bluff hands here for me. Why? Simply because they are going to have the best equity against our opponents calling range. If he calls the flop with KJ/KQ I can spike an Ace with the Axs, I can spike a gutshot with the draws, and a straight with 43. Now most opponents aren’t going to call very light on this flop, but when you feel the adjustment coming, you could very well add 99-77 to this range. As his calling range changes, so does our raising range.

Of course hands like 5x, 2x, or low pocket pairs may be solid hands against his range. But do we want to raise them? A hand like 2x is so likely to get sucked out on we may very well want to raise it, and turn our hand into a two pair draw. A weak 5x also may be a solid raising hand for the same reason. This board is also such a good two barrel board for our opponent, our hand may just become worthless fold equity for our opponent. However, a lot of the time we are going to want to call with our midpair, as they have solid show down value and don’t need to be turned into bluffs.

Okay, reality check:

1. Every hand in your range is affected by every other hand in your range. Even if you lose money with one hand, it may be so good for your entire range that it becomes a very +EV play. Since there is no bluffing when you check/call, and checking weak hands doesn’t affect your opponents betting range very much, making a bad bluff is infinitely better than making a bad call.

2. When choosing a raising, betting, or calling range, don’t be arbitrary. If you choose to raise 20% of your hands, than raise some of the better 20% against your opponents range.

3. Sometimes hands are better off calling, and sometimes it is better to turn them into two pair/ trip draws.

Hope this week helps!

Why Being OOP Sucks

The most repeated advice in poker. We’ve all heard it before.

Position, Position, Position.

The proof is in the pudding. Our statistics show that we win much more money on the button than we do UTG. But the advice to play in position is not very powerful when we have no idea why. That’s why, in this weeks article, I’m going to explain why we pound position and how we can apply it to our games.

The main reason is the fundamental difference between being out of position and in position. When we are in position we actually get one more street of information than when we are out of position. Let’s examine a common scenario, where one player, player A, raises in position and gets a caller in the blinds from another player, player B. Player B is ostensibly first to act on the flop. Player B can only act the information from the previous street (what our opponent did preflop and what we did preflop). However, look at what information player A has. He can act on not only what him and his opponent did preflop, but also their flop action. Now look at what information B’s first action has on the turn. He can only act on the exact same information player A had on the flop! Player A actually has a full betting round of information more than our opponent. Considering there are only 4 betting rounds in poker, that information is huge.

Another reason is pot control… Let’s we raise preflop in position and and get called from the blinds. The flop comes 952, two spades. Because some opponents will c/r this flop liberally, we choose to check behind a hand like Ace high, or K2s, maybe even 65. Now even if our opponent chooses to make a pot sized bet on the turn and river versus our extremely weak range, he can only get about 1/3rd of our stack in the pot. If he wants to get our whole stack in the pot, he’d have to overbet the flop, a move that we could easily exploit by checking behind a set or a nut hand on occasion. Out of position we have little control of the pot size, often when we want to keep the pot small with a weak hand, the only way we can do it is to check, which is often a mistake with our midpair and weak top pair hands.

One other reason is the amount of players left to act preflop. Sit and go player know this one well. Let’s say in a six max game we are dealt in UTG. We have 5 people to act behind us, each who have a 2-3% of having a super good hand. All together that adds up to around a 12% chance we are going to be facing a nut hand. Because of this, we are going to face ranges stronger than ours and will likely have to fold the hands we raise to a threebet (unless it’s a good hand!).

Because of all these factors, we can play a weaker range (aka call more hands, raise more hands, bet more hands postflop) than our opponents stronger range. Takes this scenario for instance: We raise on the button 100bb deep with 76s, and our opponent threebets us from the blinds with KTo. KTo has about 55% equity against 76s; in other words it’s a better hand. Assuming both opponents are of the exact same skill, which opponent is better off. That is to say, which opponent will win more in the long run? It’s likely the player with 76s, because of the advantages of position. This is the same concept as if we have a range in position that has 45% equity against a range out of position with 55% equity. Assuming similar skill levels, in all likelihood the player in position is going to win more money in this situation in the long run than our opponent.

That’s why position is so strong.

Predicting the Future and a Hand For Analysis

We are on the river with 97s on a JJ922 board. Our opponent has bet 3/4ths the pot into us, and we are put in a tough spot. We know from the past streets that our hand look weak and our donk opponent, who seems to never fold (ever), could easily have a J, 2, overpair, or 9 and better kicker. He could be bluffing as well, but we feel like not enough to the point where we should call. It’s close. What should we do, call or fold?

The funny thing about decisions is a lot of time our mistake isn’t whether we should called or folded on the river, but instead how we should’ve played preflop, or even the flop.

Every decision you make in poker should be influenced by how the decision will affect later street play. For example, if we raise AA preflop, and AA only, our later street ranges are going to be very, very tight. If we raise 12% of our hands, we will have looser ranges on at least the flop, and likely the turn and river as well. And if we raise 25% of our hands, our ranges on later streets will likely be even weaker. Same goes for cold calling, threebetting %, and limping. However tight or loose we make a decision preflop will greatly affect our play postflop. Versus players who are tight postflop, having super wide ranges are okay, as we can bluff a lot and pick up some solid money when they fold. When players are loose postflop however, we may want to have tighter ranges postflop.

Let’s say we’re on the BU in a .5/1 Full Ring game (Hey! I’m using full ring guys!), the blinds are both 25/2’s, loose and passive preflop, but we feel they are too tight postflop. This is a spot where we should be raising a large frequency on the button, maybe as much as 40% of our hands. We can take the EV from stealing their blinds and also can afford to have wide ranges postflop. Digressing a bit, you may even want to raise 4.5x-5.5x the BB here, no matter what your standard raise size is (Although it doesn’t really have to do with this article, this is worth thinking about).

Now to another common example. We’re in a 1 / 2 6 max game and decide to raise 97s MP. The annoying 65/25 maniac behind us calls in position. The villain seems to be running so hot, as he is always betting and never folding. You know the player, and god is he annoying. The flop comes JJ2, and we cbet our standard 12 into a 16 pot. He calls. Turn is a 2, so we of course decide to give up, we check and he bets and we muck. “If only we could hit a hand.” We tell ourselves.

The truth is, we played this hand fine postflop. The issue with the hand was with preflop. What the hell are we doing raising 97s in middle position with a complete maniac behind us? We are going to get called by the maniac most of the time, and most of the time we are going to miss and have to give up, or even hit one pair and be put in a tough spot. As you may have remember from my previous article “There is no such thing as a made hand,” any draws we may flop are pretty worthless versus a wide range. Versus this type of player, we only want to raise hands like 22+, and pretty much any broadway cards. Top pair is so valuable versus this player when any broadway card pairs we essentially have the nuts, as we our never folding. With this range adjustment preflop, our maniac opponent changes from the type of player who annoys us to some fish whose stack is as good as ours!

We can make the same type of adjustments on the flop. If we cbet less, our turn and river ranges when we cbet become tighter. The more we fold on the flop, the less bad hands we have on our turn and river range. The more we raise preflop, the more air we will have in our range postflop. Every decision we make has side effects on later streets, so make sure to watch what your doing!

Hand for analysis:

This week in a thread I made in the short handed forum about bluffing, Galapogos posted a hand I thought we could all learn from.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/ask-isf-about-a-bluff-or-bluffing-t68810.html#661994

A pretty common spot: A donk player leads into us, on an uncoordinated board, and we feel like he has a weak range. He’d probably c/r two pair or a set, and much of the time this is mid or bottom pair, or a weak top pair, sometimes its air trying to take away a flop that was unlikely to hit us. So should we raise Jd7d here?

Well, the question should actually be, what range should we raise here? It goes back to the question of forming ranges. Jd7d has no back door flush draw, and likely only has one good overcard, and sometimes he’s drawing close to dead. So, the only reason we’d raise Jd7d here is if we thought that we should be raising close to 100% of our hands here, as Jd7d is one of the worst hands on this board for us to have. What we want to find is our best few hands after our easy made hands to raise (top pairs or better), and raise those as well. So 76, 64,96,97,74,AK/AQ with backdoor flush draws are all solid candidates. We could raise our midpairs, but we’re going to want to face a weaker range, one that wont call a flop raise, with those hands. So the answer is we don’t raise Jd7d, unless we felt like when this player lead, he was folding an enormous amount of the time, which is never the case on this board.

In fact, I don’t expect our opponent to fold very much on this board, but this is very much an ISF theorem spot. I expect his leading range consists of hands that he does not want to stack off with, so we should double or triple barrel nearly the entire time we raise the flop. We should find a lot of folds on the turn or river.

As played, regarding the river bet, I don’t think our opponent will call without an ace or better, so this bluff is marginal, but fine.

That’s it for this week.

There's No Such Thing As a Made Hand: Part 2

In an article from a few months ago, I explained the real differences between draws and made hands. In summary, draws and made hands weren’t simply names for hands, but actually each of them have certain equity qualities versus different ranges. Made hands were then renamed as a hand that had variable equity across ranges and stable equity through streets. Draws were the opposite. They had stable equity across ranges, and variable equity through streets. Last time I didn’t tell you a lot about what this all meant, I let you do the thinking. But now, I’d like to tell you what these definitions mean for our poker game. And I’d like to explain the application in terms of some of the most difficult hands we play: weak made hands and draws.

When it comes down to it, poker is all about getting our money in with better equity than our opponents. Yet, you can play hands in such a way that will have better equity than others. That’s because as we change the way we play a hand or a hand range, our opponents calling, betting, folding, or whatever-ing range changes.

But in what ranges do we want to play against, and what ranges do we not want to play against? When examining this situations, what I like to do is compare the equity of a single hand that is representative of a range versus another hand that is representative of another range. For example, on a K74 flop, a hand like 87 can represent mid and bottom pair type hands, and AA can represent nut hands (a little better than top pair, a little worse than a set). So when exploring these concepts on your own, try it out.

Sorry to shuffle around, lets get down to it! Lets start with draws, and a draw representative of pretty much all draws, a flush draw. So first off, lets examine the hands that will have the best equity against a flush draw. The worst equity a flush draw has is clearly against a better flush draw, around 15% on the flop, as we can still pair up and win. Next would be nut hands, followed by mid pair type hands, etc. However, the differences in equity between nut hands and weaker made hands is not very high as you may recall from my previous article.

So what does this tell us about how we should play our draws? As I said earlier, poker is all about getting our money in with better equity than our opponents, which means the converse is also true, as we want to get as little money in when we are behind our opponents. So first off, we want to get in as little money as possible versus higher flush draws when we have a weak one, in other words, we want to keep the pot small and keep our opponent passive with his flush draws, and only with his flush draws if we can. Oddly enough, when we have nut flush draws we want to do the opposite, because our equity advantage is so good. We want to make the pot as big as possible and force our opponent to be aggressive with a worse flush draw.

Doing this sounds hard, but it’s really not as bad as it looks. Here’s a hypothetical example to help you out. We have 53hh on the CO in a. 5/1 6 max game, we raise preflop to 4, and get threebet by an aggressive player to 13. We elect to call. Just ignore whether our decision was good or not. The flop comes Qs7h2h, and our opponent bets 16 into the $26 pot. Now I know this is hypothetical, but lets say we know if we raise that our opponent will shove over us with any nut hand, including any top pair, and a flush draw. And let’s say we know that if we call the flop, he will always bet the turn with his flush draws, but never check them, while its unclear how he will play his made hands.. This is a situation where we may want to just flat the flop, and go for a turn bet if he checks. That way, we play our hand against a range where we have good equity, and put less money in the pot versus hands (bigger flush draws) we have bad equity against.

Now made hands are a lot different. Strong made hands or nut hands are easy to play, and don’t take much logic to figure out how to play. We just try to get our opponent to call or raise with the widest range possible. With weaker made hands, its not that easy. (Note: Since bottom pair and hands that are really weak will almost never get value, they are essentially draws with show down value.)

With made hands, are equity changes a lot versus different ranges. Versus better made hands, we our crushed. And versus weaker made hands, we are the ones crushing. So our goal with made hands is to try to get in the most money versus the weaker made hands, and less money against the better made hands. This sounds really simple, but there are some interesting applications to it.

Common situation. A regular opponent raises preflop to 4 in that same .5/1 6 max game, and we call his CO raise from the blinds with 88. The flop comes T74 rainbow, and we check, our opponent bets 6 into the $8 pot. Using the weak made hand concept from before, it would make absolutely no sense to raise here. We blow out all weaker made hands, and we put ourselves against a range of better made hands. Calling, however, makes perfect sense. The times our opponent checks behind the turn, we can bet the river and expect value against a lot of worse made hands, and also expect him not to show up with a lot of better made hands. The same thing applies to T8s here, or any made hand that isn’t going to play well against our opponents stack off range. With weaker made hands, we almost never want to put our entire stack in unless we are forced to by an opponents bet or raise, and when want to try not to allow our opponent to do that anyway.

But conversely to made hands, with draws we actually want to get our money in versus really strong hands. We don’t want to play them against a wide or weak range, as it has just as much value versus that range as it does against a range of purely nut hands. That’s why draws are such good balancers to our nut hands. Their entire value is pretty much giving us more action on our nut hands, because what range they are facing makes so little difference.

So when your examining how you want to play a certain bet, examine what ranges you will be up against with many different lines you could take, and you will find your game improving ten fold!

Beginners Guide To Equity and Fold Equity

There has been a request for a beginners guide to equity so that’s going to be the article for this week.

Equity is our mathematical chance of our hand or hand range winning the hand against our opponents hand or hand range. For example, the hand AA has 80% equity against TT, which has 20% equity against AA. This is the same way with hand ranges. AA has 83% equity against a range of AK, TT+. Sometimes, we want to analyze how well we played a hand based on what we could have in a certain spot and based on what we feel our opponent likely has. For example, a range of AK, TT+ has 63% equity against a range of JJ-88, AJ+. Also, just like AK has 50% equity against AK, a range of TT+, AK has 50% equity against a range of TT+, AK.

On the river equity, becomes a lot different. Since there is no longer any possibility of being drawn out on, your equity depends more on the girth of your range, in other words, the amount of hands in your opponents range. For example, on a board of 248JK, no flushes, if you decide to bet a hand like JT, and your opponent has a calling range of 89,8T,J9,99,TT,QJ+, QQ, and KT, then we have close to 50% equity against his calling range, as we are beating about half his calling range and losing to the other half.

Equity exists on the most fundamental level of poker. Nothing actually changes in a poker game besides equity. For example, our opponent raises preflop with 27o. All that happened was he changed his equity against his opponents ranges. Our opponent decides to check the turn with AA and bet the river instead of bet the turn with AA, all he did was change his range on his turn bet and add to the equity of his range when he checks the turn and bets the river. When we can maximize our equity, we will make lots and lots of money.

Now an interesting effect happens when we or our opponent folds our hand. When we fold, we no longer have equity to win the hand. This is huge given the fact that even when we are way behind, such as our bottom pair versus top pair on the flop, we still have about a 20% chance to win the hand, or 20% equity against that hand. So getting our opponents to fold, and therefore getting our opponents to relinquish their equity, can be very +EV. That is why there is what we call Fold Equity. Fold Equity is the value of getting our opponent to fold given there is money in the pot.

In a vacuum, if there is exactly X amount of money in the pot, and we have a hand that will never win (unlikely), and we bet X, we will have to have our opponents fold 50% of the time for that to be a break even play. (Note: There are too many factors to properly calculate this situation with very good accuracy. Other factors include our own equity, how much our bet with air will influence the amount other hands in our range will win, etc. But also note that the factors I named all lessen the amount of time our opponent has to fold to make our bet a good play)

Hopefully, now that you understand Equity and Fold Equity better, you can understand the rest of my articles better!

I regret to inform you all that this is my last article for FTR. I just hit $100,000 in career poker earnings, I’m starting my own business, and traveling a lot so I no longer have the time. I feel like the articles I wrote are some of the best on the net. And you get them for free, so try not to take them for granted!

Hope you enjoyed my writing!