Two No-Limit Plays That Make You Easy To Read
Don't miss one article! Subscribe to the Full Feed RSS or get NPA in your inbox.
I play no-limit cash games regularly both live and online. I prefer to play live, and a major reason is because live players are for the most part much easier to read. It’s not that I can magically decode an opponent’s every twitch and tic. Physical tells are sometimes useful, but more important are betting patterns. Live players tend to routinely employ an assortment of plays that make them much easier to read. These plays are not all necessarily bad in and of themselves. They just have a tendency to make a player too predictable overall unless one takes special care to avoid this problem. Here are two of the common plays my opponents make that let me take advantage.
Flat-calling with A-K
Many live players, particularly in the small stakes games like $1-$2 and $2-$5, like to flat-call preflop raises rather than reraise when they hold A-K. Some players will call nearly every time they hold A-K, and some will mix it up, reraising and calling.
Flat-calling with A-K has some things going for it. First, by keeping the pot small, it allows you sometimes to play more profitably on flops such as Q-T-5. On these flops, A-K can leave you in a hand strength no-mans-land: too good to fold, but not good enough to play for stacks. You have more flexibility with the hand in a smaller pot. Additionally, flat-calling A-K can add some deception to your game. A preflop raiser with A-T, A-J, or A-Q will be much happier to play for stacks on an A-high flop against a preflop caller than against someone who reraised preflop.
Nevertheless, habitually flat-calling with A-K has one huge flaw. It completely unbalances your preflop reraising range. If you aren’t reraising with A-K (and presumably not with A-Q and weaker either), then an opponent can expect you to have a big pocket pair when you reraise preflop. This is far too much information to divulge about your hand. If I know a player is an A-K caller, and I also know that this player doesn’t often bluff reraise with a hand like 8-7 suited, I can play almost perfectly against his preflop reraises. I never have to give him action when he has A-A or K-K. This is a huge problem for him, since A-A and K-K are normally by leaps and bounds the most profitable hands.
The remainder of this article is insider content available to premium members only. Log in to your account or become a premium member and get instant access.
Tags: 3-betting, balancing your ranges, card player, drawing-hands, Hand Reading, no-limit-holdem, poker, preflop-play
Raising AK or flatting AK isn’t a leak, if you think AK balances your raising range it’s laughable because if you’re raising only AA, KK and AK for a 2% HUD stat he isn’t paying you regardless. In fact raising with AK is a losing strategy, not a winning strategy because you are folding out each and every hand you dominate and getting into AI confrontations as a 45% dog at best – raising with AK is a bigger leak for small stakes players than calling with it 99% of the time IMO, in fact people with 2% HUD stats shouldn’t be raising at all.