But most small stakes players do something terrible that makes their bad runs even worse. They play bad too.

Here are four bad plays that small stakes players make that cause them to experience more “bad luck” than they have to.

Calling raises out of position with dominated hands

If you read my articles regularly, you might expect this one to be first on my list. It is. And it will continue to be until I see people stop doing it. (I should live so long.) This one’s really simple. Being out of position is a big disadvantage in this game. Holding top pair with a bad kicker while you’re out of position against a preflop raiser is even worse. This just loses money, people.

Here’s how it works. You limp in with A 5 . I raise from the button. You call. The flop comes K J 6 . You check, I bet, you fold. Or the flop comes A 9 8 . You check, I bet, you call. Turn is a Q . You check, I bet big, and you hate your hand. Nothing good can come of it.

Don’t limp in with A5o. Don’t limp in with K8s. Don’t limp in with QTo. If you do limp in with these hands and someone raises behind you, cut your losses and fold. If you keep playing these hands you are going to be outkicked and outdrawn over and over again, and you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Overcommitting to vulnerable hands

No-limit hold’em is a simple game. You have your monster hands, your decent but vulnerable hands, and your dud hands. You want to put a lot of money in the pot with your monsters, a medium amount with your decent and vulnerable hands, and little to nothing with your duds.

As simple as this is, however, small stakes players get it wrong all the time. They slowplay their monsters to get just a medium amount of money for them. And they put a lot of money in the pot with their decent and vulnerable hands. At least they get the duds right. Usually.

It’s a $2-$5 game with $800 stacks. A loose player in early position makes it $20 to go. A player calls. Our hero calls from two off the button with K J . The cutoff and button also call, and the blinds fold. It’s five to the flop in a $107 pot.

The flop comes J T 8 . The raiser checks. The next player checks. Our hero then bets $150.

He normally doesn’t make bets that big. But he sees that board, and it’s scary. There’s three straight cards out there and a flush draw. He’s got top pair and he wants everyone out now before things get worse.

What’s he done? He’s just put a ton of money in the pot with what is essentially a decent, but vulnerable hand. With four opponents and such a dangerous flop, he could be behind already. More to the point, big bets only get bad hands and draws to fold. Good draws, the hands that our hero is most scared of, are coming along no matter how much he bets. You can’t protect a vulnerable hand by betting a ton of money. All you do when you bet big with a vulnerable hand is ensure that the only people who will play with you are ones who have a good chance to beat you.

Next time you get outdrawn in a big pot, don’t just tell the bad beat story. Think about how the pot got to be so big, and think about if your hand was really strong enough to justify playing such a large pot.

Paying Off When You’re Outdrawn

For the third time in the last hour you flopped top pair. And for the third time the flush card came in. The last two times it came on the turn and you folded to significant action. This time it came on the river. The nit who called you on the flop and turn has now put out a $200 bet. How bad can you run, right?

Please do not call.

Yes, people bluff scare cards on the river, and you shouldn’t just auto-muck the river if a bad card comes. But in many cases when your opponent bets or raises the river, you’re beat the overwhelming majority of the time. Don’t pay these bets off.

I see people pay off hopelessly in this situation every time I play. These payoffs are bankroll killers. It’s certainly frustrating when bad cards keep popping up. But you have to keep your composure. Go back through the hand in your head. What hands can your opponent have? Can he even reasonably have a bluff? Many bad river cards leave little doubt that you’re beaten. In these cases, you have to let it go.

Camping Out In A Bad Seat

At any poker table, there are good seats and bad seats. The seat directly to the left of the worst player at the table is always a good seat. A seat with a bunch of nits on your right and some short-stacked tourists on your left is a bad seat. If you make a habit of sitting in the best available seat at your table, moving promptly when necessary, you will make more money playing poker.

It’s an easy thing to do. A terrible player is sitting with 300 big blinds in front of him. The guy on his left gets up. There should be a fight over who gets that seat. The good seat might be worth an extra $30/hour or more, but there’s no fight. A fight over the white chip that rolled off the table? Sure. A fight over the most valuable seat in the game? Never.

Some seats are particularly bad. If you like to limp into pots and see cheap flops, then I’m a very annoying guy to have on your left. It will seem like I’m raising you nearly every time I have the button. I know I’m annoying, because my opponents are often eager to tell me so. But despite the fact that I’m thwarting his plans, that guy who likes to limp in to every pot simply will not move to the empty seat across the table. He’ll grumble loudly every time I raise, but he can’t be bothered to move three feet to a different seat.

This one couldn’t be easier. If a seat opens up, and it’s better than the one you’re in, move. If you don’t, and you proceed to lose two buyins in the bum seat, you have no one to blame but yourself.

[This article appeared in the October 5, 2011 issue (Vol. 24, No. 20) of Card Player.]

As you might imagine, it was probably a bit of both. After a session, it can be difficult to tease out the play bad from the run bad. If you want to learn from your mistakes, however, it is worth it to try to do so. In hands that didn’t go well, did you play bad, did you run bad, or was it a double whammy of play bad and run bad?

There are a lot of ways to run bad at poker, and many of them are subtle. I’m not exploring this topic to give you ways to rationalize your lackluster results. Quite the opposite, I think being aware of how luck works allows you to better understand what is under your control.

Here are six different ways you can run bad at poker.

1. Opponents catch their cards against you.

This is the obvious one and the type of run bad that gets the most attention. You get it in on the turn, top set against bottom set, and your opponent catches his one out for quads on the river. Brutal beat, man.

2. You make few to no hands for a while.

“I didn’t get dealt one pocket pair in four hours!” It happens. “I had A-K or A-Q seven times and didn’t catch a pair once!” Yup. Again, this one is fairly obvious, so I won’t belabor the point.

3. Your opponents catch hands against you.

This one can be subtle and very frustrating. This is different from the first way to run bad. You’re not getting the money in good and the wrong card comes. Instead, your opponents are just making more hands than usual. You raise three times preflop, and someone reraises you each time. Hyper-aggressive game? Maybe. But not if those three reraises were the only ones for the past hour. Instead, you just ran into big pairs three times. Run bad.

You raise preflop with K-J and get two callers. The flop comes T-7-5. The callers check, you bet, and one player calls. The turn is a 7, and your opponent makes a big bet. Run bad.

You raise preflop six times in an hour and a half, and all six times you miss the flop, and an opponent calls or raises your flop continuation bet. It’s very frustrating, and in most small stakes games it’s almost all run bad.

You raise preflop with Q-Q, and the big blind calls. The flop comes J-9-3. Your opponent checks, you bet, and he calls. The turn is an A. He checks, you bet again, and he check-raises. Run bad.

This particular form of run bad can play with your head. Unlike simply getting nothing to play, you are investing money in these hands before things turn sour. And unlike getting it in with the best of it and losing, these hands don’t go to showdown. They usually end with your opponent raising and you folding, or your opponent calling a bet and you checking and folding on the next round. After a few times, that ugly little thought, “Maybe I’m getting bullied,” starts dancing with your sanity.

Don’t worry. The table has not suddenly consipred to push you off every hand. You aren’t getting bullied. Your opponents are just catching hands, and you are running bad as a result.

4. Your opponents cold deck you.

You have the queen-high flush draw, and on the river the ace of your suit comes. You get it in, and your opponent has the king-high flush. Nothing you can do.

This is the same phenomenon as the previous way to run bad, except that instead of your opponent raising and you being forced to fold, you happen to have a big enough hand that you get all-in instead. Just one bad cold deck can ruin a whole session, and often it’s pure run bad.

5. Your opponents miss every time you make a hand.

You made three sets and two flushes tonight, and each time you bet the flop, and everyone folded.

This one is frustrating, and it can have you questioning how you play. When this happens to you a lot, you may start to think, “Should I be slowplaying all my big hands to make sure I get something from them?”

Slowplaying makes sense sometimes in no-limit, but it’s easy to overdo it. More importantly, slowplaying decisions should be based on the board texture and your opponents’ tendencies, not on what happened the last five times you flopped a big hand.

6. You’re stuck at a bad table or in a bad seat.

This one obviously applies most directly to tournaments where you’re assigned a table and seat. But it can happen to you in cash games as well.

As a winning poker player, over time I can expect to win X dollars per hour on average when I play. But that number is my average hourly win over every poker game I will play for a year (or longer).

On any one particular day, what I can expect to win per hour could be much higher or much lower.

Not every $2-$5 game is equal. Some days I sit down, and there is a drunk NFL player on my right with a $5,000 stack. This setup would be worth considerably more than my X per hour average. Other days I sit down, and the tourists are all sitting to my left, nursing $200 stacks. This setup is below average.

You should invest some effort to find the best game and best seat in the house. And if there’s no good game, perhaps you should try a different cardroom. But, by the definition of average, you will sometimes be forced to play in a below average seat or game. This important form of running bad is worth acknowledging.

Final Thoughts

About half the time you sit down to play poker, you’re going to run bad. If you’re a skilled player, you might book a win anyway as long as you don’t run too bad. But if you miss every flop for five hours and get cold-decked the one time you hit, you’re going to lose no matter how awesome you are. Good results depend on catching a few breaks.

It’s important for your sanity as well as for your attempts to improve that you be able to look back at a session and pick out the bad outcomes that were beyond your control.

But don’t rationalize every bad result as running bad. Often there’s some bad play in there as well. Next issue I’ll talk about ways that bad play can put you in situations you could have avoided and how it can cause you to lose more than necessary.

[This article appeared in the September 21, 2011 issue (Vol. 24, No. 19) of Card Player.]

Weighing Gain Against Loss

Let’s lay down some assumptions. Most people use the rationale, “I was waiting for a better spot,” to justify folding in a situation where they felt calling (or possibly raising) had more value. For example, “I really thought he was bluffing, but I decided to give him that pot and wait for a better spot.”

By definition, then, you think you are giving something up by folding. You don’t think he’s bluffing every once in a while. You think he’s bluffing so often that calling will make you money on average. But you’re folding anyway, presumably because you are averse to risking your entire stack. So what are you losing? You’re losing the share of the pot that would have been yours (on average) had you called. And what do you gain? You gain the piece of mind of knowing you won’t get stacked on this hand. If you weigh gain versus loss objectively in this scenario, you are losing much more by folding than you are gaining.

You win at poker by risking money in situations where you will profit on average. This is true when you’re risking just a $50 flop call, and it’s true when you’re risking your $800 stack. You risk money in favorable situations, situations where playing gets you more money back on average than folding does. Nothing changes just because your stack is at risk and you aren’t a lock to win. If you win more money on average by playing than by folding, then playing is virtually always the best play. It’s really that simple.

Cash Game Excuses

But Ed, you may be thinking, I can think of many scenarios where you’re better off not taking the gamble. I disagree. I won’t say it’s impossible to find such a situation in a cash game, but they are rare—rare enough that you can play for a hundred hours and never once be correct to “wait for a better spot.” I’ll discuss two of the false scenarios.

1. You’re in the hand with a bad player and you’re worried that if you break him (or double him up) he’ll leave the game.

Ok. If you somehow knew for certain that your target would leave if he busted/doubled up, and if you knew that your target would stay in the game for a certain period of time if you folded, and if you knew that a much stronger player would replace your target if he were to leave, then keeping him in the game would have some quantifiable value. However, even then the value of winning the current hand could be greater than all the possible future value you could extract from your target.

In practical terms, you can’t possible know all of that. You don’t know if a player will leave when he busts out, or if he will rebuy ten times. And even if you fold to wait for a better spot, your target could bust out to someone else on the very next hand and all your theoretical future winnings would go up in smoke. Moreover, if you play $1-$2 or $2-$5, chances are the next player on the list is nearly as bad as the player you’re worried about, so who cares if he leaves?

In the overwhelming majority of real-world scenarios, folding a good hand to try to keep a bad player in the game is a fool’s plan. It’s a case of a bird in the hand almost always being worth more than two in the bush. Playing on the best poker sites will give you an edge and have you winning faster while you learn.

2. But I’ve built a stack much larger than the buy-in cap, and if I lose the hand I won’t be able to rebuy what I’ve lost.

This is another excuse that could possibly have merit if all the pieces were to fall into place, but that in the vast majority of real-world circumstances ends up being a lot of hot air.

You have $2,000 in a $2-$5 game. The buy-in cap is $1,000. If you lose the hand, you can’t rebuy. When does this hurt you? It hurts you only if:

1. A particularly bad player at your table also has $2,000.
2. This particularly bad player doesn’t decide to blow off his stack to someone else on the next hand or just get up and leave. (See above.)

Just having a big stack by itself isn’t worth anything. You need someone else to have a big stack with you, and that person needs to be bad. That person also needs to play long enough with the big stack for you to get a good shot at winning it.

In most cases, you’re better off gambling on your current hand rather than playing for some theoretical future hand that most likely won’t materialize.

Tournament Excuses

Waiting for a better spot is nearly always a bad idea in a cash game. Because you can always rebuy, it takes a truly extraordinary circumstance to justify passing on a winning situation in the hope that an even better one comes along.

In tournaments, waiting for a better spot more often has merit. But even in tournaments, “I’m waiting for a better spot” is usually just a flimsy rationalization for timid play.

Say you’ve just entered a major tournament with lots of entrants. Before the first hand, the tournament director offers to let you flip a coin. If it lands heads, he’ll double your starting stack. If it lands tails, you’re out. Most players would never dream of taking the gamble, but mathematically flipping is basically just as good as not. Now say instead of flipping a coin, the tournament director let you run pocket queens against ace-king for double or nothing. I’d guess that still most tournament players would turn it down, even as a 56/44 favorite, wanting to “wait for a better spot.” But this is a gamble everyone should take. In a large field, a double stack is worth twice a single stack, and 56/44 is a huge edge on an even money proposition.

More generally, during the early and middle stages of a tournament when the prizes are still far off, “waiting for a better spot” is typically as bad an idea as it is in a cash game.

Final Thoughts

If you are fond of folding in tough situations, rethink your strategy. I’m not arguing for or against folding, just that you shouldn’t play timidly. If you think your opponent is bluffing, don’t fold, waiting for a better spot. Take a chance. It’s how you become a better player.

[This article appeared in the December 29, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 26) of Card Player.]

Thinking like a loser is sure to keep you losing. Why? Because it means you are focused on the wrong things, and this poor focus will prevent you from improving. Here are some things I hear players say that represent loser thinking. I’ll talk about why they are bad and then suggest some ways to turn that negative energy into positive.

1. Bad beat stories

Bad beat stories are the worst. They are pure negativity. No amount of brooding will change even a single river card from now to eternity. Thinking about a bad beat is guaranteed to improve your play not one iota.

And when the bad beat thinking takes over, it shoves all other constructive thought out of the way. If you’re still thinking about that ten on the river two hours later, that’s two hours you weren’t playing your best and two hours you have almost no chance to learn anything from.

Of course, once the bad beat monster gets in your brain it’s hard to get it out. Bad beats happen all the time, so the next fix is always just around the corner. There’s no sure way to get past a beat, but here’s what works well for me.

First, play on a comfortable bankroll. If you’re worried, really worried, about losing the money you have on the table, you are setting yourself up to think like a loser. On the other hand, if you keep five buyins in your pocket when you play, you will never have the thought, “Wow, if I lose this buyin, that’s it.” Playing on a short roll is playing scared, and when you do get a bad beat you’ll naturally resent it that much more.

Second, book some wins. If you’re focused on bad beats, it probably means you’ve been losing lately. Obviously you can’t just will yourself to win, but you can decide to call it a day the next time the natural ups and downs of poker have put you ahead a couple hundred bucks. Mathematically it makes no difference when you quit your sessions, but booking a win or two can be just what it takes to clear your head.

My hope is that the next time you’re tempted to tell a bad beat story, you’ll think of this article. Dwelling on bad beats is self-defeating, and it’s thinking like a loser. Get up and walk around. Reminisce about that tournament you won last year. Count sheep. Anything. Just get the beat out of your head.

2. Complaints about opponents

Here’s another doozy. “How am I supposed to win with that jerk in seat eight calling every hand to the river?” Unless the jerk in seat eight is Phil Ivey, chances are he’s not causing your problems. He’s just playing like an idiot. People who play like idiots lose their money. They may not lose every single time they play, but they do eventually lose. And most of the time they lose fast. If you don’t believe me, try playing like an idiot for a few hours and see where it gets you.

Poker is a zero sum game (minus the rake of course). That means that if the jerk in seat eight is losing money (and he is), then someone is winning it. It should be you.

Here’s how it goes. Say there’s a guy who is calling 75 percent of his hands preflop and then calling to the river with any pair. Twice in a row you had A-K, and you missed the board while he flopped bottom pair. He called you down and won both times. Frustrating, for sure. But here’s how many players react. The next time they flop a pair against this player, they bet it once and then just check it down hoping to win the showdown. Then when they win, they shout “Hallelujah,” and stack the tiny pot.

That’s thinking like a loser. They’re too focused on the fact that this crazy player has beaten then, and not focused on why what this player is doing is crazy in the first place. The player is crazy because he pays off too much with weak hands. Therefore, to take advantage, you should bet your real hands harder than you usually do. Checking the pair down to try to “win cheap” is self-defeating. Instead, you should bet, bet, bet.

If you find yourself tempted to complain about an opponent, stop yourself. The opponent isn’t causing you problems. Instead, he’s an opportunity. Think about what he’s doing wrong, and then adjust your play to take maximum advantage of it.

3. Waiting for a better spot

Okay, most people know that bad beat stories aren’t productive (though judging by how often I hear them most people also haven’t taken the lesson to heart). And many people know that bad opponents don’t beat you in the long run. But there’s something I hear all the time that has entrenched itself as a sort of conventional wisdom. Yet it’s loser thought.

“I kind of thought he might be bluffing, but I folded anyway. I figured I’d wait for a better spot.”

I cringe whenever I hear people say they “waited for a better spot.” Nine times out of ten, it means, “I was too chicken to take decisive action, so I took the easy way out and folded. I can’t embarass myself if I fold, right?”

This one’s a little tricky. I’m not saying that folding is a bad thing. It’s what I do almost every hand. But habitually waiting for a “better spot” is a big problem. Why? Because people who do that often end up waiting for a near lock before they put their money in. There’s another word for that play style – nit. Being a nit isn’t bad because it’s uncool. It’s bad because it’s not very profitable in most no-limit games.

Good players take some chances. If they get a read that someone might be bluffing, they pull the trigger and call or reraise. They don’t say, “Well, I think it’s a bluff, but I think I’ll fold anyway and maybe I’ll flop a set in a few hands and he’ll get it in with me.” That’s wishful thinking, and it’s thinking like a loser.

Evaluate every decision on its own merit. Ignore the mythical “better spot” that may or may not arise. If a daring play seems like the right play, take the chance. You’ll get burned sometimes, but it’s the only way to learn.

[This article appeared in the December 15, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 25) of Card Player.]

In total I have identified 25 stages that I think most players go through, roughly in order, as they improve. This article begins with Stage 21.

Stage 21. I should look for large pots that people seem to have given up on and shove my money in.

The learning curve for this stage is steep, but the payoff is well worth it. Even though large pots are the ones most worth fighting for, players give up on them all the time. Sometimes they called twice with a draw and missed. Sometimes they tried to pick up the pot with a turn barrel and got called. Sometimes they called twice with a medium strength pair with the intention of folding to a big river bet. These are just some of the more common scenarios where a player will build a large pot with you, but be unwilling to stay with it until the end.

Any time Stage 21 players find themselves in a large pot, they use their hand reading tools to gauge an opponent’s commitment to the pot. An unthreatening river card can weaken enough drawing and medium strength hands to make an all-in bluff profitable. An unexpected check can be reason by itself to fire a big river bet. Stage 21 players know the signs of opponents who may have given up on the pot, and that makes them very dangerous.

Stage 22. I can value bet on the river much lighter against bad players and expect to get called by worse hands.

Early on in their development, players learn intuitively that ranges frequently become polarized on the river. The hands that have weathered three rounds of betting are often either strong made hands or busted draws. Betting a medium strength pair on the river, therefore, makes little sense, because the busted draws won’t call, and strong made hands will.

But this logic doesn’t hold against many weak players. Their ranges aren’t as polarized on the river, because they linger too long in hands with marginal hands. On a Q-8-6-J-4 board, for instance, a weak player can still hold a hand like A-K or 8-7 or A-6 even after heavy flop and turn betting. Therefore, against such a player, it can make sense to bet a hand like A-J for value on the river. A “typical” player would almost never call with a worse hand, but bad players will.

Stage 22 players have a keenly developed sense of the hand ranges they can expect their opponents to hold. By counting the number of unexpected weak hands in these ranges, they can find good river value bets that other players miss.

Stage 23. I need to focus on line balancing. Reading hands lets me find unbalanced lines in my own play and in my opponents’ play.

Line balancing is the critical skill for a TAG player who wants to progress into tougher games. People play no-limit in a systematic way, nearly always calling with this sort of hand in this situation and nearly always raising with that one. This simple systematic approach creates hundreds of unbalanced lines – situations where the player will almost never have a weak hand or, oppositely, a strong one. Unbalanced lines betray too much information that a strong opponent can use exploitatively.

Stage 23 players focus on line balancing, both in their play and in their opponents’. They look for situations where their opponents have unbalanced lines and exploit them. Just as important, they look inward, analyzing the patterns in their own play. Say a Stage 23 player notices that he often calls twice with medium pairs only to fold to a river bet. He would almost never play a legitimately strong hand that way. His opponents could use this tendency against him, firing river bluffs and expecting to get plenty of folds. So he adjusts – he balances the call flop-call turn line – by calling twice with hands he also plans to call with on the river. By balancing this line, he thwarts river bluffs and denies criticial information to his opponent.

Stage 24. Through obvservation I can determine roughly what level my opponent plays at and out-level them by one level.

Stage 24 players can evaluate opponents quickly. They watch for plays their opponents make – and look out for ones they don’t make. This information allows them to gain insight into their opponents’ strategies and permits them to predict how opponents will react to a new situation. With this knowledge, they can stay one step ahead of their opponents.

For example, a Stage 24 player could watch an opponent play for a while and then come up with a rough guess for the stage number this opponent has mastered. He might notice, for instance, that a player knows to raise more hands in position, but doesn’t know how to combat a light 3-bet with this weak late position hand range. This would place the player somewhere between a Stage 13 and a Stage 15 player. He could therefore fairly expect the player to have mastered Stage 10 skills, but not Stage 20 skills.

Stage 25. I can make seemingly drastic adjustments to my game to exploit opponents playing an unbalanced strategy.

Most players adopt a general strategy or “style” and mostly stick to it. They will make modest adjustments given the situation, but they don’t stray too far out of their comfort zone. Stage 25 players wil make huge adjustments when the situation calls for it. These are adjustments that lesser players might never even think of. Or they might consider them, but rarely have the confidence to pull the trigger.

Stage 25 players still have much to learn, but they have absorbed the fundamentals of the main important poker skills. From there it’s refinement. Finding more unbalanced lines in their own play and balancing them. Knowing what players to expose unbalanced lines to and what players to play defensively against. Seeking out more and more subtle ways to exploit opponents. And so on. By the time you get to this level, you can truly call yourself an expert player, and you will no doubt have the winnings to prove it.

[This article appeared in the December 1, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 24) of Card Player.]

In total I have identified 25 stages that I think most players go through, roughly in order, as they improve. This article begins with Stage 16.

Stage 16. Double barrelling can be quite effective, and sometimes I should resort to firing three barrels.

Stage 7 players learned to make continuation bets and sometimes also follow those bets up with turn barrels. After raising preflop, a flop continuation bet will frequently win the pot. And even if you get called, sometimes a stiff turn bet will succeed.

But before Stage 16, players typically give up if their turn barrel gets called. They figure that a player needs a fairly good hand to call a turn bet, and they don’t want to try to bluff out a good hand. While this reasoning is often sound, sometimes a third big bluff on the river is the best play.

This is particularly true against players who limit their hand range by calling on the turn. As a simple example, say a player would almost always raise the flop or turn with two pair or better, but just call with one pair. A turn call would then indicate a good, but not great, hand. It could be something like K-Q on a K J 8 7 board. A large bet on the river could be enough to convince this player finally to give up on top pair.

Stage 17. I can take aggressive donk bettors who bet many flops off their hands with well-timed raises and floats.

In Stage 11, players learn to attack small pots that no one seems to want. Some players take this principle too far, however, and begin to attack small pot after small pot with many flop bets. At Stage 17, players can identify this pattern of overaggression and counter it by playing back at opportune times. Stage 17 players can resteal from aggressive donk bettors either by raising the flop or by calling on the flop with the intention of taking the pot away on a later street.

In order to identify good times to play back, a Stage 17 player must be familiar with the likely hand ranges his opponent can hold and how well those hands connect with the board.

Stage 18. I should seek out bad players and try to isolate them to play as many pots as possible with them.

By Stage 18, a player has the basic tools to succeed at no-limit. He plays tight out of position. He opens up a bit in position, and opens up a lot when given the chance to steal the blinds. He defends himself against aggressive opponents by ramping up preflop aggresion. He plays carefully when opponents show strength, but he attacks weakness after the flop. Finally, he can identify bad players against whom he should loosen up.

In Stage 18, a player learns that he can sometimes play much looser and more aggressively than normal when a weak player has entered the pot. It is wrong to open the pot with a hand like 8 7 from two off the button. The hand is simply too weak for the position. But it can be correct to raise a limper with the same hand in the same position. In an unopened pot, playing 8 7 would be an attempted blind steal that will fail too often to be profitable. Raising a limper, however, is not a blind steal at all. Instead, it’s an attempt to play a pot with someone who will, over time, give their money away. The downside to playing the weak hand is the same in both scenarios – players behind will wake up with strong hands and muscle you out of the pot. But the upside is potentially much greater against a limper. Instead of winning the blinds, you can now win much more from a bad player. This difference can make playing bad hands worth the risk.

At Stage 18, a player learns to evaluate opponents and customize a preflop strategy to maximize profit.

Stage 19. Preflop hand values usually depend far more on the situation than on the intrinsic value of the cards.

Naive players might rank preflop starting hands in a list from strongest to weakest, with A-A being the strongest and 7-2 perhaps the weakest. A Stage 19 player realizes that, apart from the extremely strong hands like A-A and A-K, preflop hands have only modest intrinsic value. Instead, their value is primarily situational. This is a generalization of the principle players learn in Stage 18. That is, in some situations (blind stealing from two off the button), 8 7 is not worth playing. In other situations (isolating a lousy player), it is.

Hands have strengths and weaknesses. A small pair like 3-3 can flop a set and win a huge hand and sometimes can win in a cheap showdown against one or two opponents. But without a set it’s a hand that doesn’t offer many semibluffing opportunities, and it’s usually too weak to withstand any betting pressure. A hand like A-3 is sometimes is likewise often too weak to withstand betting pressure, and it can also win cheap showdowns. But it offers card blocking value as it makes it harder for an opponent to hold an ace in a hand like A-A or A-K. Suited connectors create lots of semibluffing opportunities, but they stink in situations where bluffing opportunities are likely to be scarce.

A Stage 19 player evalutes the strengths and weaknesses of hands, and he also evaluates the situation and the sort of strengths that are called for. Does the situation require semibluffing chances? Does it value card blocking? Is making top pair likely to be valuable? He then matches up hands to situations and decides how to proceed.

Stage 20. The size of the pot determines how aggressive I need to play and how committed I am to the pot.

All poker decisions boil down to risk versus reward. The risk is what you could lose proceeding in a hand, and the reward is the pot you can win. The Stage 20 player realizes that all evaluation of situational values depend on the pot size. In general, the bigger the pot the more aggressive and committed one needs to be. But, as always, the devil is in the details, and a Stage 20 player has learned to incorporate yet another important variable into his decision-making.

By Stage 20, a no-limit player is a tough competitor in most games. But there are still five more Stages of a TAG, and I will present those final five in the next issue.

[This article appeared in the November 17, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 23) of Card Player.]

In total I have identified 25 stages that I think most players go through, roughly in order, as they improve. This article begins with Stage 11.

Stage 11. I should look for small pots that nobody in particular seems to want and attack them.

Up through Stage 10, most bluffing has fallen into one of two categories. Either you are making semibluffs with good drawing hands, or you are following up a preflop raise with flop and turn barrels. But bluffing situations also arise when you don’t have a hand and you haven’t yet shown any aggression. Spotting and taking advantage of these situations in Stage 11 will pad your winrate.

For example, say two players limp, the small blind completes, and you check with trash in the big blind. The flop comes T 4 4 . This is a flop few players are likely to be interested in, and it may merit attacking. You could toss out a small bet and see if it wins immediately. Even if you get called, all is not necessarily lost. A call is more likely to be a flush draw, a ten, or an unimproved pocket pair (or ace-high) than a four. You could try betting again if the turn comes something like the K , a card that damages the value of most of the possible calling hands besides trips.

Small pots ripe for stealing arise frequently. A Stage 11 player regularly takes shots at these pots and shows a steady profit as a result.

Stage 12. I need to adjust my postflop play somewhat to my opponents. That means getting it in with hands like top pair against bad or loose players.

In Stage 3, players learned that top pair can be a very dangerous hand to stack off with. When most competent players drive the betting, culminating in an all-in, they will typically have more than top pair. So early on players learn to relinquish top pair when the pressure becomes too strong.

But important exceptions exist to this rule, and at Stage 12, players begin to get it in with just top pair in lucrative situations. One important exception is when a particularly bad or loose player is in the game.

Say a bad player with $300 in a $2-$5 game limps in, and you raise preflop to $25 with A Q . The bad player calls, and the flop comes Q 9 2 . Some players will call flop, turn, and river bets with a hand like Q 7 . Against this type of player, you should bet three times even if you don’t improve. Other players will make wild flop raises with hands like Q 7 or J 8 or 6 4 . Against these players, if they raise your flop bet, you should simply move all-in with your top pair.

Stage 13. I can make money by stealing more preflop. I can steal more loosely from the button, and I can 3-bet light from the button and blinds.

Many players have trouble beating tight games. They feel like they never get action on their good hands, and the game begins to feel like a constant fight to stay ahead of the blinds. A Stage 13 player realizes that the first step to beating tight games is to steal the blinds whenever possible. If everyone folds to a Stage 13 player on the button or in the small blind, often he can raise 50 percent or more of his hands and expect to win the blinds often enough to show an automatic profit.

In addition to stealing blinds relentlessly whenever players are unwilling to protect them, a Stage 13 player challenges others who try to steal by reraising possible blind steals with a wide range of hands. For instance, if an aggressive stealer opens for $7 on the button in a $1-$2 game, he might sometimes protect his big blind with a reraise to $23 with a hand like T 7 .

Stage 14. I can also get carried away and start opening too many hands from all positions.

Stage 13 is a critical one for many players. Once they see that they can win the blinds from the button with hands like 8 7 and Q 6 , they begin to change the way they think about hand values. If 8 7 can win on the button, why not also from two or three off the button? The problem with this thinking, of course, is that with so many players yet to act, too often someone will wake up with a strong hand. Learning to steal with position from tight players doesn’t mean you should get carried away and loosen up from all positions. If you don’t have position and a legitimate chance to steal the blinds, play tight like you learned to do in Stage 2.

Stage 15. I can combat light 3-bettors with light 4-bets and light 4-bettors with light 5-bet shoves.

In Stage 13, players learn that they can combat aggressive blind stealers by 3-betting sometimes with modest, speculative hands. In Stage 15, players learn that they can attack opponents making these light 3-bets by making light 4-bets. And, likewise, they can attack a possible light 4-bet by moving all-in with a 5-bet.

For instance, in a $1-$2 game with $200 stacks, an aggressive player who raises 50 percent of buttons makes it $6 to go with K 8 . The big blind, also an agressive player, makes it $22 to go with A 3 . This is a light 3-bet made with the hope of winning the pot immediately. The button suspects a light 3-bet, however, so he 4-bets to $52, again hoping to win immediately. Finally, the big blind, again suspecting a possible bluff, shoves all-in for $200.

You can play for hundreds of hours at a live table and never see preflop aggression like this. But in aggressive online 6-max games, this 3-bet/4-bet/5-bet game plays a central role in preflop strategy. A Stage 15 player achieves competency in this game within a game to remain competitive with his peers.

By this time, a player has the skills to win in nearly any no-limit hold’em game in a live cardroom, up to and including $5-$10 games. This is also the stage where players can hope to break-even or show a slight profit in tough online games like $0.25-$0.50. Next issue I’ll discuss the Stages that a TAG must go through to become bigger winners.

[This article appeared in the November 3, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 22) of Card Player.]

In total I have identified 25 stages that I think most players go through, roughly in order, as they improve. This article begins with Stage 6.

Stage 6. I can semibluff decent draws postflop with essentially no added risk.

Players that haven’t yet reached Stage 6 I consider to be nits. They take few real chances, shying away from making or calling big bets without holding a near lock of a hand. At this stage, however, players begin to awaken to the fact that they can become more dangerous players if they are willing to make big bets sometimes with non-lock hands.

The easiest hands to make these bets with are good draws. For instance, say it’s a $50 pot preflop. The preflop raiser bets $40 on a T 8 7 flop. You have K Q with $200 remaining. An all-in raise here is a fairly safe play. Because the K Q will nearly always have a number of outs if called, there is a large margin for error. In other words, it’s almost impossible for this hand to be in really bad trouble if called.

Aggressive players use opportunities like this to put pressure on their opponents. It makes their hands harder to read, and in the long term it wins more money.

Stage 7. Continuation betting is much more powerful if you follow it up sometimes with turn barrelling.

A continuation bet is a flop bet following a preflop raise. Many newer players will correctly make continuation bets when they raise preflop and miss the flop, but if they get called they will then nearly automatically give up on the hand. In this stage, however, players learn that there are many opportunities to steal pots even after being called on the flop. Often a flop call indicates a speculative hand such as a draw or a weak pair. In these cases, a solid turn follow-up barrel will frequently win the pot.

Learning when to fire a turn barrel requires thinking about an opponent’s preflop hand range as well as how those hands interact with the board. Therefore, this is the first stage where players begin to rely on hand reading to make better decisions.

Stage 8. I should reraise more hands preflop for value.

New players typically raise preflop with only their strongest hands – big pairs and perhaps A-K and A-Q. This is particularly true for players who have learned enough about the game to play like nits. A player at Stage 8 realizes that his opponents limp in with hands much weaker than the traditional raising hands. When players are limping in with hands like 8-7 offsuit and A-3 offsuit, stronger hands like Q-J suited and 8-8 make for good situational preflop raising hands.

Stage 9. I can now play a few more hands from all position because bluffing makes bad hands profitable sometimes.

Nits learn to play tight, and it’s a style that is well-suited to their no-nonsense postflop play. If you aren’t willing to bluff very often, it’s difficult to make speculative hands turn a profit. These hands don’t make the near-locks that nits are looking for often enough. Making speculative hands profitable requires a good bluffing sense. If you don’t make a big hand, you still get a chance to win the pot by stealing it.

In Stages 6 and 7, players add two important bluffs to their arsenals: semi-bluffs with drawing hands and turn barrels against likely weak flop callers. Once players learn to use these bluffs effectively, they can open up their preflop games a bit. Because they can generate more value from weak hands, they can play speculative hands preflop that are a bit more likely to miss the flop or hit it weakly. Of course, some players take this idea too far and begin to flail wildly in every pot. Don’t do that.

Stage 10. I need to adjust my preflop game to my opponents. That means not folding as much to frequent reraisers and calling more on the button against light openers.

This stage is particularly crucial for online players. Online no-limit games are ultra-aggressive, and players are looking to steal as many blinds and put on as much pressure with preflop reraises as possible. The nit’s reaction to this aggression is to fold most hands and wait for solid values. But this strategy is too cautious.

At Stage 10, players construct hand ranges for their opponents. If someone steals frequently from the button, for instance, a player at this stage will know what hands he is reasonably likely to be up against. Then he can defend his blind with an array of hands that play without disadvantage against this range.

The same principle applies when facing preflop reraises. In the old days, a preflop reraise meant a strong hand. But in the ultra-aggressive online games of today, players reraise light as frequently as they can get away with it. Learning to defend well against this onslaught is critical.

At this stage, players can begin to compete in the tough online microstakes games. They have added basic aggression to their games, winning extra pots and keeping their opponents off balance. They’ve also loosened up a bit preflop because they know they can turn a weak hand into a winner with a clever bet. Finally, they’ve begun to adjust to aggressive opponents who are trying to steal as much as they can get away with. Next issue I’ll talk about more preflop adjustments players make as they become more sophisticated.

[This article appeared in the October 20, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 21) of Card Player.]

I think these stages are worth thinking about because they can help you do a couple of things:

1. Realize approximately where you stand in your development, and therefore what concepts you have still to master.
2. Understand how to identify roughly how your opponents are thinking, what tactics they are well-defended against, and what tactics they might be vulnerable to.

As I read hands and try to get into the heads of my opponents, I refer to an internal conception of these stages, and I think it helps me in my quest stay one step ahead of my opponents.

In this series of articles I will present my 25 stages, beginning in this article with the first five.

Stage 1. Hrmm, this K5s looks kinda good.

Rank beginners tend to focus on doing one thing: trying to make good hands. They want to make straights, flushes, and full houses. It seems only natural that they would focus on that. Good hands win pots.

This focus leads beginners to choose a preflop strategy that emphasizes suited and connected hands. They may not think too clearly about their hand selection, but anyone who plays for even a few minutes will notice that players play some hands and fold others. On the surface, given the focus on making hands, K-5 suited then looks perhaps like a good hand to play, while 9-4 offsuit may be a fold. A hand like 9-8 offsuit can make a straight, so it’s worth a gamble. This naive strategy ignores position, ignores risk-reward considerations, and ultimately builds the foundation for a fatally flawed strategy. Players at this stage will hemorrhage money until they progress.

Stage 2. I will never play anything but these 18 hands under any circumstances.

The first improvement most players make after they read a few magazine articles and perhaps a book or two is they learn to play tight. K-5 suited really isn’t that great a hand because it’s hard to make a flush, and the king and five by themselves don’t have a lot of value. The hands with the most value are the big pocket pairs and the big card hands like A-K and A-Q.

The natural impulse after learning the benefits of playing tight is to become rigid about it. There are good hands like Q-Q and bad hands like T-8 suited. Players at this stage learn to fold, fold, fold, until they get one of their good hands.

This change goes a long way to plug the money leak from Stage 1. But many players at this stage think they are much more advanced than they really are. Just playing tight will not win you money. There is much more to the game.

Stage 3. I need to fold postflop if I don’t hit a hand. And I need to fold to pressure if I don’t have a great hand.

After learning to play tight preflop, players easily take to the idea that they should also be tight postflop. Fit-or-fold is the name for this way of playing. If I fit the flop, I’ll keep playing. If not, my hand is worthless and I’ll fold. A-K is just a drawing hand, after all, and if it doesn’t catch an ace or king on the flop it’s basically worthless.

This is an integral stage in the development of a player, but again most players at this stage think they are more advanced than they are. No one ever won a pot by folding. Learning to release hopeless hands is a critical skill, but players at this stage often think many hands are hopeless when they really aren’t. And, more generally, players at this stage are still thinking only about the strength of their own hands. They aren’t thinking about what their opponents may have. This limitation makes it hard to win consistently.

Stage 4. Maybe I can loosen up a little bit in position. I can play more hands because I know how to fold them postflop.

Players at this stage make the critical leap that they can sometimes win pots without an ironclad monster hand. In particular, they learn that they can use position to force opponents to fold, to see cheap cards, and to otherwise tilt the action in their favor. Because of this, they realize that they can play hands like T-8 suited sometimes, provided there hasn’t been a lot of preflop raising and they will be in position.

This realization is on point. But I often hear players justify their looser play by saying, “I know how to fold if I miss the flop.” This attitude is a throwback to the fit-or-fold mindset of the Stage 3 player. A main reason why hands like T-8 suited are profitable on the button is because you can steal pots with them even when they miss. If you focus solely on making a hand, you’ll find that even a suited and connected hand like T-8 suited doesn’t make a monster hand often enough to turn a large profit just playing to hit the flop.

Stage 5. I need to bet my good hands hard so I can get value for them.

Before this stage, players tend to be focused on what not to do. Don’t play bad hands. Don’t play out of position. Don’t pay someone off with a second-best hand. When they have a good hand, they will bet it, but they won’t try to maximize its value.

I routinely see newer players make anemic bets of 20 percent of the pot or smaller with big hands like sets and flushes. At Stage 5, players realize that big hands deserve big pots. You don’t make sets very often, so when you do, try to win a big one. Build a pot early with a nice-sized flop bet and then keep betting to try to get the stacks in the middle.

At this stage, players can be considered solid “nits”. They are playing tight preflop, slightly looser in position, and mainly putting in serious money postflop only with strong hands. Nits can make decent money in small stakes live games, but to conquer the tougher games they need to evolve further. Next issue I’ll talk about the stages where players add some basic aggression.

[This article appeared in the October 6, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 20) of Card Player.]

It’s a fourhanded $2-$4 6-max game on FullTiltPoker. The cutoff folds. The button, with an $80 stack, has 7 3 . He raises to $10 and wins the blinds.

I think a lot of these short stackers are stealing more than their share of blinds.

Theoretically speaking, it should be harder for a short stacker to steal the blinds from the button than it is for a full stacker. Short stacks blunt positional advantage, so the out of position blind players should be able to defend more frequently.

For instance, say you’re in the big blind in a $2-$4 game with a $400 stack. Consider two scenarios. First, a strong player with $400 opens for $14 on the button and the small blind folds. Second, a good short stacker with $80 opens for $10 on the button and the small blind folds.

Overall, the second scenario is significantly more favorable for you, and you should be able to play a wider range of hands profitably. Apart from the fact that it’s $10 to call in the first scenario and only $6 in the second (a not at all insignificant difference), the short stacker will have less positional leverage and many fewer opportunities to outplay you postflop.

In practice, it appears that many full-stacked regulars don’t alter their blind strategy much between the two scenarios, and they tend to err on the conservative side. That fact allows short stackers to slurp up far more than their share of the blind money.

When you’re threehanded and playing effectively 20BB stacks, theoretically speaking, the money should be flying. There should be liberal three-betting and four-bet shoving, and liberal flop check-shoving and calling. The blind money is large enough compared to the stack sizes that you can frequently get your stack in “light” (I put it in quotes because it only seems light to many of us) and still get an overlay.

I don’t see this when I play. When someone gets it in against a short stacker, I tend to see two “legitimate” hands more frequently than I should. Basically, I think players in the big blind should use the following plays more often when short stackers open on the button.

Three-Betting Light

If an $80 stack opens a wide range of hands for $10 on the button in a $2-$4 game, you can three-bet to about $22 with impunity with a reasonably wide range as well. First of all, I’ve noticed that many short stackers fold too frequently to a small three-bet, so you can exploit that theoretical error by making the play more often.

Beyond that, if the short stacker is betting 1/8 of his stack with a wide range on the button (as many do), you can three-bet a wide range of hands for value, and the bottom of this “value” range might seem light at first. For instance, in full-stacked play one might consider three-betting with a hand like A-8 suited to be a “light” three-bet because presumably you do so with the intention of usually folding it to a four-bet. But against a short-stacker opening a wide range on the button, three-betting with A-8 suited should be a very standard play. It’s a raise for value, and it’s a hand you should feel comfortable getting it in with should the short stacker shove on you – provided the short stacker shoves often over a three-bet as he should.

The other thing about three-betting to $22 is that it leaves you room to fold to a shove with the worst hands in your three-betting range. If you’re three-betting with the right range, the short stacker should know that you’ll fold sometimes to a shove, but usually you’ll call, and most of the hands the short stacker opens on the button will be significantly behind your calling range if they shove them over your three-bet.

The bottom line of this three-betting strategy is that it will prevent the short stacker from robbing you blind of your blinds.

Calling And Making A Play On The Flop

Some short stackers play well preflop but get a little soft once the flop comes. You can take advantage of them by flat calling the small button raises, planning to make some moves postflop. The two simplest moves you can make are check-shoving and donk betting.

Check-shove bluffing is the natural play against short stackers who continuation bet too often. Say they’re opening 50 percent of their hands on the button and betting nearly every flop when checked to. You can destroy that strategy by calling frequently from the blind and check-shoving a lot of flops. You generally won’t even be risking that much because when called you will often have decent equity, and the stacks are short to begin with. For instance, with a hand like Q-T I would often flat call preflop and check-shove a lot of flops. I’ll win many pots uncontested, and when called I will often have at least six outs.

Other short stackers tend to play a sort of fit-or-fold strategy once they see a flop. They check behind a lot when they miss, hoping to check the hand down. Naturally, check-shoving doesn’t work against that strategy because the short stacker’s betting range is strong. But donk betting works instead. You can fire out for half the pot at a lot of flops and win more than your share. And sometimes when you check the flop and your opponent checks it back, you have an almost automatic win if you bet about half-pot on the turn.

Don’t Let The Short Stackers Rob You

For the most part, the short stackers aren’t getting it in light from under the gun in a 6-max game. But a lot of them know they can open light on the button and get away with it. Don’t let them. Fire back at them either by three-betting preflop or by flat-calling and making plays postflop. If they know how to play their stack size well, you won’t really get an edge on them by doing this. But you will even it up and cut into their profit. Don’t be a soft target for the short stackers’ bread and butter.

[This article appeared in the December 31, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 26) of Card Player.]