Noted Poker Authority » Q&A

Q&A #123: Sticking It To Light 3-Bettors

Ed Miller — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:42:45 +0000

Light 3-betting plays a large role in online 6-max games. If you fold too often to potentially light 3-bets, you risk getting run over. If you play back too often at potentially light 3-bets, you risk giving too much action. It can be a fine line.

Today’s question comes from James ...

Q&A #122: A Top Pair Facing Pressure On The River

Ed Miller — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:39:53 +0000

For today’s column I examine a hand played by wahoointexas and posted on the message board. Here’s what wahoo had to say:

Appreciate any advice as to the way this hand was played, and what you think is the correct move on the river is in this situation.

Live 2/5 NL, ...
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Q&A #121: What I Do On Paired Ultra-Dry Flops

Ed Miller — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:07:40 +0000

Recently there was an interesting discussion on the message board about a hand that karbyn played in a $2-$5 live game. Here’s the intro post:

First hand 2/5 live. There’s about 6 regulars, 3 unknowns, and me. I sit down in Seat #1 with $340 racked from a ...
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Q&A #120: Pot-Limit Omaha Starting Hands

Ed Miller — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:45:42 +0000

Over the past year I’ve focused almost exclusively on no-limit hold’em questions and answers. There are two reasons: that’s mostly what I’ve been playing this year, and that’s also mostly what most people play.

But I have dabbled some in pot-limit Omaha this year, and I have to say I do really enjoy playing PLO. One thing I like about PLO, beyond the fact that it’s a complex and challenging game, is that there is relatively little conventional wisdom out there about how to play it. So I see many different opponent playing styles when I play, and I have to adapt my strategy more aggressively as a result.

Today I’ll answer a PLO question that spadebidder asked on the message board:

I’m just beginning to learn Omaha since it is a popular side game in the NLHE league I play in. The cash games usually alternate NL holdem and PL omaha each table round, with the button choosing hi-only or hi/lo. I’ve started studying the game after looking pretty ignorant trying to play Omaha the first couple of times.

I have a better understanding of the game strategy now, but my question is about starting hands. There seem to be two schools of thought, with one liking the Hutchinson point system, and the other favoring looking at starting hands as 6 possible holdem-type hands and wanting the most good combinations that can flop big hands like straights and nut flushes so that you hit the flop more often (putting more value on double-suited and multiple-connected sequences like A K 2 3 ). The Hutchinson system seems to be based entirely on showdown value against random hands, and I’m a little skeptical that this is the right way to value your hand, since post-flop play seems to be the critical part of Omaha, and you are rarely all-in preflop. It also seems to me that straights and flushes win a lot more often than full houses, devaluing paired hands.

What are your thoughts on this?

Basically, I think that neither of your two “schools of thought” fully capture the complexity of PLO preflop hand selection.

I’ll start by saying that I loathe the Hutchinson point count systems for both hold’em and Omaha. (Google it if you aren’t familiar.) It’s not that I think they are completely useless (just mostly useless). I dislike them because they aim to teach a general, fuzzy principle that has a lot of exceptions, but they use a system with a very precise veneer to do so.

What do I mean? Well, basically the Hutchinson systems are designed around one general principle:

“Pairs and high cards are good, suited and connected cards are good, and low cards, unsuited cards, and unconnected cards are bad.”

This principle is certainly true… to a point. But poker is extremely situational. I won’t hesitate to raise (or even sometimes reraise) 94s on the button, but I fold Q9s when I’m under the gun. And I also fold 94s on the button quite a bit as well.

Ok, we all know poker is situational, and the Hutchinson systems are clearly designed to get beginners off to a good start, not to capture all the nuance of poker. My problem with these point count systems as a teaching tool is that they seem very precise. Add 12 points for your pair, but deduct 4 for that seven. And then multiply by 1.4 because you have four cards, not two. Finally, subtract 25 points because you basically have no idea what in the hell you’re doing, now do you?

The instructions are quite detailed, and that fact alone leads the beginner to conclude that this is all something more than basically fuzzy hogwash. The more complicated something is, the more important it is that you NOT SCREW THIS THING UP!!!!!!!

Right?

So basically I think the point count systems are misleading to the beginners they’re targeted for, and they’re useless to anyone else. In all fairness, I’ve been guilty of constructing such monstrosities myself. So I don’t really blame Hutchinson for giving it an honest effort. But I’d say let’s forget about counting points.

Now to eviscerate the second “school of thought.” Well, maybe I won’t eviscerate this one. It is reasonable to view an Omaha hand as six different hold’em hands. After all, at the showdown (if you get to showdown), you’ll be playing two of your four cards, and you have six different two-card options in your hand.

But I think this school of thought also misses the point. PLO is an extremely complex game, probably more so than no-limit hold’em. It’s also a very positional game, again probably more so than no-limit hold’em. And, just as in no-limit hold’em, hand values can swing very wildly depending on the stack sizes, your opponents’ tendencies, your image, your overall strategy, and more.

If you can’t necessarily say “this is a good hold’em hand, and that is a bad hold’em hand,” then you very well can’t say, “these six hold’em hands make a good Omaha hand, and those six hold’em hands make a bad Omaha hand,” either.

So here’s my school of thought about Omaha starting hands. An Omaha hand is good if you can devise a profitable strategy for it in a given situation, and it’s bad if you can’t devise such a strategy, or if you try to shoehorn the hand into a strategy it’s not suited for.

What do I mean? Well, take a hand like 9 7 6 5 . This hand has strengths and weaknesses. A strength is that it’s got a suit and is quite connected. A weakness is that the cards are small, the gap is near the top of the run, and it can’t make a set.

If you can play this hand to its strengths, then it will be a good hand. If you’re stuck in a situation where the weaknesses will kill you, then it’s no good.

A weakness of a hand like this one is that it can flop a wrap, but be dominated by someone playing a bigger wrap. Say you are against a fairly tight player with 100BB or deeper stacks, and the flop comes

K 8 7

You’ve flopped a wrap. But many of your straight cards don’t make the nut straight. If your tight opponent wants to get it in with you, you won’t have the edge you might assume that you should have. For instance, say he has J J T 9 . You’re in pretty bad shape – your wrap has only 28.5% equity. Or your opponent could have A K K T and be roughly flipping with you.

But that’s just one scenario – deep stacked against a tight player who wants to get it in. You can get dealt 9 7 6 5 in many other situations. Sometimes you’ll be playing that hand against a total drooler who wants to get it in with you on that K-8-7 flop with 9-7-5-5 or worse. Sometimes you’ll have position on a tight player who gives up under pressure unless he’s flopped a total monster.

Sometimes the stacks will be deep and you’ll be able to put your opponent on aces because he 3-bet preflop (and he only 3-bets with aces). And that player will overplay aces and get it in willingly in bad situations. You’re almost a 70-30 favorite over A-A-J-2 on that same flop. As long as there’s plenty of money behind and your opponent is game, your connected hand is great, and that little gap doesn’t matter that much.

Which reminds me, stack size affects PLO starting hand valuations perhaps even more than it does hold’em hand valuations. Those big cards and big pairs are tough to beat when the stacks are short. But when the stacks are deep, deception and hand reading become much more important than just having big cards in your hand.

A final point. PLO hand reading can be tricky, and a little deception can go a very long way. Many players will interpret a 3-bet as meaning that you likely hold aces. You can take advantage of that fact and sometimes 3-bet such a player with a hand like 8 8 4 4 . This hand fails the “6 hold’em hands” test because 8-4 is pretty dubious, and it makes up four of your six hold’em hands. But this hand is still great for deception. About 1/4 of the time you’ll flop a set, and your opponent often will think he’s playing against aces. So, for instance, on a board like

K 8 5

you might find your opponent happy to get it in with you holding something like T 9 8 7 . A pair and a gutshot is plenty of hand against most aces hands, but against your set it’s a serious dog. (Hat tip goes to Sunny Mehta who clued me in on this upside to a double paired hand.)

For a beginner at Omaha, learning about runs, gaps, suits, pairs, danglers, and so forth is critical. But once you get past the surface, you have to evaluate starting hands not on any absolute scale, but rather on how appropriate the hand is for a given situation.

Q&A #119: How Do I Apply SPR To My Game?

Ed Miller — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:02:37 +0000

In the first no-limit book that I co-wrote with Sunny Mehta and Matt Flynn (as opposed to the upcoming book), Professional No-Limit Hold’em: Volume 1 (PNL1), we devoted a large chunk of the text to the concept of using Stack-to-Pot Ratios (SPR) to plan your hands and to make commitment decisions.

The SPR for a hand is defined simply: It’s the size of the effective stacks remaining divided by the size of the pot after the preflop betting round. So if after the preflop betting is done the pot is $40 and the effective stacks are $200, the SPR is 5 ($200 / $40).

In PNL1, we talk a lot about how to use this SPR number to help plan your hands and make decisions while you play.

Today’s questioner, vb_rounder, asks on the message board if I really use these SPR numbers when I make decisions and how useful I really think the concept is:

I’m curious as to how often you apply the concepts found in pnl vol. 1 to your game (i.e. SPR, commitment threshold, etc.)? I rarely see you incorporating these terms in your articles, so I’m curious as to whether your contribution to the project was more from an organizational/literary standpoint (similar to NLHETAP), or more strategic? I read pnl when it first came out and didn’t care much for it compared to your other books (i.e. GSIHE, SSHE, and NLHETAP). Once the SPR chapter hit, I lost interest as it seemed a little too complex to be practical in a live cash game setting. Personally, I love your cardplayer articles and the style of writing. I like the ease in which they present good, practical information to the reader and are not convoluted with math and impractical theories or concepts.

I realize this question might be dated, but due to your current involvement with pnl 2 i thought I’d ask.

I’m definitely glad vb_rounder likes my Card Player articles, his observation about them is accurate, and the style I adopt in them is intentional. When I write for Card Player, I focus on simple, no-nonsense advice that I think should improve the average reader’s game. I delve very little into the math. The reason I write these articles this way is because I have a limit of only about 1,000 words to get my point across, and I think I can usually use those words better by providing a hand example rather than some math. Also, Card Player readers often read casually, while they’re waiting for a seat at the cardroom for instance, so I try to write casually to match.

My books are a different story, and because of the longer format I can provide both hand examples and math to make my points. SPR is an example of an extremely important concept that we decided to break down both with hand examples and with a nice dollop of math.

The idea behind SPR is a simple one: The bigger the pot, the more risks you should be willing to take to try to win it. This concept is important in all forms of poker – indeed, it was one of the central themes of my limit hold’em book Small Stakes Hold’em.

SPR is simply a way to quantify pot size. If the SPR is 1.5, then there’s nearly as much in the pot as there is remaining in the stacks, and therefore the pot is quite large. You should generally be willing to put your remaining cash at risk in a wide variety of situations because the reward for doing so is so high.

If the SPR is 20, however, then the pot is still tiny compared to what could be at risk. In these situations you should play more cautiously and generally be willing to get it all-in only with a really strong hand.

The relative size of the pot, as quantified by the SPR, lies at the heart of every no-limit decision. Its importance is truly fundamental.

In Professional No-Limit Hold’em: Volume 1, we described many ways that an awareness of SPR can be used to make better no-limit decisions. For instance, we talked about thinking about the target SPR for your hand – the pot size beyond which you’d be happy to get all the money in. And we talked about the max SPR for your hand – the pot size at which you are not happy to get it in, but are willing to if necessary given your effective odds and your winning chances.

And in PNL1 we talked about using SPR to plan your hands from the get-go, before putting any money in the pot. Is your hand going to be effective in a lot of large pot situations? Is your opponent going to make the most mistakes when the pot is medium-sized? And so forth.

These are the same concepts that I write about regularly, both on Noted Poker Authority and for Card Player. You’re right that I don’t always frame these ideas in terms of calculating numerical SPRs, but that’s because I like giving people different ways of thinking about the same stuff. Some people love the math-based explanations. They like being able to calculate a number and use it to guide their decisions. Other people glaze over when they try to think in terms of the numbers. So I’ll introduce the same basic principle in a different way. For instance, recent Card Player article Playing No-Limit With A Plan doesn’t ever explicitly mention the term SPR, but the themes in the article are consistent with the themes we introduced in PNL1.

Do I calculate and use SPRs while I play? I do. I have to thank Matt and Sunny for introducing me to this simple, but powerful idea. But you can be a good no-limit player and never once calculate an SPR. It’s not because you can ignore or flaunt the basic principles behind SPR. It’s just because you can come at those principles from a different direction and arrive at the same place.

Q&A #118: Suited Connectors Vs. Pocket Aces And The Confusion About Limping

Ed Miller — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:19:51 +0000

I wanted to clear up two major no-limit hold’em misunderstandings. They are somewhat related.

The first one is described in a comment by Ben Attenborough on recent post Playing No-Limit With A Plan.

Hey Ed, I would just like to say I think this is a very well written article which goes a long way to explaining why often suited connectors are over valued in NLH. The other night I was playing a live game in a casino and another player said he prefered 67suited to pocket aces. He said he had lost thousands with aces but had won loads with 67suited. I countered by suggesting as this was a live game environment and he wasn’t taking notes he couldn’t produce any evidence to prove his assertion. When I look at my poker tracker stats I find I make most money with aces.
Another friend of mine insists that “the pros say jack ten is a better hand than aces.” I strongly disagree with him but he is completely adamant about it. I understand than in really deepstacked games a player who plays aces really badly (by tipping the strength of his hand pre-flop and then refusing to release it post flop) a player could lose money with aces against a good player with J10 in position. But such a player will also show a loss with J10 (unless it is some bizarre player who plays J10 brilliantly but aces like an idiot). What do you think?

While I suppose that it’s theoretically possible for someone to play pocket aces so badly that they actually perform better with JTs (presumably because they’re far less likely to do something horrendously stupid with JTs), in practice I would highly doubt that any such player exists anywhere in the world.

And even if such a player were to exist, they would have to play almost exclusively in extremely deep-stacked live games (500BB stacks and deeper) to perform the feat of actually performing worse with pocket aces than with JTs.

For anyone who has Poker Tracker and who has played more than five hands of online no-limit, the notion that JTs is better than AA is a laughable claim. Anyone with any decent-sized database of online hands will see that they win far more with AA than with any other hand. I would bet it’s the case for virtually every online player, no matter how good or bad they play.

So my verdict is that Ben’s friends who think suited connectors perform better than pocket aces are severely misinformed.

But I’ve noticed that live game players often do tend to play aces (in particular) very badly. Everyone knows that an obvious way to misplay aces is to hold on to them too long in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re no good. But I actually don’t see that mistake as often as I see a different one.

The most frequent mistake I see live game players make with aces is to play them far too timidly. “You’ll either win a little or lose a lot with those aces.” That’s the mindset. It’s complete bullshit. Believe me, I usually win my aces hands, and I win plenty of all-in pots with them too.

But when you buy into the “win a little or lose a lot” mindset, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. You go into damage control mode as soon as the flop comes out. You don’t bet your hand for value. You don’t make money off of players with top pair and drawing hands. You give free cards. You make wimpy bets or check the hand down. You take free showdowns instead of making those ever important river value bets.

But even if your approach to playing aces is all wrong, I still think you’ll make more with them than you will with JTs. The hand is just far stronger. And also most players tend to raise preflop with aces, but limp in with suited connectors. If you raise with aces, but limp in with JTs, I think it’s nearly guaranteed that you’ll win more with the aces.

Which brings me to my second topic. There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the decision about whether to raise preflop or to limp in. In most of my articles and videos, I generally recommend limping in quite rarely and almost always raising preflop if no one has done so already. Yet in my book, No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice, co-authored with David Sklansky, we talk a lot about the virtues of limping in. What gives?

Here’s the deal. Raising preflop has a lot going for it. But in some circumstances with certain stack sizes and opponent types, limping in can be good as well. However, in most small and medium stakes cash game situations, I think one simple factor tilts the balance almost always in favor of raising: the bigger the pot, the more money a good player can win.

It’s simple. If you are better than your opponents, then you’ll win more money on average playing pots that start at $50 than pots that start at $10. Just like you’ll win more if there’s more money on the table, and you’ll win more if the blinds go up, you’ll win more if the pots on the flop tend to start out bigger.

Of course there are balancing factors. If the blinds get too big compared to the stacks, your relative edge will shrink. And if you are making huge preflop pots with so-so hands, then your edge will disappear as well. But in games with 100BB stacks and generally passive opponents, I think you’ll almost always perform better by raising preflop rather than limping simply because you’ll be playing for a lot more money.

So that’s my take on two common misconceptions. Yes, pocket aces are way better than any suited connector. If you think you do better with suited connectors, you’re almost certainly wrong. If you doubt me, take a notebook with you and write down how you do on every pot where you have aces, then every pot where you have a suited connector. After a few hundred hours of play, the aces are almost certainly, on a per hand basis, going to be way ahead.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t play your aces better. Yes, do let them go if the board gets scary and that nitty player across the table is bombing the pot. But beyond that, stay aggressive. Aces are a potent weapon, not a fragile liability. When you get aces, attack. Bet them. Get value from players with top pair and draws. You’ll be surprised at how much you can win with them even if you don’t hit a set.

If you’re a good player with an edge on your opponents, you’re almost always better raising preflop rather than limping in. Though there are theoretical tradeoffs for either decision, in most games you’ll do better raising simply because you’re building bigger pots. It’s like raising the stakes on your opponents. Bigger pots mean more money out there to win. In most situations I think the balancing considerations just don’t matter enough to change it up. Build yourself some nice pots and the money will come your way.

Q&A #117: Should They Call Him McSpew?

Ed Miller — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:21:35 +0000

Should they call him McSpew? You be the judge. Here is jenson from the message board to tell his story:

At least they called me that on another forum when I posted this. I’m wondering if you guys have the same sentiment. I accept it if you do.

I was thinking of Ed’s recent blog posts about ultra loose live games when I made this play. Just to be clear, this is not the type of game where people are pushing all in indiscriminatly preflop, but the stacks are deep and just about every hand is raised to $20 preflop.

Here’s what I posted elsewhere:

I walked into a near empty Borgata poker room this morning and took the first available seat at a 1/2NL table. The table was mostly full of old-timer regulars paying more attention to their racing forms than poker.

Nearby was a raucous table with several players with very deep stacks for 1/2NL. One guy had close to $1,500. Another guy had about $1,000 and several stacks were near $500. Several of these guys had been playing all night. Only one guy was visibly drunk.

When a seat opened at the action table I moved right over. Pretty much every hand was raised to $20 pre flop with up to four or five players seeing the flop. The action was loose on later rounds too with a mixture of players simply calling down light and truly big hands.

This hand happened in my second orbit and I had a modest stack of $160. I’m in middle position with a low suited two-gapper. Two guys limp in front of me and I limp along too. The guy to my immediate left raises to the standard of $20. By the time it gets back to me there were four callers. The pot was now about $100 (initial raise + four callers).

I push for $160. Thoughts?

Here’s what I think.

I don’t think McSpew is quite fair, but I don’t love the play either.

First, let’s look at the play in a vacuum. Let’s say you get called by 77+, AJ+, and KQ. I’ve run limp-shove plays like this one before, and this calling range is at least a reasonable approximation of what you’ll tend to run into. Some players will call tighter and some will call looser.

Jenson didn’t say what low suited two-gapper he had, so let’s go with 96s. Against that calling range, 96s will win approximately 32 percent of the time. Thus, when called (by exactly one player) you will lose on average approximately $32:

-$32 = (0.68)(-$160) + (0.32)($240) = -$108.8 + $76.8

When your bluff works you win $100. You win about 3 times more money when the bluff works than you lose (on average) when it fails. So the bluff needs to work only about 25 percent of the time to be profitable.

Now that calculation was pretty rough. First of all, you could get called in more than one place. Say you get called in two places. It’s reasonable to assume the second caller would be tighter than the first. So let’s assign the original range to the first caller and a tighter AA-JJ,AK range to the second. In this scenario 96s wins about 22 percent of the time. Every time you are called in two places you lose approximately $41:

-$41.2 = (0.78) (-$160) + (0.22) ($380) = -$124.8 + $83.6

It’s a little worse than getting called in one place. But usually when you get called it will be in only one place, and getting called in two places is only a little bit worse. Also, getting called in two places isn’t quite as bad as this estimate suggests because our model overestimates how often the second caller will show up with AA and KK. The second caller will be more likely to hold QQ, JJ, or AK because if he held either of the two big pairs he might have reraised himself. Overall the possibility that you’ll get called in two places shouldn’t affect your decision too much.

Overall, the break-even point for this bluff is probably a success rate in the high 20 percents. I think it’s reasonable to assume the bluff will work that often the first time you try it, so no, I don’t think this play is worthy of the epithet McSpew. It’s probably somewhat profitable.

I have two points, however:

In general, all-in preflop bluffs in loose games where five people routinely call nice-sized preflop raises are very profitable. It’s not a surprise to me that my analysis suggested that the bluff might be profitable in this situation. However, it’s not a play you can use again and again. Once you do it once – twice or three times at the most ‐ you’re significantly more likely to get called the next time. So while the play tends to be profitable, you get to pick maybe one or two spots to try it per session.
So the question becomes not, “Is the play profitable?” but “Is this the most profitable situation to try the play for the session?” In my opinion, this was an ok spot, but not a great one. First, the hand is a little weaker when called than it could be to try the play. I usually try it with hands that tend to have at least a few percentage points more equity when called than 96s has. In loose games this shove does frequently get called the very first time you try it, so that equity becomes important.

Second, you limped behind two limpers. You’re trying to represent a limp-reraise with pocket aces when you try this play. Yet you limped in behind two limpers. Would you do that with aces? Perhaps you would in this crazy game, but overall I think your play looks less credible than it would if you had open-limped.

On the other hand, you did manage to catch five people with a full raise in the pot, which makes the situation fairly juicy in terms of pot size. So it’s an ok situation.
It’s not clear to me why you’re limping behind two limpers in middle position with a hand like 96s in a game where most of the pots are raised to $20 and you have only $180 in your stack. What scenario are you looking for to make the hand profitable? From a preflop equity perspective, your hand is essentially no better than a random hand. Yet you can fully expect to have to face a raise for 1/9th of your stack. Your hand is unlikely to make a top pair you’d want to go with. Your hand has two gaps, so you have only one way to flop an open-ended straight draw. And if you flop a flush draw you’ll sometimes not even have the best flush draw. So the hand doesn’t profit by getting money in preflop (and you can expect to have to put significant money in preflop), and its relative postflop advantages are questionable at best.
In other words, 96s just isn’t a very good hand in a super-loose game where most pots are raised preflop to over 10 percent of your stack size. You aren’t on the button. You will likely play the hand out of position to more than one player. This is not a particularly profitable situation. Indeed, what actually transpired is perhaps one of the better scenarios for you.

Now the limp can’t be that bad because it’s only $2 and when your opponents are super loose it doesn’t take much to make the hand profitable. But limping in from middle position behind two limpers with hands like 96s is not how you make your money in loose no-limit games.

I’ve run many bluffs like the one jenson tried in this hand. They work, and they’re quite profitable. This opportunity was likely somewhat profitable as well. However, if I were in his shoes, I would have passed on this hand (folding it without even limping in). With a somewhat stronger hand or perhaps with better position, I would be more apt to play.

Q&A #116: Taking An All-In Risk During The Late Stages Of A Tournament

Ed Miller — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:31:29 +0000

In tournament play, you make decision after decision that could result in risking all your chips. You’ll make at least one decision for all your chips in virtually every tournament you play. And in most tournaments you’ll make multiple all-in decisions.

Whenever you choose to go for it, and you lose, it’s easy to second-guess your decision. “I thought I had an edge at the time, but maybe I should have waited for a better spot…”

Tournament decisions can be complicated by the nature of the prize structure, but in many cases the second-guessing is unwarranted. Today’s questioner, slide (from the message board), is wondering about some of his all-in decisions:

Lately ive been having some bad results calling All-in bets near or at the final table.

Usually when im at or near the final table (in the real life tourneys i play) average stack is around 10 big blinds, so there isnt much happening except ALLINs and folding (alot of stealing).

Obviously this cant go on forever, so whenever i think i have a good chance of having the best hand i call. Alot of times this turns out to be a coin flip, and i was wondering if calling the allin was the correct play.

Ill give 2 recent examples:

1) I called an allin with 77, other guy had KJ and the board paired Aces and Tens leaving me empty handed. (i thought he might shove with Ax, any pp or 2 face cards) so in my mind i had a slight advantage.

2) I call an allin with AQs, other guy had TT, board came up dry and i headed back home.

(i had this guy on AT+, pp, or 2 face cards)

Now obviously i shouldnt be calling these bets if we had bigger stacks, but with the short stacks you just cant wait around for AA/KK all the time.

So my question is should i be making these calls, or should i just let them steal, and wait till its my turn to steal back?

Unless the prize structure for your tournament is exceptionally flat, I like both of your choices to get the money in.

Let’s look at your equity against the hand ranges you put your opponents on. (By the way, your hand ranges seem fairly reasonable to me and within the range for typical players in all-in situations.)

For the first hand, you held 77 and you thought you were up against a range of any ace, any pocket pair, or any two face cards. You are a 56-44 favorite over your opponent’s hand range. You didn’t tell me the exact stack sizes involved, but let’s say that we’re playing 100-200 blinds and a 25 ante with 2,000 stacks (10BB stacks). If your opponent goes all-in and you call, you’re looking at risking 2,000 to win about 2,500 chips, giving you roughly 5-to-4 pot odds. The bottom line is that you’re a noticeable favorite in the hand, and you’re also getting odds on your call.

I think the term “coin flip” can be used in a misleading way when analyzing tournament strategy. If the hand is 50-50, it’s a coin flip. If it’s 55-45, it’s a very significant advantage for one player. Casinos have won hundreds of billions of dollars on edges that size and smaller. If you’re 56% to win the hand and you’re getting 5-to-4 on your money, you really need a compelling reason not to take the risk.

Likewise, on your AQs hand you were a 55-45 favorite against the range you allocated to your opponent. Again, you need a compelling reason not to play.

What would a compelling reason not to play look like? Well, the obvious case would be a super satellite. Say you’re playing in a tournament where the last nine players will all receive a WSOP main event seat. You’re at the final table of ten players. In other words, as soon as one player is eliminated, the tournament will end, and everyone left will get an equal prize.

Say everyone has a roughly equal chip stack, so everyone has about a 90% chance to get a seat (varying some depending on where the button is). If you go all-in as a 55-45 favorite, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. If you fold, you have a 90% chance to win a seat. If you call, you have only a 55% chance to win a seat.

But most tournament scenarios aren’t nearly as extreme. Most tournaments award a large chunk of the total prize fund to the top two or three spots, with relatively smaller consolation prizes to the remaining positions. In these tournaments, going for the win, rather than trying to fold your way into the money, will usually be your best strategy. If you have a good opportunity like a 56-44 edge to pick up a pot that’s offering you odds, you should generally go for it.

So it’s impossible for me to say for sure that you did the right thing to take a stand in your tournaments because it could depend on the exact chip stacks and prize structure. But generally speaking, in most tournaments in most situations, you’re doing the right thing by going for these solid edges. Sometimes it won’t work out, but when it does, you’ll end up going on to win the tournament a lot more often than you would if you systematically folded in these situations. And overall you’ll end up winning more money too.

Q&A #115: How Time Charges Affect Strategy

Ed Miller — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:55:19 +0000

Today we have a quick Q&A about playing in a game with a time charge. A time charge is a way for the house to profit from the game. In lieu of a rake on each pot, in a time game the house simply collects a fixed fee from each player at the beginning of each new dealer’s down (typically every half an hour).

For instance, in the game described by today’s questioner, the time charge is $8 per half hour. At the beginning of each down, the dealer collects $8 from each player, and then all the hands are played rake-free.

On to the question from vb_rounder on the message board:

How would an $8/half-hour time charge affect a medium-stack (50-60 BB) strategy in a live $1/$2 cash game? Also consider tips are additional monies being removed from pots won.

Would you alter your strategy to include playing slightly more loosely pf, or simply play a normal tight strategy of raising big pf w/ premium hands, avoiding marginal drawing-type hands, and trying to get all-in on the flop with TP and big draw semi-bluffs?

The answer is simple. A time charge doesn’t affect strategy at all.

A time charge is a sunk cost. It’s a fixed fee. You pay the exact same amount whether you play every hand like a crazy person, or you play like a complete nit. So the money you pay to the house doesn’t affect your strategy at all. You would play exactly the same way in a game with a $2 per half hour time charge as you would in a game with an $8 or a $20 time charge.

Contrast this to a rake, where the way the money is collected can affect your strategy. You pay rake only when you win a pot. So if you play every hand like a crazy person and consequently win a lot of pots, you will pay a lot of rake. And if you play like a complete nit, you will pay significantly less rake.

In addition, rake can affect the odds you get on certain bets. Instead of betting X to win the Y in the pot, you end up betting X to win Y minus $2 or Y minus $4 because of the money removed for the rake. The impact on strategy is generally to encourage slightly tighter play in a raked game. The bigger the rake, the worse odds you get on your bets, and therefore the more often you need to win the pot to make those bets profitable.

Back to the time charge. Since no money is removed from the pots (except for whatever you tip out), the odds remain the same no matter what the time charge ends up being.

As for exactly how you should play a 50-60BB stack – well that’s a complex question that depends heavily on the type of game you’re in. If your opponents are loose and you routinely see 5- and 6-handed raised pots, then by-and-large you’re looking to make good pairs and big draws to shove your money in on the flop with. If your opponents are tight and a preflop raise typically wins the pot outright or gets one or two callers, then you can play a strategy that puts more emphasis on postflop stealing (despite your stack size).

And yes, you can play ever-so-slightly looser in a time game than you can in a raked game, because every pot is just that little extra bit bigger. But the difference is small enough that I’d be hard-pressed to come up with too many practical examples of how I’d alter my play. Most of the examples I might come up with would involve heads-up pots and blind stealing/defense situations. Obviously there can be some hands that are profitable steals in a time game that become slightly unprofitable with a rake.

Finally, $8 per half hour is a bit of a high charge for a $1-$2 game. Unless your opponents are real world-beaters (extremely unlikely in any $1-$2 game), I’d expect you to be able to make an acceptable profit from the game playing a 50-60 BB stack. But you’d probably expect to make maybe $3-5 per hour more in an equivalent game with typical 10% to $4 rake structure.

Q&A #114: Two Big Pocket Pair Hands From Live No-Limit Games

Ed Miller — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:31:34 +0000

Recently on the message board I fielded two questions about big pocket pair hands played in live no-limit games. I want to share these two hands with all my readers.

The first question comes from Slam. You can read the entire discussion on the message board. Slam asks:

I’m holding my own with all of my $100 buy-in…pretty loose game. I’m dealt K K in middle position. Two players in front of me limp in for $4 min bet. I make it $12. Two players after me and two behind me all call the $12 ( $60 in the pot )

Flop comes out 9-4-4 rainbow. Two players check to me, I push my $85 all-in. Everyone folds, one guy behind me (who checked) calls my bet with roughly same chip stack. He turns over 4-6 offsuit, two lumps of coal hit the turn and river, he politely rakes the pot.

I give him the stink eye and say “You call $12 with 4-6 offsuit ?!?!” He says “You bet $12 with Kings ?!? A couple other players snicker, I get up and leave (politely I think).

Statement: I have no problem dropping $100 in that situation, but wonder if that was a dumb play

Question #1: Did he infer my $12 pre-flop was too much or not enough ?

Question 2: Do you think I made the correct play, or was there a better way to play my kings ?

I would have played the hand differently in two ways:

I would have raised more preflop. Not because $12 with $100 stacks isn’t “enough” to make the hand profitable… it is. But I think you can squeeze more money out of the hand by raising bigger. I probably would have made it $20 to go. The guy with 6-4 offsuit probably still would have called, and that’s just fine. The vast majority of the time you just got $8 more out of him, while the occasional times he outflops you you end up losing the same amount. Win more when you win, lose the same when you lose. That means more profit long-term.
I would have bet less on the flop. That’s a fairly good flop for your hand, but you want people to be able to pay you off with lesser hands. You want anyone with a 9 or a smaller pocket pair to go to the felt with you. They may do that even in the face of your all-in push, but I probably would have bet about $20 or $25 into the $60 pot. You don’t need to protect your hand because the chance of getting outdrawn is small. I’d try to take the weaker pairs for a ride by betting $20 now, maybe $30 on the turn, and then the rest on the river. Know how they sell worthless crap on TV by splitting it into 3 low payments of just $19.99? Well, you can sell a crap deal to anyone with a 9 by putting them on the installment plan also.

Either way, you’re going broke to the guy that flopped trips. No way to avoid that at all.

The bottom line is that if you’re playing a 50BB stack and you have an opportunity to 3-bet preflop with a big pocket pair, you will be committing your entire stack postflop the vast majority of the time. Sometimes you’ll lose, but usually you’ll win. And either way, your main concern should be how to get your opponents with weaker hands to put as much money in the pot as possible.

One final point: In my opinion it’s impossible to “hold your own” with a 50BB stack. That stack could easily be doubled up in one hand or lost in one hand, and either way you could have played just fine. Your stack is a tool to help you acquire more chips, and when you think in terms of “holding your own” you often sink into the trap of seeking to conserve or nurse what you have rather than aggressively going after what the other guys have. More on this later.

The second question comes from vb_rounder. Again, you can read the entire discussion on the message board. Vb_rounder asks:

EP raises to around $12.00 preflop. I re-raise in LP w/ JJ to $35.00 . BB (loose, forty-something, touristy-looking fellow) raises all in for $261.00 total. EP player folds. I asked him “why so much?” BB says something to the effect of “I just don’t want you to suckout”. I folded JJ faceup on the table. I recently doubled my starting stack to break even for the session, and didn’t feel like flipping for stacks. He later stated that “he had KK”, but never showed.

Bad laydown?

I think it’s a good fold. For the vast majority of live games, your opponent has no less than K-K to make this reraise. The fact that he’s touristy-looking makes me like the fold more.

I agree with a poster in the thread about not folding face-up. It’s unlikely to hurt you much, but you never know who might see it and decide to take a shot at you later. Since it’s a live game and you’re assuming (correctly) that people aren’t making a lot of big bluffs, you don’t want to encourage it at all because if the same situation comes up again, you should be folding then also. It’s not in your interest to encourage bluffing if you plan to fold.

I did want to point out your stack psychology. You just recently doubled up and got even and now you didn’t want to flip for stacks. This kind of thinking will just cripple you in no-limit. It really, really will. Honestly, I make a lot of money in live no-limit games by stealing pot after pot from guys who think just like you did here. It couldn’t be simpler. I just shove the big bets out there and watch them fold everything they don’t consider a near lock. They grumble and complain and say, “One of these days I’m going to stand up to you.” And they never do.

To win serious money at no limit you have to use your stack as a weapon, and that means being 100% willing to lose it at any moment. I really can’t stress this point enough as it’s extremely important. When I play live, I always play stakes where I can lose stack after stack and just shrug it off, replacing it as needed. That allows me to be more aggressive than the players who are nursing their stacks, and basically it allows me to rob them blind, $20 or $25 at a time.

If you don’t have enough money to replace stack after stack at the stakes you’re playing, move down. If you’re already playing the smallest game in the room, buy-in for less. If you’re playing the smallest game in the room and you can’t buy-in for less because the minimum buy-in is $40 and you have less than, say, $400 to play with… unfortunately, you’re kind of pretty much underrolled to play no-limit. You can play, but expect not to play that well because you’ll be too worried about what you can lose to play as aggressively as you should.

Overall I think that many players question their play with big pairs often because they are overly concerned about losing one buy-in. Getting stacked happens, and the best players have little to no fear of losing it all.