Second Barrel Basics

Many flop calls are made for speculative reasons. Someone has a draw they hope to improve on the turn. Or they have a weak pair, and they aren’t sure whether you have a bigger pair or just two unpaired cards. Or they don’t have much of a hand, but they’re sticking around hoping you will give up. Firing the second barrel is designed to attack these speculative calls.

In these cases, the flop callers are not committed to their hands. They just plan to stick around for one more round, and only if they catch a break do they plan to proceed beyond that.

When your opponents are calling for a draw, more often than not they won’t catch their card, and you can bet them off the pot. When your opponents are calling to see if you’ll give up on the pot, you can disappoint them by firing on the turn.

Overall, when your opponents call the flop for speculative reasons, you are in a position of great strength no matter your cards. Simply betting the turn is a winning strategy.

Identifying Speculative Calls

Not every flop call will be speculative. Sometimes your opponent will be trapping with a huge hand. Or, more often, your opponent will have a fairly good hand that they just don’t plan to fold. They may not like that you keep showing strength, but they aren’t giving up either.

To fire second barrels effectively, you need to separate the likely speculative calls from the stronger calls. Two keys to doing that are identifying your opponent’s hand range and examining the board texture.

Say you raise from a relatively early position with K-Q, and a tight player immediately to your left calls. Everyone else folds. The flop comes 8-4-2 rainbow. How should you proceed?

When tight players call preflop from an early position, they tend to have fairly strong hands, and their ranges are weighted toward pocket pairs. For instance, they might make the call with any pocket pair, A-K, or A-Q.

Look at the board texture – three rag cards. How would your opponent proceed with each hand in his range on this board texture? Pocket aces through nines are overpairs. Pocket eights, fours, and deuces have flopped a set. Even pocket sevens, sixes, and fives look like they might have dodged a bullet by catching this raggedy flop. The same logic applies to A-K and A-Q which could be ahead. Your opponent’s possible hands mostly look fairly strong.

I would tend to check and fold the flop. Don’t bluff into strength. But say I decided to try a continuation bet and my opponent (predictably) called. How about firing a turn barrel?

If the turn is a 3, then a turn barrel would be terrible. The pocket pairs look just as strong as they did on the flop, and the weaker hands like pocket sixes, pocket fives, A-K, and A-Q have just picked up a straight draw. You’re likely to get called or raised.

If the turn is a J, then a turn barrel wouldn’t be so bad. Pocket tens and nines are no longer overpairs. Pocket sevens, sixes, and fives each have to worry about two overcards on board. A-K and A-Q have missed completely. It’s not a great second barreling opportunity, but 8-4-2-J is a much better board texture in this situation than is 8-4-2-3.

A Better Opportunity

Now that you understand the basics of how your opponent’s hand range and the board texture interact to determine whether you have a smart second barrel, I’ll show you a more lucrative example.

It’s a $2-$5 game, and you and all of your opponents have about $500 stacks. A player limps in from four off the button. Everyone folds to you on the button, and you make it $25 to go with 7 5 . If this play looks loose to you, I assure you that it’s perfectly sound – provided you can smartly fire the second barrel if the opportunity arises.

The big blind calls, as does the limper. The pot is $77, and you have $475 remaining. The flop comes J 8 3 . Everyone checks to you. This is a somewhat coordinated flop, so if you bet you can expect to get called with reasonable frequency.

However, a large proportion of these flop calls will be speculative. Your opponent will often be drawing to the spade flush or to a straight with a hand like Q-T, Q-9, T-9, T-7, or 9-7. Or he’ll have middle or bottom pair with a hand like 8-6 or A-3. You can expect to push your opponent off of many of these hands if the turn card comes good for you and you bet.

You bet $55 into the $77 flop pot. The big blind folds, and the limper calls. The turn comes the K . Your opponent checks.

This card is great to fire a second barrel on. It completes none of the speculative hands I listed above. It has the additional benefit that it should scare your opponent if he flopped top pair with a hand like J-T. The pot at this point is $187. I would bet around $120 or so. This size should be enough to convince most opponents to give up on the speculative hands. It might even get someone off a jack.

The K is a nearly perfect turn card for firing a second barrel because it completes no draws and also scares flopped top pairs. Say you caught the T instead.

The situation is now much different. All of the speculative straight draw hands I listed above have now improved. Q-9 and 9-7 have made a straight. Q-T, T-9, and T-7 have made a pair. You can expect at least a call on the turn from each of these hands.

In addition, possible hands like J-T and T-8 that could have possibly been cajoled to fold either on the turn or on a scary river card (you can fire a third barrel too) have now made two pair and are going all the way.

I would just check back the T and resign myself to losing the pot since this card hits the speculative hand range fairly well.

The same logic goes for a turn nine, and also a queen or a seven. These are bad cards because they hit your opponent’s range.

Good barreling cards in addition to the king include small bricks like offsuit deuces, fours, fives, and sixes.

Some turn cards make for great bluffing opportunities, and some are too likely to help your opponent to allow you to keep bluffing. If you compare your opponent’s likely hand range to the board texture, you can determine whether your opponent is probably in a calling mood or a folding mood. If you learn to fire second barrels when your opponents are likely weak, you will terrorize the tables.

[This article appeared in the November 5, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 22) of Card Player.]

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.

We still have one or two more chapters to write, and I’m sure we’ll go through the book and swap out some weaker example hands for better ones. But at this point the vast majority of the book is in the can. I expect we’ll be basically done writing by the end of the month.

(If I’m not posting much during the next month or two and if I lag on answering questions and emails, it’s because I’m devoting as much time as possible to getting this book out the door.)

So what do we need to do between the time the writing is done and the time we can release the book?

1. Hammer down publishing plans. Two Plus Two has elected not to publish the book, so we’re on our own for now. We’re 100% confident that it will get published. We just have a few options and haven’t chosen one yet.
2. Select a final title. This project was started as Professional No Limit Hold’em: Volume 2. But, frankly, the book has evolved into something more than just a companion volume. The book, while it certainly builds on some of the topics from Volume 1, functions as a practical, stand-alone guide to crushing small and medium stakes no-limit games. To reflect the fact that it’s more than just a companion volume, we’re considering changing the title to something more descriptive.
3. Edit and proofread. Fairly important.

I’ll continue posting regular updates on our progress from now until the time the book comes out. For now I’m extremely excited. The writing is almost finished, and frankly I’m thrilled with what we have. Small Stakes Hold’em came out over four years ago, and yet people still come up to me all the time and tell me about how that book launched their poker careers. I think this new book has the same potential of SSHE to launch the careers of a new generation of no-limit players.

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.

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Taking Control Of The Game

Many small stakes live games are relatively passive. The players are mostly just pushing small pots back and forth, each hoping to cooler someone. A lot of winning regulars are content to mostly play along, limping into pots and waiting for those cooler hands. But you can often do much better by taking control of the game.

What do I mean taking control? I mean raising preflop with marginal hands to isolate limpers. I mean reraising preflop with marginal hands to isolate loose raisers. I mean firing more barrels on the turn and river. Overall I mean ramping up the aggression significantly.

Taking control of a game by using aggression does two positive things:

1. It allows you to absolutely run over the game for a while until your opponents begin to adjust.
2. When they do start to adjust, it takes your opponents out of their comfort zones where they’re more likely to make mistakes.

By taking control of a passive game by raising and reraising, barrelling off and barrelling again, you force mistakes. You force mistakes by getting them to fold to your weak hands, and then eventually you force mistakes by encouraging them to stack off with second pair to your one big hand of the night.

You can’t take control of a crazy or super-aggressive game in this way. But when the game is passive and people are limping around a lot, you can often devastate the game by forcing the action in a lot of pots.

Value Betting On The River

Too many players check perfectly good hands down on the river rather than bet them for value. This is an area that offers many players a lot of room for improvement. Generally speaking, if you have top pair or better and it’s checked to you on the river, you should seriously consider firing. You don’t have to bet the pot. You can bet less, sometimes a whole lot less. Getting something for your hand is better than getting nothing for it.

The risk of value betting on the river is often that you’ll get raised or check-raised, sometimes as a bluff. But in a regular old passive small stakes live game, this risk is remote. You can play for days and days and never once encounter a river raise from anything but a top-notch hand. So get value betting.

Varying Bet Sizes

The great thing about no-limit is that you have so much latitude to vary bet sizes. You can bet five times the pot or one-tenth the pot or anything in between. Furthermore, you can often manipulate your opponents into doing what you want them to do just by choosing the right bet size. Make an overbet and get a fold. Make a small bet and get a crying call.

The problem with varying bet sizes to manipulate your opponents is that your opponents could potentially reverse engineer your thought process and then figure out roughly what sort of hand you have. While this threat is always present, the reality is that many small stakes live game players are simply not very sophisticated.

When I play these games, I vary my bet sizes a lot, often with the intention of manipulating my opponent into making one play or another. The manipulation is successful far more often than it fails due to an opponent “levelling” me. As long as the backfire rate is relatively low, I think varying bet sizes smartly can improve your bottom line a lot.

Then I’d have to ask the most important question: What are you trying to accomplish?

Most players decide on their plays without ever really thinking about what they’re trying to accomplish with the hand. They call with this hand. They raise with that one. Why? Because they think the hand is good enough to see a flop with. Or because they want to thin the field. Or just because.

Those reasons aren’t good enough if you want to win consistently. To make money at no-limit, you have to play with a plan. You have to anticipate the different ways that the hand could play out and encourage the favorable outcomes while avoiding the unfavorable ones.

Obviously poker is random, and a terrible card can ruin even the most promising situation. You can’t avoid the occasional tough spot or bad beat. But many players willingly wade into bad situation after bad situation because they don’t plan.

Consider this scenario. It’s a 10-handed $5-$10 game. You have $1,000 and everyone at the table has you covered. Three players limp, and then the cutoff raises to $80. You’re on the button with 7 6 . What should you do?

Many players would call automatically: They have a decent-looking hand and the button. That reasoning, however, reflects no planning whatsoever. You’ll likely have to make several decisions after the flop. Are those decisions likely to offer you favorable or unfavorable outcomes?

Let’s play through some potential scenarios:

Scenario 1. You call, the blinds fold, and the first limper reraises to $380. Everyone folds to you. Your hand is likely too weak to compete against your opponent’s range of hands, and you have to fold. If this scenario is reasonably likely, then you should fold the first time around rather than risk getting blown off your $80 investment.

Scenario 2. You call, the blinds fold, and all three limpers call. That makes the preflop pot $415, and you have $920 left in your stack. So you have somewhat more than twice the size of the pot remaining. If someone bets the pot (or close to it) on the flop, then you have to make an immediate decision for all your chips. It would be very rare that you’d want to call a $400 bet only to fold to an all-in $520 bet on the next round. Playing for the flop bet will effectively commit the rest of your chips.

Your first flop decision will also likely be your last one. You’ll either commit everything, or you’ll fold. Because of your weak relative position, acting directly after the preflop raiser, that flop decision will be excruciating.

For instance, say the flop comes Q 7 5 . The flop is checked to the preflop raiser who bets $300 into the $415 pot. You have to commit now, and you have no good information. Furthermore, you have four opponents, any of whom could have a hand. This scenario doesn’t give you an edge, and yet you’ll stumble into a situation like this one over and over again if you decide to see the flop. You can avoid it by folding preflop.

Scenario 3. You call, and everyone else folds. The preflop pot is $175 and you have $920 left. Your opponent is aggressive, and you expect him to bet the pot or close to it almost no matter the flop.

Once again you’re in a tricky situation. You’ll miss the flop frequently, so if you plan to fold every time you miss, then right off the bat you’re giving your opponent a large percentage of the pots. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to overcome that disadvantage to make the hand profitable overall.

To make the preflop call workable, you have to steal some of the pots. If your opponent raises limpers with some weak hands and therefore frequently flops nothing himself, you may be able to steal enough pots. If your opponent usually has a strong hand when he raises several limpers, then trying to steal from him is not going to work out.

In this scenario, calling is a dicey proposition that requires several things to go right for you: the limpers have to fold, your opponent has to have weak hands in his range, and the flop has to cooperate with your plan to steal by being sufficiently scary.

Scenario 4. Your entire table is very nitty, including the preflop raiser. You think the preflop raiser is making such a large raise because he’s nervous about his hand he wants everyone to fold. The table is tight enough that the limpers will indeed likely all fold. In this scenario, calling makes a lot of sense.

Your tight opponent will know that calling such a large raise suggests some strength, and he will fear that your hand is better than the hand he has (unless he happens to have pocket aces or kings). If you call, and the limpers fold (as predicted), then your opponent may tip his hand on the flop. Namely, he may make a big bet with a big pair, and he may make a small bet or check if he misses or otherwise doesn’t like his hand (9-9 on a Q-J-4 board, for instance). In that case, you call preflop with the intention of letting your opponent tip his hand on the flop, and reacting to it with precision.

So what are you trying to accomplish? Are you playing 7-6 suited because you want to flop a draw and win a big pot off your solid opponent? That’s a bad plan because the preflop raise is too large compared to the stack sizes. You’ll be all-in (or at least pot-committed) on the flop – before you hit your draw.

Are you playing 7-6 suited because it “plays well multiway” and this will be a multiway pot? Again, it’s no good here because you’ll be forced to commit too early in the hand.

Are you playing 7-6 suited because your opponents are nitty and you plan to call preflop and take the pot on the flop? If so, you might be on to something.

Plan your hands. Consider some likely scenarios, and decide if you like them. How will your hand play if the obvious happens? What are your “home run” scenarios, and how likely are they? If you do this, you’ll avoid playing on autopilot and you’ll make better and more profitable decisions.

[This article appeared in the October 22, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 21) of Card Player.]

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

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.

But suited connectors aren’t all bad. Indeed, they can be quite nice no-limit hands if you play them well. Shortly after the original article was published, one of my readers alerted me to the discussion of a hand posted on the forums at InternetTexasHoldem.com and asked me for my thoughts.

Here’s a summary of the hand in question.

It’s a full ring online $0.50-$1 game played with $100 effective stacks. A player opens from three off the button for $3.50. The next player calls. The cutoff folds, and the action is to me on the button with 8 6 .

I’ve played with the open raiser before, so I know that his range to open from this seat is approximately any pair fives or better, A-T or better, A-8 suited or better, K-J or better, or Q-J.

I call the $3.50, and the blinds fold. So the pot is about $10.50 on the flop, there’s $96.50 behind, and the flop comes:

A 9 7

Everyone checks to me on the button, and I bet $8 into the $10.50 pot. The preflop raiser checkraises to $25, and the middle player folds. What now?

Here are my thoughts about the hand.

Preflop, I reraise (rather than call) in this situation with a good frequency. The opener’s range is wide, and the pot is sweetened with a call from a likely weak hand. I would expect to pick up the pot immediately often enough that the reraise will likely come close to paying for itself.

When you get called, you have a hand that is disguised and tends to flop a lot of draws. Flopping a draw will give you the maximum ability to put the final screws of pressure on postflop. This is what I mean when I recommend playing suited connectors with position and looking for chances to steal the pot. You don’t want to sit around and wait for your hand to connect with a flop. It won’t happen often enough, and you won’t get paid off frequently enough to compensate you for all your misses. Instead, you want to seize the initiative and force your opponents to hit the flop or fold.

Furthermore, reraising with 8-6 suited in this situation balances your reraises with big hands. If you reraise small card hands with some regularity, you’ll find that otherwise sane players will start to call your reraises with hands like A-T when they’re out of position. As a result you’ll tend to make a lot more profit on average with your big pocket pair hands.

As long as you don’t go crazy with these in position suited connector reraises, they can be really difficult for an open raiser to counter.

Calling is also a reasonable option, but again you can’t rely on implied odds alone to make the hand profitable. You must plan to steal quite a bit. For instance, you might bet nearly any flop that gets checked to you. And if the preflop raiser is the kamikaze type who will fire a continuation bet nearly 100 percent of the time even out of position into two players, then you can’t just give up whenever you miss the flop. Sometimes you have to call or raise that flop bet with air, trying to take the pot away. Again, if you fold every time you miss, you’ll be folding on the majority of flops, and you won’t win enough on the remainder of the flops to make up for it.

When you flop a monster draw, as in the example hand, you want to get the money in. I think the opener’s checkraising line is suspicious. It’s a really strange flop to try to checkraise, but perhaps this player is a little loopy. Or maybe he thinks that someone behind him is very aggressive and is almost certain to bet.

In general, in no-limit, when there’s a confrontation between a made hand and a big draw that both have roughly 50 percent equity on the flop, the big draws like to get all the money in on the flop, and the made hands like to get it in in installments over a few streets. Because your equity is so strong against most made hands, I would argue for simply shoving all-in over the flop checkraise.

The only possible exception to that conclusion would be if, for some reason, you think this peculiar checkraise line heavily weights your opponent’s range toward big flush draws. If you shove immediately, a hand like K Q will call you, and you’ll be a solid underdog. If you flat call the checkraise and shove the turn if a flush card doesn’t come, however, you may get folds you wouldn’t have gotten on the flop.

But big flush draws are quite a small part of his overall range on the flop (before he takes any action), so your read on the checkraise would have to be very precise to even consider any line other than shoving the flop.

Overall, I think the preflop call can be justified, but if I called I’d do so thinking about how I could steal the pot postflop. A preflop reraise would have been a strong option well worth considering. And once you call preflop and flop a monster draw, I think the best play in the vast majority of cases is to shove all-in on the flop and hope to win the hand.

[This article appeared in the October 8, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 20) of Card Player.]