More cash wisdom from Carl Sampson as he looks at the dangers of becoming pot-committed in full-ring Hold’em games.
As well as discussing the dangers of pot commitment, this month I will also be looking at some danger hands and how you can avoid risking your entire stack in situations that simply do not merit it.
Incorrect and inappropriate pot commitment is perhaps the biggest single danger to novice and even intermediate players in No Limit cash games. I see these situations arise all the time online and most of them can simply be avoided.
GOLDEN RULE NUMBER #1 - “PLAY ON A STREET-BY-STREET BASIS”
What does this mean? Well you have to remember that cash game poker is vastly different to tournament poker in so many aspects. While the two are also very similar, it’s a bit like comparing tennis with badminton. But so many players who come to cash games do so having only played tournament poker.
This is not automatically a handicap but it can be if the player fails to properly adjust. In tournament poker the blind to stack ratio gets very large quite quickly and this is certainly the case with online tournaments with fast structures. What this can mean is that certain plays in poker tournaments become somewhat automatic after a while and your stack size coupled with the size of the blinds leaves you in a situation where moving all in for your remaining chips is the only sensible option.
COMPARISON: TOURNAMENT HAND
GAME: Deep Stack NLHE Tournament
YOUR HAND: A-K
YOUR STACK: 25,000
BLINDS: 500/1000
Let’s say that you raise with A-K to 3000. It gets called in two spots to your left and the big blind calls also. The pot is now 12,500 and you only have 22,000 left.
FLOP: A-7-2
The big blind comes out betting 8000. With rapidly escalating blinds and maybe the presence of antes too then your best option here may be to simply move in for your remaining 22k! The 1500/3000 level is just around the corner and you could become chronically short stacked very quickly and a dry run could be about to hit you.
The pressure to constantly increase your stack, coupled with rapidly escalating blinds and antes, forces the tournament player into situations where they need to commit their entire stack or risk getting blinded away. It is an obvious fact that the winner of the event must get their hands on every single chip in the field and this in itself creates its very own set of unique pressures.
COMPARISON: CASH GAME
GAME: NLHE CASH $600
BLINDS: $3-$6
YOUR HAND: A-K
YOUR STACK: $660
Now contrast the tournament example above to a NL600 cash game with the exact same hand, same situation and same action. This time our hero with big slick is sitting on $660, which is 110BB at $3-$6 No Limit Hold’em. This equates to having 110,000 in chips in the tournament situation. Also your opponents in this hand all have $600+ stacks so they can easily bust you in this hand.
You’ve raised to $21 and the two players to your left plus the big blind have called you, making an $87 pot. The flop is exactly the same for your A-K and is once again A-7-2 rainbow.
But this is an entirely different situation here to the tournament example. While you are still likely to have the best hand, a hand like top pair-top kicker is not a hand where you can get too deeply involved. So just how deeply involved can you get?
Well first of all Hold’em is a game that is broken down into four individual betting streets. But these streets are not equal and the betting and pot sizes increases dramatically with each round. As a rule of thumb, you really do not want to be betting on more than three rounds out of the four unless you make a very powerful hand. In fact with marginal hands even betting on third street may be a mistake.
Here the big blind bets out again just like they did last time and fires a bet of $60. But in no way do you have a raising hand here. You have already bet strongly on one street so the amount of flexibility that you have left has been severely minimised, especially when you and your opponents have deep stacks.
If you are ahead on this flop then you are likely to stay ahead and if you are behind then you could be in very serious trouble if your opponent has flopped something like a set. Folding top pair-top kicker to a $60 flop bet on this board is not an option. But this does not mean that you can escalate the pot with a mere pair or call further bets on the turn and river.
Pots can mushroom once they get beyond the flop as half-pot and pot-sized bets are now increasing vastly in size. With two players yet to be heard from to your left then your position is somewhat dodgy. Raising in this situation would be similar to calling on the flop and calling another bet on the turn in terms of expenditure so you are in serious danger of getting pot-committed here.
After calling this bet then I would be preparing to extract myself from this hand if several scenarios presented themselves. If the big blind fired out a substantial turn bet then I would fold my hand. This may come as a major shock to hardened tournament players but it is the correct play here. Also, if the flop bet was also called by a player to my left then I would be very careful about continuing on with the hand.
If the pot was heads-up on the turn and the big blind checked to me then I would eliminate an entire betting round by checking this hand back. I may bet something like half the pot and then try to check the river but this then leaves me vulnerable to being called and then being value-bet on the river. This would be a bet that I would be forced to call.
In these situations, before you know it you can blow most, if not all, of your stack in one hand. So the bottom line here is that you need to be very careful just how deep you go with mediocre hands in deep-stacked situations. Next month, I’ll take a closer look at sensible hand selection in these same deep stack cash games. Good luck! |
