Carl Sampson returns with top tips on breaking down the small-stakes full-ring games.
Whenever I sit and play in any low-stakes no limit full-ring game I tend to see the same old mistakes time after time. In fact, only yesterday the following hand cropped up on my table at NL100 ($0.50/$1) on Cake Poker.
Our hero raised in the UTG+1 seat to $3.50 and it was folded round to the cut-off who called and the button called too. I had nothing so I folded, as did the two blinds, so we had a three-way pot in this hand. All three players had stacks of over a hundred big blinds and were fairly deep.
There was $12 in the pot on the flop and the original raiser led out with a pot-sized bet of $12 on a board of 10s-7c-3c. The cut-off folded but the button called and the turn card was the 2d. Now the pot stood at $36 and the original raiser bet the full pot again but this time he was min-raised and he ended up not only calling but shoving what he had left into the middle.
Needless to say he was called and the button showed the 7d-7h for middle set with the raiser showing pocket kings. There was no long shot king on the river and seconds later we were looking at an empty seat.
Many novice players would argue that all they were doing was protecting their hand from drawing hands and that giving free cards is criminal. This is true but you know what? So is getting all-in for 100BB with just a pair of kings and especially against another deep stack when there are four communal cards in the middle.
You have to ask yourself the question, “How big do I want this pot to get with one pair?” At the end of the day, it does not matter how big that pair is - you have one measly pair. To see the poor quality of this play we have to view it from another angle:
Let’s say you and your opponent have $100 stacks in a $0.50-$1 game. You have pocket aces and your opponent has, say, 9c-8c. If they knew that you would get all-in after the flop without improvement then they have tremendous implied odds to call your raise. They are risking a mere 3.5% of their stack and while you are risking the same 3.5%, they then stand to win your remaining 96.5% should they out-flop you. Their hand has flexibility while you are giving yourself none whatsoever when you play your hand in this way. If your opponent fails to connect then they can simply muck their hand and take the $3.50 loss.
NOVICE THINKING
One of the underlying reasons for why this player allowed himself to get stacked was the fact that they had bad position throughout the hand.
All poker hands profit from having good position. Even when you win the hand, you will still win more money when you are aware of what actions your opponents have taken before you. But in this situation our hero was thinking something like the following:
PRE-FLOP
“I have a strong hand, so I raise.”
ON THE FLOP
“I probably still have the best hand but I need to make my opponents pay to draw out on me and I have two opponents to worry about and not just one. They only called my raise so they could have many hands and there are potential flush and straight draws out there. Another club coming on the turn would make it more difficult for me to get them out of the pot if they have a high club card so I need to bet something substantial here; a pot-sized bet should do.”
ON THE TURN
“Getting called again wasn’t good but at least the flush and the straight draws didn’t come in. At least I managed to get rid of one player, which is good news, but if I check here then my opponent is going to see that as weakness although I could induce a bluff. But I really don’t want those drawing hands coming in and if my opponent is going to make his draw then I am going to make sure that he pays for it. He may also be only calling me on the flop because he suspects that I have an A-K and am merely firing another barrel. Another big bet should get rid of him.”
AFTER THE TURN RAISE
“I didn’t expect that but he may be trying to push me off the hand with a draw. I have used half my stack already and I don’t want to buy back in for anymore because I will be leaving in five minutes anyway. I really don’t want to lay this hand down and give this dude the satisfaction of having bluffed me off the hand. If he has two pair then I can still outdraw him and only a set leaves me really buried; he can’t have aces otherwise he would have re-raised before the flop. Time is running out, I hate it when it does that...what the hell...ALL IN!”
EXPERT THINKING
Our hero may not have been thinking along these exact lines but I tell you what, many thousands of small-stakes players do think like this. But I am now going to go into how an expert player might address this exact same situation and the types of things that they would be considering:
PRE-FLOP
“OK, I have pocket kings - big deal. My position is terrible and the game is pretty tight. If I raise with these then the chances are that I will only win the blinds and I don’t want to lose a big pot with this hand unless I improve on the flop tremendously. My early position means that there are eight other players to be heard from after me and I see aces against kings so much more in these full-ring games than I do at six max games. I could try limping in with these and try to create a little bit of extra pre-flop value from the deceptiveness of my hand. I could then play the hand carefully and release it if the action or the board gets too scary.
“In this instance no-one will know that I have played pocket kings in this way. The flip side is that I really don’t want to play a one-pair hand out of position in a multi-way pot so I favour raising as I would ideally like the hand heads-up. I could do either play and balance is a key feature of poker but in this instance I will open-raise to $3.50.”
ON THE FLOP
“Right, I have two callers who both have position over me so I am going to have to be careful here. They could easily have called my raise with a pocket pair and be holding a set right now and I need to be aware of this. But I cannot let two players receive a free card by checking so I have to do something.
“An ace coming on the turn will not only kill my action as they will expect a pre-flop raiser to have an ace but it could also eliminate my chances of winning the pot as well if someone is holding an ace.
“If they have some kind of draw then I need to make them pay to hit this so I think betting is correct here. The only decision left is to decide how much to bet. The pot is $12 so I don’t need to over-bet the pot as a bet of around $9-$10 should get the job done if they both have nothing.
“But then again an $8 bet is only giving an opponent with a draw less than 3/1 and this could also extract some value from one-pair hands like A-10, A-7s, 9-9, 8-8 etc. I think that an $8 bet is fine and should get the junk hands out so I will bet $8.”
ON THE TURN
“I am certainly not happy about getting called but at least the pot is heads-up now. The pot is now $28 and the straight and flush draws have not come in but they may not be on those types of hands so I still have to be careful. If they are on draws then I need to make the odds against them hitting their hand incorrect and a bet in the region of $20 should do the trick.
“I must also have an escape plan if I get raised as well. The nature of this game is tight-passive so I really must respect another call and certainly a raise. If I bet and get raised then I will fold and be happy that I didn’t lose too much money with a good pre-flop hand.
“A $20 bet should tell me if they are really serious and if my hand is good at this stage. I wish that I had better position but no point in worrying about that now. I could go into shutdown mode but what happens if my opponent bets big on both the turn and river? How can I be sure that they are only betting because I have shown weakness? The best course of action is to fire another barrel so I bet $20.”
ON THE TURN RAISE
“That min-raise wasn’t expected and he could be testing me. But if I call this $20 then I will certainly have to risk more money on the river come what may. I will either have to make a blocking bet to stop them from betting big or I will be faced with another even BIGGER bet on the river.
“I am in for $31.50 so far in this pot which isn’t a disaster for a hand like pocket kings. This player has been playing pretty solidly so far and minimum raises in these games seem to be indicating value bets and not bluffs. I just don’t think that someone would make a value raise here with a single pair so they must hold two pair at least.
“These types of raises are not good as they let drawing hands in cheaply but I must avoid rewarding my opponent’s bad play by paying them off. The tight-passive nature of this game probably means that my kings are no good and the penalty for being wrong is more severe than the reward for being right and the probability of them holding a superior hand is strong - I am going to fold this hand.”
Folding pocket kings in that situation is a very difficult thing to do and is certainly a play that many players simply could not make. Anyone who thinks that this play is wrong needs to only look at the flip side. Getting all-in by the river with a hand as weak as pocket kings cannot be correct but yet this is precisely what you are in danger of doing.
Players with strong hands will look to try and stack you in increments, as they will likely not want to blow you off the hand. But can you see the difference here between how these two players played the exact same situation and the difference in their respective thought patterns? This one hand alone is indicative of many of the mistakes that small stakes no-limit players make in these games.
SEVENS UP
The following situation was taken from a hand that I played recently at NL50 on Cake Poker. Once again this was at full-ring and once again it involved pocket sevens.
It was folded around to the hijack seat (to the cut-off’s immediate right) who open-raised to $2.25 after there had been a limper. I am situated on the button with the 7c-7h and call. This is an implied odds play based on the fact that both me and my opponent had stacks in the region of $60 and the original limper had a $50 stack should they call.
I had absolute position on the button, which meant that my opponent would have no idea that I had flopped a set until it was too late. Both blinds folded and so did the original limper and we had a heads up situation with $5.75 in the pot. The flop came Jc-7d-4d, giving me middle set.
My opponent over-bet the pot slightly and fired out a $6 bet, which in my mind indicated that they were trying to blow me away from the hand. Despite the fact that there are several potential draws out there, this is heavily negated in a heads-up situation like this and I did not want to lose my client too soon so I called.
This made the pot $17.75 so my opponent is in danger of getting pot-committed here. The turn card was the Qc and my opponent checked. Now my decision is one of ‘do I try to extract some value or check and hope that he makes a bluff on the river?’ I thought that the chances of my opponent bluffing again were drastically reduced after they had checked following me calling their pre-flop raise and flop bet.
I decide in the heat of the moment to bet $9 which my opponent may interpret as a bet made purely because I suspect that they are weak. They snap-shoved all-in, making me think that they could possibly be holding Q-Q or J-J, but I cannot pass a set of sevens in this situation and I make the call.
They showed Kh-10d for a straight draw and the 6c came on the river to win me the pot. But let us look a little more deeply at the mistakes that were committed by this player in this hand.
ANALYSIS
PRE-FLOP
Raising a single limper with a hand like K-10 in the hijack seat is not a bad play, although it isn’t a great one either. The hand isn’t suited and suffers from reverse implied odds as it can have pay off problems against hands like A-K, K-Q, K-J, A-10. But these NL50 games do tend to be tight/passive in nature so you can often win the blinds cheaply or get the pot heads-up and then win it on the flop with a continuation bet.
The problem with this type of strategy is that attacking the blinds in no-limit play isn’t as mathematically viable due to the short odds that the raiser is taking. But the raise isn’t a blunder so it is hard to be overly critical at this stage of play.
ON THE FLOP
Here is where things start to get a little interesting. I have called the raise purely as an implied odds play with pocket sevens as both me and my opponent have deep stacks and I have position. They bet slightly more than the pot on the flop. This once again is not a bad bet and a pot-sized bet will win the pot a good percentage of the time.
But a $6 bet isn’t necessary and you could easily get away here by betting a smaller amount which would have precisely the same effect. A bet of $4 here would have been enough to see whether or not I was still interested in the hand. But once again these are minor technical errors but they do add up over the year.
ON THE TURN
Here is a big mistake. Not only has this player bet the pot on the flop but they are check-raising on the turn to continue with their bluff charge. This is one problem with attacking the blinds for players like this - they get away with numerous small wins and then get ruthlessly exposed in one big pot that gets out of control.
Their problem is that they have not properly ascertained what the average mindset is of a NL50 player and what the correct is way to play in these games! This player has seen me call a raise pre-flop, then call their bet on the flop and bet over half the pot when checked to.
While this betting sequence has yet to narrow down exactly the content of my hand, it is a strong indication that I do have something worth playing. In this case then they are making a fatal error looking to semi-bluff big here because in all likelihood then not only is their raise likely to get called but it also leaves them in a situation in which they will be forced to compete their draw.
It is rare in NL50 for players to be bluffing in escalated pots and they nearly always have something so that even if it isn’t strong they are prepared to play it. This was the critical mistake made by this player - he chose the completely wrong time to attempt to launch a semi-bluff.
However, his play was not a total disaster as he still had a fair amount of equity in the pot from the outs that his straight draw gave him but the point is that he had to make this hand to win as he had no fold equity as there was no chance that I was passing a set. One may argue that he didn’t know that I had a hand as strong as that and this is true. But the fact remains that he should have at least been suspicious that I had something and adjusted accordingly.
He could have improved his play tremendously by merely calling my turn bet as he had pot odds of slightly over 3/1 plus some implied odds by being able to extract some money on the river should he make his hand which could have made his play +EV instead of one that was –EV.
Next month we will be looking at more cash game strategies and mistakes in low-stakes no limit games. See you then! |
