Making Hands

I just had a discussion with a friend yesterday on the subject of playing to make hands in poker. This friend plays a lot of online poker, and is a profitable player. There are a lot of poker players who just sit and wait around for hands like AJ or KQ, and then raise or call, see the flop and then depending on how well their hand hits, make further decisions from there. These players might turn out to be profitable, depending on how successful they are in getting their opponents to pay them off on their made hands. The problem with this strategy is that making hands is not a common occurrence, and these players lose money on hands that they miss and subsequently fold.

There aren’t many loose passive players online, and these are the type of players that you can expect to pay you off if you play to make hands. This generally results in a break-even or even a losing record for players who play to make hands (Fit or Fold players) online, simply because they aren’t getting paid off on their hands, while losing money consistently to hands that they don’t hit and the rake. Sites like Poker Stars give significant rake-back to players who play a lot of hands at higher stakes (ranked supernova or supernova elite), but how many players get to those ranks?

Fact is, in the game of poker, your two pocket/hole cards don’t matter until you finally showdown on the river. What matters before the showdown is what your opponent might be holding, your table image, your opponent’s table image, you and your opponent stack sizes, the money in the pot, and finally, your position relative to your opponent. Players who play to make hands simply ignore these important factors in the game, at least until they make a hand, which actually mean that they rely more on luck, i.e. they are gambling. Of course, there are times when playing to make hands is necessary. E.g. when you’re up against a loose passive player, and, that’s it I think. If any of you readers can think of more situations where playing to make hands is necessary, please comment.

How does one not play to make hands? Here’s an example in a recent online game I played. I was holding AcTc on a NL100 6-max table, sitting on the cutoff. The player to my right had stats of 38/25 which meant that he’s a loose aggressive player. My own stats were 15/12. My stack size was about $130, and he had $150 or thereabouts, so we were pretty even. Action was checked to him pre-flop, and he raised 3xBB. I decided to re-raise him and made it $9. Action folded over to him who flat called. The flop comes Kd9d8h, with suits different to the one I was holding, so I completely missed the flop, and had no draw. He checks, and I made a c-bet of $12 into a $19.50 pot. He makes a min-raise, which made the existing pot $55.50, a very nice pot. I had slightly more than $90 left in my stack, about the same as what he had since he put in $12 more than me. I decided to go for it, and raised to $40. He folded and I took down the pot.

A player who plays to make hands would do things very differently if they were in my situation. They would have called pre-flop, whiffed, and folded to any decently sized bet on the flop. Of course, they would only have risked $3, instead of $61 (half my stack), but think of it in a different context. Passive calling gives you no information on what your opponent might have. Say the flop comes AdKd7h, and your opponent makes a pot sized c-bet. Since you already made your hand, you would probably re-raise, and say the opponent 3-bets you. What do you do then? AT here is crushed by AJ, AQ, AK and A7, AA, KK and 77. It’s also only about even money against a pair plus flush draw, and only really beats a smaller Ace or flush draw. Most Fit or Fold players would not be able to fold here. They finally make a hand, but face a 3-bet. They would then call the 3-bet, and face enormous pressure to call all subsequent bets, possibly putting your whole stack on the line instead of only half your stack.

Note that this situation is not fictional, and occurs very often in a game of poker. A lot of experienced regulars online would make that 3-bet on the flop simply because its profitable to do so against a player who only plays to make hands. Every time that player folds, its instant profit. If that player goes over the top, it’s very easy to for them to fold since they can recover that loss in subsequent hands using the same line of play.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to play a more imaginative game. As always, comments and feedback are appreciated. Till next time, may you not play to make hands, but make your hand just the same!

Stayin' Alive

We’ve often heard people say tournament play is different from cash games, but what exactly does that mean? How much different can cash games get, when you’re playing the exact same game? The cards don’t change. Your odds and outs in a particular hand don’t change.

What changes is the fact that blinds played are progressively increased. Imagine playing cash games with progressively increasing blinds! You could only play as long as your bankroll can sustain your blinds. The more blinds (forced bets) you have to make, the more the game becomes a gamble. In fact, thinking about it, a single tournament could be used to represent a player’s progression at poker, that is, if you had the choice of remaining at a certain blind level until you’re ready to move on.

When you’re forced to move up in blinds, the more it becomes necessary for you to recover your losses through forced bets. This means playing more hands, which would eventually mean that luck decides the outcome. When should you start playing more hands in a tournament? At the beginning, where the blinds don’t matter as much? Or towards the end when you’re forced to play hands due to a diminishing stack size?

The ultimate goal of a tournament is to stay “alive” as long as possible. The person who stays alive the longest, wins. This is the fundamental concept of a poker tournament, and one that most players fail to understand. Everyone tries to accumulate as many chips as possible, but in an inevitable situation in the tournament when you’re forced to make a decision for all your chips in a cooler situation (e.g. nut flush versus a possible full house), players ignore the goal of “staying alive” when making that decision.

How does staying alive factor into a poker decision? Simple. Imagine that you’re playing a tournament with actual money. Blinds increases periodically, and you don’t stop playing till the last man standing. You’re given a decision to go all in pre-flop when you’re holding Aces, but you’d be playing for all the money you have left in the world, with no chance of earning more. This would mean that if you lost (which you will, at least 20% of the time!), you will be relegated to permanent bankruptcy. Would you still take the risk with Aces?

I was playing a hand in an online tournament just yesterday. I was the shortest stack, with 13 players left in the game. Blinds were $25/$50, and my stack size was $900, less than 20 times the big blind. I got AQs on hi-jack, and made a standard raise of 3xBB. Action folds over to the player on the Big Blind who was playing a loose aggressive style, and was at that time, holding the largest stack with about $4000 in chips. He thought for a while, then shoved me all-in. Based on his play, the chances of him holding a better hand than mine was slim, and I made the call. Sure enough, he was holding JTo, and my odds to win was almost 65%. The flop comes J66, and he flops top pair, but I flopped a flush draw, with two over cards. Even with him holding top pair, I was still the favorite to win with a 52% chance. His Jacks held up to take down the pot, eliminating me in the process.

I knew I had the better hand, based on all the information available, but if I had thought about it in terms of actual cash, and going bankrupt, I would never have made that call. With 15 big blinds remaining, and 6 players on the table, I could still see about 60 hands before I’m forced to play for all my (remaining) “money”. A lot can happen in 60 hands.

In reverse, the “staying alive” factor can also be used to advance yourself in the tournament. Big blind played an aggressive strategy, forcing me to make a decision for all my chips while only risking a 25% of his stack. He had 35% to win $900 if I called, and 100% to win $225 if I folded. He only had to risk 25% of his stack. This was an excellent play, and plays like this win tournaments. He ended up placing 2nd.

There are a lot of ways to view this, and the sheer number of possibilities that could happen is what makes poker an extremely challenging game. Sure, it was technically a suck-out by the JTo, but if you think about it in relative terms (since everything is relative), Big Blind was playing at a 25% risk, while I was playing at a 100% risk. The odds to win the hand was in my favor, but the odds to win the tournament was in his favor!

Which would you rather win? Till next time, make your decisions like all your money depends on it!

Bets

Making bets is pretty much what you do when you play poker. Big bets, small bets, pot-sized bets. The general mistake a lot of people make with bets is that they don’t size their bets correctly. Bets that are too large overly expose your stack, and increases risks. Bets that are too small don’t extract enough value.

When playing poker, its easy to get carried away betting into a pot in the hopes of getting a player off a hand. Sometimes though, it’s good to just recall the fundamental reason to bet. You bet to increase the money in the pot for hands that are strong. You avoid increasing the size of pots for hands that are weak. When you’re firing several barrels into a pot with an average made hand (or even on a bluff!), and your opponents are not folding, you know you’re doing something very wrong.

I think the amount to bet depends on the reason you’re betting. If you’re betting to push your opponent off a hand, you have to know from previous experience the amount and situation he would fold a particular hand to. For example, if you’ve observed that he folds top pair to an 80% pot bet on a possible made flush, you can do the same when you’re in the hand with him in a similar situation. If he folds to 80% pot bets 4 out of every 5 times, you should always make this bet in similar situations regardless of what you’re holding, simply because its profitable to do so. Bets like these also help you read your opponent’s hands better. If he doesn’t fold when you bet 80% into the pot, you can pretty much be assured that you’re up against something better than top pair and you can let go of your hand unless you improve.

If you’re betting to increase the size of the pot for your monster made hand, there are several things you have to note. Bets the opponent calls on a regular basis, your stack size and your opponent’s stack size, the aggressiveness of your opponent and his opinion of your aggressiveness. I was in a situation some time ago, in a $2/$5 live game, when I had JTs out of position against a tight solid player (TSP) in late position. I have a loose aggressive image, with a pretty deep stack ($650 or thereabouts). TSP had about the same amount and called my pre-flop 4xBB raise. The flop came JJ9, with a possible flush draw, a monster flop for me. The only thing you should be thinking at this point is to make as much as you can from your opponent. I knew TSP for a passive player from previous games, so I knew I could not slow-play. I raised $28, 70% of the pot, and he calls. TSP regularly calls me down with a pair or Ace high (because of my loose aggressive image), so I put him on a 9 or a possible flush draw. The turn comes a T which made the flush, but I had the nuts. I bet $60, and he makes a raise to $165. If I went all in or even made a raise at this point, he could barely call me with the nut flush, and anything less would generally fold, so I flat called. This made the pot equivalent to our stacks. The river came a 5, and I made a bet of $300. He calls with the nut flush, and I take down the pot.

This example might not be the best, but I think it illustrates the need to know your opponent’s style of play and also his view of how you play. The turn and river bet was also important imho. The turn bet increased the size of re-raises from possible strong made hands, while the river bet was strong enough to avert suspicions for an extremely strong made hand, while putting enough value for a strong made hand to make the call (2 to 1). Many people might be tempted to check the turn with the nuts, but there’s no guarantee that your opponent would bet in position if he made the flush.

This is a complicated topic, and I’ve barely scratched it, but I hope this gives a bit of insight on the intricacy of making bets in poker.