Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (21 page)

You should still fold most hands if someone raises from early position. Call only with fairly strong hands, like A-Q+, 2-2+ and big suited connectors. Proceed with caution even with these hands. If the raiser is from middle or late position, you can call a bit wider, with 2-2+, A-J+, A-2s+, K-J+, Q-J and suited connectors. Be careful defending from the blinds. You can easily get carried away and start defending with hands like Q-5s, saying you are only going to continue if you flop well. If it comes Q-8-3 and a lot of chips go in, you can be fairly certain you are beat but will still have a hard time folding.

Re-raise fairly tightly from the big blind. Just calling to see a flop usually doesn’t cost much and you don’t have to worry about chasing anyone out of the hand, as in the small blind. I tend to re-raise from the big blind only with good hands against middle-and late-position raisers, and rarely against early-position raisers. I may re-raise with hands such as 8-8+, A-9+, K-10+ and some suited connectors. I re-raise basically every time with the most premium hands, and I usually call when I have a weaker hand with high implied odds, such as 8-8 and 9-8s. Make sure your range is fairly balanced so your opponents can’t narrow you down to 10-10+ and A-K whenever you re-raise from the big blind. If someone constantly steals your blind, it may be good to re-raise occasionally, just to let him know you will not be run over. You can do this with a very wide range because your profit will be from just winning the blinds pre-flop. This has the added benefit of making your opponents raise your blinds less frequently.

I’ll call with a slightly wider range with a raiser and caller in front of me because I am getting better odds and will usually have relative position on the pre-flop raiser. I call with hands like 2-2+, A-10+, K-J+, Q-10+, J-10 and suited connectors. I will still re-raise with 8-8+, A-9+, K-10+ and some suited connectors.

With limpers in front of me, I tend to raise only my most premium hands, and total junk occasionally. If there are four limpers and the action gets to me, I will raise with 8-8+, A-J+, K-Q and random hands. When you raise over the limpers with junk, your hand doesn’t matter that much, as most of your profit will come from just picking up the blinds. I would rather check and see a flop with a hand like 8-6 because it flops well. It’s better to raise with hands that flop poorly, such as A-3, K-6 and Q-4. Again, be careful about making these plays. Even if you hit the flop, your value is going to come from winning the blinds pre-flop.

If everyone folds around to the small blind, you are now in a powerful position in the big blind because you act last on all betting rounds. Because of this, you should call raises fairly wide and re-raise fairly wide as well. But you should still fold junk hands. If everyone folds to the small blind and he raises, you can re-raise with hands like A-2, K-5, Q-8 and other hands that have reverse implied odds. Also re-raise good hands like 7-7+, A-10+, K-J+ and Q-10+. You should tend to call with suited connectors and small pairs because you will have decent implied odds due to position. Even though you can re-raise with a wide range against the small blind, you should also consider calling with many hands in order to use your position to win the pot on a later street.

Some players in blind-versus-blind confrontations lose their minds and play like maniacs. If you are against one of these players, call more and try to flop a strong hand. Be careful about re-raising him with weak hands; he will probably four-bet you with a wide range, putting you in tough situations.

You should basically be fairly tight and aggressive from the big blind. As your poker skills improve, you can slightly widen the ranges I’ve listed. Widen the ranges even more when antes come into play. If you don’t, you will find yourself getting blinded off. It is basically impossible to profit from the blinds. Wait until you are in the more profitable positions to make most of your plays.

The Squeeze Play

The squeeze play is a fairly profitable move that you can employ when someone raises and is called. Your play is to re-raise, hoping to pick up the pot. The initial raiser often lacks a strong hand, and the caller likely would have re-raised if he held one, which puts you up against an average hand and a fairly weak one.

For example, say a loose player in middle position opens to 3BBs and the next player calls. You have K-7o on the button. This is a decent spot for a re-raise to around 12BBs, hoping to pick up the pot pre-flop.

My re-raise with multiple players in the pot is three times the initial raise plus whatever the callers have put in, which in this case is

9BBs + 3BBs = 12BBs.

The squeeze play works very well when short-stacked. Suppose a player raises and another calls in front of you. You have 25BBs. If you know their ranges are wide, you can go all-in with literally any two cards if you know they will fold often enough. I like to have some sort of hand when I make this play, but realize it is one of the most powerful tools of the short stack.

While this play worked well in the past, it is well known in today’s game, so you can’t squeeze every time you get a chance. In general, you want to squeeze against aggressive opponents that raise with a wide range before the flop. If the initial raiser is tight, squeezing him would be a bad idea, as his raising range is similar to the range with which he’s willing to put in a lot of chips. Folding is the right play in this case.

There are a few ways to defend against the squeeze play. If you raise, someone calls, and a loose aggressive player re-raises, you can four-bet, squeezing the squeezer. Since he knows your range is probably weak, you can four-bet and shut him out of the hand. You can also call with your strong hands and trap him in the pot.

One of my favorite things is to set up a squeezer and punish him. In a large online tournament, we were down to 25 people out of 8,000 that had started. I had around 60BBs and picked up A-A in middle position. A loose player in middle position raised and I just called. I knew that the players in the cutoff and on the button liked to squeeze whenever they had a chance, which is the main reason why I just called. The cutoff re-raised and the initial raiser folded. I went all-in and the squeezer instantly called.

In this spot, a lot of weaker players go all-in with hands like A-x and small pairs because they think they have the best hand but don’t know how to play it. They should actually just fold those hands. My opponent called me with A-J and it came J-4-2-5-J to bust me. If you read the last sentence and thought, “That’s why you don’t slow-play your hand,” you are missing the point. I got all the chips in with 91-percent equity and that’s all that matters. When playing with habitual squeezers on your left, you should be more willing to re-raise pre-flop if someone raises instead of just calling, because you set yourself up to be squeezed by calling. Think ahead and avoid trouble.

Some players never squeeze with weak hands. In general, older players don’t squeeze. I watched a 21-year-old online player in a $5,000 WSOP event raise with 9-9 from middle position, get called, and then get squeezed by a 60-year-old man. The young player instantly went all in with 9-9. The older player thought for around 3 minutes, said, “Well, I guess I’m behind. Maybe it’s a coin flip,” and called with Q-Q, knocking out the young player. While 9-9 is way ahead of a standard online player’s squeezing range, it is crushed by the older player’s range. Because of this, the young player should have folded 9-9 before the flop.

To sum up, look for spots where the raiser is probably loose and attack him relentlessly. Don’t be scared to squeeze, especially if you haven’t done it in a while. If you’re re-raised, keep your cool, figure out everyone’s range and make the most profitable decision.

You do not Have to Raise the Button

Some players, especially young online players, feel obliged to raise the button whenever it is folded to them. This is a big mistake because it makes them predictable. If your opponents know you are going to raise the button every time, they can play nearly optimally against you, as you will usually have a weak hand. If you fold sometimes, they are stuck guessing whether you have a strong hand or are stealing.

One other benefit of folding the button sometimes is that when you raise, you will get a little more credit for a strong hand. Normally when you raise the button, even if you fold your weakest hands, you still prefer to just pick up the blinds. Suppose you can raise 75 percent of hands from the button when the action is folded to you, picking up the blinds each time, or you can raise all the time and win the blinds half the time. Raising the blinds 75 percent of the time will win you more chips. Also, when you’re called and have to play post-flop, you will have a much stronger range of hands when you raise only 75 percent of the time, allowing you to win much more often.

Folding the button with your weakest hands also decreases variance. We talked earlier about how some variance is good but when you can cut out the bad side of it, such as when you are forced to play weak hands, you should.

The final benefit of folding from the button with your weakest hands is that it keeps you out of tricky spots. When you raise the button with 8-2 and the small blind calls, if the flop comes J-8-3, you will find yourself in many ugly situations. You don’t really want to bet and fold to a raise, and many players will check-raise with air on the flop because you have been stealing their blinds so aggressively. You also don’t want to employ pot control because basically every turn card is bad for you. So, you are forced to choose one of two bad options. Tighten up a little from the button. It will save you numerous headaches and a lot of money.

  Chapter 5

Post-Flop Concepts

In this chapter we will be examining various concepts that apply to playing in pots beyond the flop. Many players - even quite strong ones - misunderstand these concepts.

Value Betting

A value bet is made with the hope of being called, in order to extract the maximum value from your opponent’s likely worse hand. Weaker players associate a value bet with a small bet, as they think that is the only bet a weak hand will call. This is totally false. A value bet can be any size, from 1/4 pot to over 3 times the pot.

Your value bet must win 50 percent of the time against your opponent’s calling range to be profitable. In tournaments, because you can’t reload if you go broke, you should tend to avoid spots where you estimate you are good 52 percent of the time, and only value-bet when you are fairly certain you are ahead and can be called. When you value-bet, your opponent must be able to call with hands in his range that you are ahead of. You will constantly be in situations where a bet on the river is bad because your opponent’s calling range consists mostly of hands that beat you.

An example of a fairly standard spot where most players miss value is when you raise something like A-10 from the button and the big blind calls. The flop comes Q-10-3. He checks and you bet. He calls and the turn is a 4. You both check. The river is a 5.