Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (61 page)

Weak players often speak of being pot-committed when they have an easy fold. Suppose you raise A
-7
to 2.25BBs from late position out of your 30BB stack and a tight player in the big blind calls. The flop comes J
-7
-2
. Your opponent checks and you bet 4BBs. Your opponent goes all-in for 23BBs more.

At this point the pot is about 38BBs, giving you 1.6-to-1 odds. You have nowhere near 40-percent equity in this hand but weak players make this call all the time. Against a range made up of mostly top pair or better but also 10-10, 9-9 and 8-8, you have a whopping 20-percent equity. If we add the most likely sevens to your opponents range, such as A-7, K-7, 8-7 and 7-6, you still only have 35-percent equity.

So, even though you have middle pair, top kicker, you have an easy fold if you know your opponent will never bluff here with air. Adding just three hands in with one overcard each to our opponent’s range bumps us up to 45-percent equity, making this much closer to a call.

Always do your best to determine your opponent’s range. If you can accurately predict his range of hands, you are left with a fairly simple math problem. From there, poker becomes simple. Call if you are getting a much better price than you need. Fold if you aren’t. It’s that simple.

  Chapter 13

When You Have Between 27 and 15BBs

When your stack sinks below 30 big blinds, you gain a few of the most powerful tools in poker. Every time you enter the pot, your opponents have to be concerned that you have a hand you are willing to go all-in with, which means that if your range is fairly balanced, they are going to have a tough time playing against you. They also have to raise a tighter range because every time they raise, you may go all-in.

While I may appear to advocate tight play when you have between 15 and 27BB, I suggest, as always, that you pay close attention to your table. If your table allows you to steal the blinds constantly, then steal to your heart’s content. If everyone plays loose, then wait for a hand you can happily move all-in with. As long as you pay attention, playing when you have between 15 and 27BB is fairly simple.

Raise-Folding

When you get down to 27 big blinds, you will find people either respect your raises too much or not nearly enough. By now you know that if players are playing tight, you should steal any time you have the opportunity in late position. I tend to raise to around 2.25BBs before the flop if everyone has around 30BBs or less, but I’ll raise to about 2.5BBs if I am the only short stack because I always want my raises to get at least some respect. Once you get this short, it is rather tough to play post-flop because a raise and continuation bet take about 1/3 of your stack.

Even if your table is playing fairly loose, you still need to raise before the flop from time to time. The best positions for this are early, where you have maximum fold equity because opponents assume your range is strong, or late. If there is a fairly tight player in the big blind, you should usually attack him when you have the opportunity.

If players re-raise every time you open with your 20BB stack, you should tighten up and raise mostly hands with which you are willing to four-bet all-in. To add some bluffs to my range, I tend to raise hands like suited connectors that do well post-flop, just in case I’m called instead of re-raised. So, from middle and late position, if I know I’ll be re-raised fairly often, I will only raise hands like 2-2+, A-10+, K-J+ and suited connectors. If I’m re-raised, I will usually go all-in with 5-5+, A-10+ and K-Q, assuming the re-raiser is loose.

Whatever you do, avoid the habit of blindly raising every time you are in late position. Players will quickly pick up on this and take advantage of you. However, attack the weakest, most passive opponents until they fight back.

If you are down to about 15BBs, raising to 2.25BBs pre-flop doesn’t leave you with much of a stack. Because of this, consider just going all-in before the flop from late position with hands that don’t play well post-flop, such as A-6 and 3-3. Shove or fold with a hand like 9
-8
. The only hands you should consider raising to 2.25BBs are those such as A-J, 9-9 and other monsters with which you will be happy getting all-in on most flops. Also, if you raise these strong hands and get pushed on, you have an easy call, whereas you will be getting almost the right odds to call with A-6, causing you to make mistakes. Open-pushing with these weak but decent hands will save you many headaches and won’t cost you much equity in the long run. There will be much more on open-pushing in the next section.

Three-Betting All-In

One of the most important technical skills professional players use constantly is the three-bet all-in. The power behind going all-in over an opponent’s initial raise is that he will usually have to fold a weak hand, assuming you are going all-in for enough chips to have decent fold equity. Obviously you have to pick which players you go all-in on fairly well, or you may be pushing with little or no fold equity.

Going all-in with weak hands works simply because most opponents raise a lot of hands, which isn’t necessarily bad, while folding too many of them to an all-in re-raise.

Consider an extreme example. Assume you are in the big blind with 10,000 chips. The button, whom you know raises 100 percent of the time when it is folded to him, raises to 1,500 chips at 250/500-50. The small blind folds and it is up to you. Assuming you have been fairly tight throughout the tournament so far, you should go all-in with any two cards, especially if you know your opponent will raise wide but call fairly tight.