Overview
This post will be about beating low-stakes no limit hold’em,
both generally and specific to the games I play (0.5/1 home games, 1/3 cardroom
games).
Why would I share advice, if it’s any good? While it could
be self-defeating – making my opponents better players if they follow it, I
think the benefits are myriad:
- Sharpening my own thoughts and theories to make me a better player
- Developing follow-up threads to share thoughts amongst readers
- Be remembered / recognized as someone that helped even one person increase their profits, would mean a lot to me.
I’m sharing this as free content – but if you take some part
of the advice below and feel that you have profited from it, please let me
know, and (seriously) Venmo me a token amount as thanks!
If you’re like most recreational poker players, you like to
play for fun – whether cash games or tournaments. Cash game players enjoy the
camaraderie of a regular home game or of chatting with familiar faces at their
local cardroom. Tournament players like the added component of a structured
event, limiting their exposure to the buyin amount and building up tension as
the blinds go up and relative stack sizes compress.
So, if you could continue with your hobby and get better at
it with minimal investment, why would you not do so? If you were a tennis or
golf player and I gave you a single piece of advice that would increase your
win rate by 10%, would you take it? This is what I’m going to try to do here.
Why me?
First, let’s get one thing out of the way. What qualifies me
to dispense advice to fellow players? Am I really better (or as good as you) in
this crazy game? For starters, I’m not a coach and I don’t have life changing
money wins in my past (my Hendon mob entry for published tournament winnings will
show virtually zero). I guess my best answer is that over the past year or so,
I’ve made some changes in my game that I believe have yielded very good
results. Sharing some of those insights may benefit you, and they may also help
you beat me! I say, bring it on, because when I see you improving then I’ll
have to adjust and improve some more!!
Common (Unforced) Errors
Let’s look at a few of the most common and (borrowing from
tennis) “unforced” errors I see at every level. As you go up in stakes (say to
2/5 or 5/10 cash games, larger tournament buyins), these errors although still
existent, diminish somewhat. All of the examples below relate to a full-ring
table with 9 players, 200 big blinds deep ($200 at 0.5/1 with no rake, similar
to our home games).
Open limping
You are the first to act (under the gun). You look down at a
hand like Q9 offsuit or J7 suited and decide to limp (call the blind amount).
Your reasoning is that your hand doesn’t feel strong enough to raise, but you would
like to see a flop with it and potentially stack a better starting hand that has
raised you preflop.
The problem with this thought process is that although you
will occasionally flop well, over any decent sample size you will lose money
with this action. If your table is passive and everyone limps after you then
sure, you’ve just won the lottery – you’ll get to see a flop for almost free.
But if there is at least one raise after you, you will now have to call another
2-3 blinds just to see a flop which you will most likely have to check/fold. That’s
called lighting money on fire.
Some of the more advanced players have developed what they
call a “balanced open limping range” including monsters like AA-JJ that will
limp-reraise preflop. One problem with this strategy is that when players in
position see a limp-reraise they understand what it means. Another is that when
you removed monsters from your open-raising range of hands, that weakens it
unnecessarily, making it hard to balance multiple ranges.
Over-limping
You are in 5th position from the blinds, one to
the right of the button (aka cutoff). There have been 3 limps to you and you
look down at A3 offsuit or Q7 suited. You proceed to just call, hoping to see a
flop.
This is less of an error than limping first to act, because
it is less likely you will face raises from the remaining positions – button,
small blind and big blind. However, you are still investing in a pot where if
you flop top pair and face action, you will most often be dominated. If you are
really good at knowing “where you are” and folding such hands (like when the
board is Q-T-4-3 and you are raised on the turn by a tight player), then you will
minimize your losses. However, the reason that the preflop charts advocate folding
these hands is again – over a large sample size they are negative EV (expected
value).
A footnote to this pattern is that over-limping the button
with speculative hands is not (usually) a large error, especially when the
blinds don’t often raise. You get to see a pot in position with a hand that may
make the nuts (like 65 suited) and that didn’t want to bloat it preflop.
Opening and calling too many hands
This is an error common to most players, closely related to
the limping errors. You get bored folding and want to see flops (as a smart man
said: “The hand only starts on the flop”). You are playing more hands than “theoretically
correct” and inevitably, over time, lose money as a result. Take a look at this
App to determine which hands you can open at which stack sizes and positions : https://app.floptimal.com/
Examples at 100BB cash games, 8 players:
- AT offsuit is mostly a fold in first position
- JT offsuit is a fold up to 4th position
- 22 is a fold up to 5th position
Varying open bet sizings
You are in middle position (say 3rd from the blinds),
and looking down at 77 or AK suited, decide to open bet 6 big blinds. While your
“standard” open bet sizing is 3 big blinds, you decide to make it bigger here,
to discourage calls and allow you to pick up the pot without (or with less)
resistance.
The problem with this strategy is that it is unbalanced.
Your opponents quickly learn that there is a portion of holdings you want to “protect”
more than another, and will adapt accordingly (bonus: what are the correct
adaptations here?).
When I expressed this line of thought to a friend, he
responded that he likes to “mix things up” to confuse opponents and doesn’t necessarily
bunch one category of hands into a larger bet sizing. While this seems to make
sense on the surface, to me this rationale doesn’t really add up. It would seem
that the best way to “confuse opponents” would be to keep the bet sizings
identical with both strong and speculative holdings.
There is an argument to be made for varying open bet sizings
based on position. So, in early position I will open smaller (say, 2-2.5 big
blinds) and in later position will open a bit larger (2.5-3 blinds). But it
should never be a function of my hole cards. Why smaller in early position?
Because it is the harder position to play post-flop and we have less incentive
to bloat the pot preflop.
Incorrect sizing adaptations
Another common error I see, is not adapting the open bet
sizing appropriately to prior action. Two examples come to mind:
A. Two players in early position
have limped. In middle position, you look down at AKo and raise to your
standard, 3 big blind sizing.
B. The first player to act has
limped and second player has raised to 5 big blinds. In late position, you look
down at JJ and raise to 12 big blinds.
In both cases, you have failed to adjust your raise size to
prior actions; in the AKo case, you’ll want to raise to your normal sizing plus
the number of limps (e.g. 3+2). Some pros advocate going even larger, say
adding 2 big blinds for each limper to something like 7 BB.
In the JJ case, someone has opened to 5 BB over a limper.
That already indicates a strong holding. In fact, the product I train with (PokerSnowie)
will fold JJ in that spot!!
But, given we are not playing against an AI bot but rather
against a human who will be unbalanced with his/her raises, I will most often
want to 3bet this hand in order to either take it down now or get heads-up with
them with a top 3% hand (JJ). I will raise to something like 3X the original
raise plus limp, 16 BB. The extra 4 BB gives opponents worse odds to call with
hands like KQo, ATo that will be doing not too badly against our JJ should they
just call. Should opponent then 4Bet, in our games we will know (most likely)
that they either have JJ dominated with AA-QQ or are flipping with AK and can
get away from our hand. By the way, in “PokerSnowie land”, hands like KQo and
ATo are never raising to 5BB second to act and that helps explain the JJ fold.
Post-flop: Donk betting
The action that to me most marks an opponent as a “fish” is frequently
donk-betting flops. Example: you limped in early position with QT offsuit. Button
raised to 3.5 BB and you called. The flop is Q73 rainbow. You lead out for 5 BB.
Case 1: button folds. Case 2: button reraises to 18 BB.
Outcome: In both cases you have torched money.
In Case 1, when you check then button will often Cbet because
a Q high board favors his range. You can then just-call and decide how to
proceed on future streets, based on the board runout and opponent actions. While
your QT is quite literally a bluff catcher in this spot, it will still be
profitable to call down on many boards. However, when you lead out and opponent
has whiffed the flop (say, holding A5 suited), you have just let them off the
hook. You lose any cBet that they would have made, plus any follow-up betting that
you could have picked bluffs from on turn or river.
In Case 2, you have bet into a strong range with a middle
strength holding and have been reraised. You can’t continue and have to fold a
decent hand that could have called one or two “normal” bets.
When smart opponents see what you are doing, they will put
you into a lot of Case 2 spots, even with bluffs and you may find yourself
facing an all-in bet on the river with absolutely no idea what to do, all
because of that silly donk bet.
Caveat: there are boards favoring the preflop caller
in early position, and donk-betting is sometimes warranted on them. For
example, a 654 board greatly favors the callers’ range and he can donk lead
there with hands like sets, two-pairs, gutshots, combo draws etc. This is a bit
more of an advanced topic and the subject of “solver study” to determine which
hands fit best into donk leading ranges.
Caveat 2: When you call a raise in position, it checks to you on the flop and you bet, that is not "donk betting". The preflop raiser, by not continuation betting, has indicated that the board does not favor their hand and/or range, and now betting in position by you is natural. I try not to take this concept too far, because the preflop raiser may simply be trapping the other players with a monster or overpair that s/he will re-raise over any bet. See next paragraph on cBetting too frequently.
Post-flop: cBetting too frequently
This is one element of my game that when improved, changed
my results dramatically. My early theoretical poker study, taught me that when
I am the preflop aggressor, I should almost always cBet the flop. This, regardless
of stack sizes, number of opponents in the pot, board texture etc. The logic behind
that advice was simple: when I raise preflop and get called, me and my
opponents will most often not make pairs or better on the flop. When I cBet, I
am denying them the opportunity to continue on these missed flops and will be
printing money. In theoretical terms this is called equity denial.
If you are a fan of 2000’s era poker shows like Poker After
Dark and the old-school tournament series, you’ll see this pattern in action a
lot. Aggression (and counter-aggression) seemed to be the driving passion of
most players and viewers loved to watch Phil Ivey putting opponents to the test
with hands like 52o that whiffed the board.
As GTO solvers and related technologies became popular, it
became clear that post-flop play has to adapt to all of the elements : stack-to-pot
ratios, board texture (card rankings and dynamism). In fact, multi-player poker
isn’t fully solved and the AI example I can extract from PokerSnowie’s Scenarios
tool are mere approximations – relying on millions of hands played against
itself.
This is a long-winded way of saying that before betting a
flop, take a look at the board and the number of players in the hand. The worse
the board for your range and / or the more number of players in the hand, the
less likely you should be to cBet.
There’s another side benefit to this approach: when you are
out of position (usually early position) post-flop, you want to depress the
number of cBets as a natural function of your position. And that opens the door
for highly profitable check-raises by you.
Example: sitting at the cardroom yesterday playing 1-3
with a $300 max bet limit, I held AA in early position. I opened to $10 preflop
and got 3 callers. The flop came Q77 and I checked. A player in late position,
playing a stack of about $150, bet $50. I put him all in, he called and lost
(mucked his hand on the river). If I had cBet this flop, I would have won $140 less.
