In my last column, I described to you the progress of my newest poker student, who was experienced at limit hold'em and interested in taking up no-limit hold'em cash-game play. This is a continuation of that column.
One of the first things we covered is my philosophy of bet sizes. There is a school of thought that says you should always make the same size raise when opening from a certain position. The idea is to make you harder to read. I do not agree with this. Hardly anything I teach about poker involves the word "always."
I use a certain range of opening-bet sizes. Most of the time, I randomly vary my play. Once in a while, I think that a certain bet size suits my hand a little better, so I use it. The range I use is normally three to five times the amount of the big blind. If you are playing in a cheap game, like $1-$2 blinds, the normal opening-bet size may well be five times the big blind, which will get called just as often as three or four times the big blind at $5-$10 blinds or $25-$50 blinds. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
In my last column, I discussed just smooth-calling a flop bet with good one-pair hands. This "keep something in reserve" philosophy has some advantages, and is an especially useful tool when there are players behind you who are deep-stacked.
In one hand my student played, he had limped in from up front with pocket tens. (I prefer calling to raising in a full game.) Two players called behind him and the big blind checked, so four players saw the flop. The board came 5-4-2 with a two-flush, and the big blind bet. My student made a big raise with his overpair, because the bettor did not have a lot of money left. I would not raise here even when heads up, but having two big-stacked players behind you makes it much riskier. Furthermore, that flop is far more dangerous (with players other than the blind) than a flop of something like 6-5-3, because three parts of a wheel means that you have to worry about the often-played hand of a small ace. The two other players in the pot folded, but the small blind reraised all in. The amount of the reraise was not substantial,
so my student called. He got his chips in drawing almost dead, and lost to a straight.
These days, no-limit hold'em players as a group are more aggressive than they were a decade or two ago. While aggression against weakness has its virtues, it also makes the chip pusher more vulnerable to losing substantial amounts of money when a good hand smooth-calls instead of tipping off the situation by raising. Even though the smooth-call gives the opponent a chance to improve, it does not inform him that he may well be going uphill. We know you can fight fire with fire, but what is wrong with fighting it with water sometimes?
In any card game, the "ace of trump" is a powerful card. In poker, we sometimes use this term for the ace of the flush suit. (This applies whenever there are two or more cards of a suit on the board.) If a pot has been raised preflop, having the ace of trump in your hand severely curtails the possibility of an opponent having a flush draw when there is a two-flush on the flop. Here are a couple of hands that my student played in which this concept applied.
My student picked up two red aces in the small blind, playing with $5-$10 blinds. The under-the-gun player called $10 and the next player raised to $40. The field folded around to my student and he made it $100 straight. He has been doing well on sizing his bets, but he had a brain-lock here. I told him that if an opponent outflopped his aces, it was going to cost him at least half of the grand he had in front of him, and there was a good chance of losing all of it. Charging someone only $60 for a decent shot at busting you is bad poker.
At any rate, the flop came 9
4
4
, putting a two-flush on the board. My student fired out a pot-size bet, being concerned about the possible flush draw. (I had told him to bet heavier when there was a flush draw on the board.) I asked him what two hearts the opponent might be holding when he had the ace in his hand. The only plausible way he could have two hearts would be if he held the K
Q
,
and decided to raise the under-the-gun caller.
Without my student having the A
, the opponent is probably around a 10-1 underdog to have a flush draw. Here, the odds are probably about a 100-1 against it. I said, "Loading up and betting the full size of the pot is not necessarily a bad poker play, but doing it in this situation because of the flush draw is faulty reasoning."
The next session he played, this hand came up. He held the A
with a black queen, and opened for $35 from middle position, getting two callers behind him. The flop came J
6
2
, and he checked. The second player also checked, and the last player bet $60, winning without a fight.
I asked my student, "Why didn't you make a continuation-bet on the flop?"
He replied, "I had two opponents and there was a flush draw on the board. This made me a little conservative."
I replied, "I would not criticize you for failing to make a flop continuation-bet into multiple opponents, even though I usually do it into only two players when the flop comes with one big card and two small cards. With a flush draw on the board, increasing the chance of getting unwelcome action, you are entitled to vary your game a little. But here, you had the ace of trump. That changed the situation sufficiently enough to make a continuation-bet mandatory, because you knew that a flush draw being in someone's hand was extremely unlikely."
We have seen how the ace of trump in your hand greatly reduces the chance in a raised pot of your running into a flush draw. It can also give you a chance to represent the flush if it comes, or even to make the nuts when that fourth card of the suit arrives. You should always know the suit of your ace, and be aware that your hand has a better chance to win if a two-flush (or three-flush) comes in your suit. If you have to look back at your hand when another card of that suit hits, you are giving away information.
Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.
