Fighting Against Leverage

"Leverage," as a term applied to poker, describes a wager that has an influence beyond the amount required to call, because there are more betting rounds and more chips that can be wagered. The would-be caller needs to think about how much more might have to be put into the pot before the winner can be determined.

Leverage is discussed in the chapter "Using Leverage" in my book Improve Your Poker, printed in 1997. That chapter begins with the following two sentences: "This chapter will discuss leverage in bluffing. By leverage I mean the way your bet or raise can represent a far larger sum in the mind of the target than was actually wagered." I am bringing this up because one of my correspondents told me leverage is a term coined in the 21st century, and by someone other than me.

Frankly, I am not sure whether or not I am the first writer to use the term leverage. There are several poker terms and ideas that I have popularized, the origin of which I do not recall ("cutoff seat" is another example). The terms may have been borrowed or may have been originated by me; I simply do not know.

I do know where I first encountered the concept of leverage (though I do not think the term itself was used). It was while reading the no-limit hold'em chapter in Doyle Brunson's pioneering work Super/System, written in the late '70s after Doyle had won back-to-back World Series of Poker championships. Doyle described how a raise exerts great pressure because it threatens all of the opponent's chips, not just the amount needed to match the wagered amount.

In this column, I would like to discuss the other side of leverage, in which it is a factor that you must consider when calling a bet or raise. Here is an example: You hold the K Q in the big blind in a $5-$10 no-limit cash game. The under-the-gun person, who is a strong and sometimes tricky player, opens with a raise to $30 (three times the big blind), the button calls, and the small blind calls. You elect to go for the good pot odds and call. The flop comes Q 9 7. You check (I would usually bet in this spot), the preflop raiser bets $100 into this $120 pot, and the other two players fold. You and your opponent have about $1,000 left. What should you do?

The preflop raiser may well have a good hand, making a continuation-bet into three opponents on a fairly dangerous flop. He also could be varying his game with something like J-10 suited. Maybe he has A-K and is making an uncharacteristic move. If this had been a tournament situation and that same wager had been all in by a short stack, with you and one or both of the other preflop callers having stacks of several hundred in chips, a call looks automatic to me. In the scenario I portrayed in a cash game, you have a big problem. Let's discuss it.

I think a call here is weak poker (that is why I would have bet the flop). First, you are out of position. Second, your opponent has shown more strength by betting here than would have been shown by the same wager all in (picture how he would play a pair of jacks in both situations). Third, there are several hands that he is unlikely to hold but could have, so you do not know for sure when he has caught something helpful.

The fourth and deciding factor for me is that you do not have enough strength to stay in the pot if he bets again. A turn bet by him not only will say that you are clearly beat, but also will have the leverage of a possible river bet behind it. Calling a turn bet looks like lunacy to me. So, here's the bottom line. Let's suppose your chances of having the best hand are one out of three. You seem to be getting the right price to call, but that would be extremely misleading math. The actual price is far different, for this reason: A good bit of the time when you hold the best hand, you will not win the pot.

If you are the type of person who would call in the situation described here, I think you have a leak in your game - the leak of ignoring your opponent's leverage when considering whether to call a wager. Calling with hands that cannot cope with any more pressure is failing to look ahead to the next betting round. This does not mean that you should adopt a policy of folding if you do not have the strength to call a second barrel, but you need to view a hand that can call only one barrel with considerable suspicion.

Let us now look at the same layout of cards and betting, but from a different seat position. Let's suppose that the under-the-gun player raised, two people called, and you called from the button with that K Q. The under-the-gun player makes his $100 bet on the same flop, the preflop callers fold, and it is up to you. What should you do? It should be obvious that this is a different situation in certain respects. You still have only a single barrel type of call, but leverage is not a one-way street anymore. Your opponent is out of position and also must consider the possibility of having the best hand and not winning the pot. Furthermore, if the bettor is facing a player like me, who likes to just smooth-call quite often with a good made hand with position, even on a board that has a number of drawing possibilities (as opposed to "raising to find out where I'm at"), he is not going to be a happy camper even with a quality hand such as A-Q. This brings up another aspect of big-bet poker; the caller in position also has leverage. It is now much easier to win with the worst hand when calling.

This column shows that having good position when considering a call helps to reduce the amount of leverage held by the bettor. Good position turns the call into a weapon that can be used on offense, using leverage against the bettor. You can easily see why top no-limit hold'em players, especially cash-game players, love having position on their opponents. They enjoy using leverage, whether betting, raising, or even just calling. The additional amount of chips that can possibly be wagered radically changes the nature of big-bet poker confrontations.

(I will add that the term "big-bet poker" is one that I specifically remember coining!)

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.