On Getting Stacked

One of the most disappointing events in any no-limit hold'em game is getting stacked. Oftentimes, with the monetary loss also comes a sense of embarrassment and self-doubt. "Did I do it wrong? Should I have approached the hand completely differently?" Every decision gets scrutinized.

I want to discuss a hand submitted to me by one of my regular readers. It was an online 25¢-50¢ no-limit game. My reader had a $22 stack, or 44 big blinds.

He raised to $1.75 from under the gun with the Q Q. The button reraised to $6. The blinds folded, and my reader called.

The flop came 5 4 3. Both players checked.

The turn was the 3. My reader bet the pot, $12.75, with his queens. His opponent raised enough to put my reader all in, and he called.

The other player had pocket aces, the river didn't help, and my reader got stacked.

Here was the question he asked when he submitted the hand:

"Was all of this inevitable, or just another instance of my poor play? Hey, go ahead and kick me, I can take it. In fact, if I played as poorly as I feel, I welcome and need the kicking."

My thoughts about the hand play are simple, but I have more to say about some of the issues beneath the surface.

He starts the hand with 44 big blinds. With that stack size, against the vast majority of online six-max players, I'm happy to play pocket queens for stacks preflop if given the chance. So if I had played the hand, there would have been much less to it. I would raise, the other guy would reraise, and I would shove all in. Naturally, I would then get called and lose.

It's the reraiser's range. Let's say you know that your opponent will reraise only with pocket jacks or better, or A-K. If you shove, he'll call with any of those hands. Pocket queens is about a 52.5-47.5 underdog against that range. So, given the dead money already in the pot (the $1.75 raise, the reraiser's $1.75 call, and the blinds), even if the reraiser's range is that tight, it's at least a break-even play to shove with pocket queens.

In practice, online six-max players tend to reraise significantly more hands than just those super-premium hands. If you catch your opponent with a weaker hand, sometimes he'll fold and sometimes he'll pay off your shove. With a stack of only 44 big blinds, I'd expect to see a shove paid off sometimes by hands like A-10, 8-8, and so forth. So, I'd just shove it for value.

My reader was destined to go broke in this situation. He took a more circuitous route than I would have taken, but either way, the result was determined by the cards and the starting stack sizes.

Getting stacked can feel like a very personal failure. You put your money in with hand X, your opponent puts his money in with X+1, and you lose. It feels terrible, and it makes you doubt yourself.

But let's step back a bit. As you play, you'll have a range of hand strengths. Sometimes you'll flop the nuts. Sometimes you'll flop nothing. Most of the time, you'll be in between. Some of the in-between hands (typically the better ones) will be good enough that you'll commit yourself and your stack to them. In other words, you think that your hand compares favorably to the range of hands with which your opponent will get it in. (You can get committed correctly even if you don't compare favorably, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm discussing here.)

So, think about that range of hands with which you're willing to put your money in. It starts with the nuts and then it goes down to some hand at the bottom. What hand is that? It's a hand with which, when you get the money in, you win a fair bit, but you lose a fair bit, too. That's what makes it the borderline hand; it's a hand that will lose a fair amount, but will win just enough more to make it profitable. If the hand weren't like that, if it won far more than it lost, it wouldn't be the borderline hand. There'd be some other weaker hand at the border.

Furthermore, borderline hands tend to be a lot more common than near-nut hands. You're going to make top pair more often than you're going to flop a set. You're going to be dealt queens, jacks, tens, or A-K a lot more often than you're going to get pocket aces. Getting all in on the borderline might be the best play, but it's far from a sure thing. You're going to lose often.

How you lose, as long as your assumptions about your opponent's range are correct, is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you got your money in with pocket queens against aces and lost, or with queens against jacks and a jack hit the river. Likewise, when you win, it doesn't matter if you got queens in against A-K and won the flip, or got it in against aces and flopped a queen. A win is a win, a loss is a loss, and if, after you account for all the possibilities, the play makes money, usually it's the right play.

Getting stacked is a common part of no-limit hold'em. If you rarely get stacked, you're not getting your money in often enough with those borderline hands. You don't want to get stacked, naturally, but merely getting stacked isn't an obvious indication of failure.

Getting all the money in with pocket queens in this hand was a perfectly reasonable play. It just didn't work out this time. And beyond that, getting stacked made my reader feel terrible. It's the feeling terrible aspect that concerns me. I think every no-limit player needs to make his peace with getting stacked before he can play the aggressive style that really gets the money in the long run.

Winning at no-limit isn't a gimme. If you put in the study and the playing hours, and give yourself plenty of license to fail at first, you'll eventually master the small-stakes games and start winning at a good clip. But you have to give yourself a license to fail. Getting stacked is just part of the experience.

Ed is a featured coach at StoxPoker.com. Also check out his online poker advice column, NotedPokerAuthority.com. He has authored four books on poker, most recently, Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume 1.