Cultivating Your Edges At No-Limit Hold’em — Part II

As we discussed in part I, all serious no-limit hold’em players who play 15 plus hours per week should spend a good percentage of their time studying the game to continually raise their level of skill.

A great place to start is the inspection of how well you utilize your edges at the poker table. Below are some well-known and documented edges that successful poker players cultivate:

• Skill advantage (Knowing you can outplay the villain overall)
A. Math and highest EV bet lines
B. Hand reading

• Image (Having a killer winning/lucky image must be taken into account as it is a potent weapon)

• Position (Having position is a tremendous weapon to hold)

• Initiative (Important because the player with initiative is the ONLY player who can win without a hand)

• Card advantage (Having strong premium hands or playing PP/SC only when highly profitable to do so)

Last column we discussed skill advantage. Let’s look at the remaining four here.

Image

A player’s image is vital for controlling the table and producing the look of a big winner. Being lucky or running hot both produce good images. When a hero wins big, other players defer and get out of the way. Instead of scheming against the hero, they leave him alone and this dynamic allows a player to control the table. The hero’s bluffs are not called often nor will they attempt many bluffs. It should be easy to see why cultivating such an image is highly invaluable, even if the image is a lie.

Many years ago at the Stardust Casino, Cissy Rousso-Bottoms used image creation to her advantage in the $10-$20 limit hold’em game. She often bought 2-3 racks of chips and added them randomly to her stack, giving the impression as though she never lost. She spoke as if she won every day and “appeared” to be winning in life. She always talked about running good and being lucky, constantly reminding players of how much she had won. If a player complained they couldn’t make a flush, it was because she was getting all of their flushes. Players began referring to her as if she were she was a real live “witch” as nobody wanted to believe that a woman could play and win that much and be a mere mortal like the rest of them. Keep this in mind when whining about results at the table. Being miserable around other poker players empowers them, while being confident and seemingly “lucky” will burst their ego’s helping you then gain mental control over villains.

The harder you work at all of the non-strategy areas of poker such as image, seating, game selection, etcetera, the more successful your game will be and will set you farther and farther apart from the average player.

Position

Position is well known for its power in no-Limit hold’em for obvious reasons such as being last to act on each betting street. The positional advantage is fairly transparent and easy to see when playing, yet rarely do I see average players push the positional edge to great lengths. Therefore, I urge you to find and put to use as many ways possible to utilize position as an edge within your game.

One effective way to push the advantage of position is to combine it with initiative. In the next section entitled “Initiative”, we look at how to overcome Card Advantage with the combination of Skill, Position and Initiative.

Initiative

Initiative is another backbone of edge that superb players use to its maximum potential. Players with initiative (the person who raises and will continuation bet on the flop/turn/river) do not need a hand to win. Players with initiative win simply by betting while other villains must either already have a made hand or be forced to bluff-raise in order to win. Lower limit players are not adept or even comfortable bluff raising and are overcome time and time again by the aggressive player’s initiative.

Would you ever consider three-betting K-J offsuit versus an average TAG (tight aggressive player) who open raises late middle position? Most poker books say that a hand like K-J offsuit is a trouble hand because it’s dominated. The truth is domination is only valid if you are weak and passively calling (playing fit or fold); Domination is a myth if you use initiative correctly. Let’s explore why I might make such a statement with an example.)

Example of Initiative/Position/Skill overcoming Card Advantage

2-5 NL 150 Big Blinds effective

Routine TAG villain opens late MP to $20, fold to Hero in CO who has K J

Hero three-bets to $60.

Many times we fold out A-10, A-J etcetera, which is a bolstering win for us but this time let’s give villain a hand toward the upper end of range such as A Q

What does the average TAG do? They either fold or call and usually call.

With a little post flop skill we will:

Win when both miss

Win big when we cooler the villain

Win when villain only flops a piece (second pair) and we effectively determine this and bluff villain off of the best hand

Lose very little when we determine villain flops top pair aces or queens.

Lose big only when we’re coolered

Overall, you’ll crush the villain’s A-Q with a trash hand such as K-J offsuit. This type of play is very difficult to defend against. Fortunately the average lower limit no-limit player is not adept at this.

Card Advantage

I placed Card Advantage last because unless you have A-A or K-K, you will have to play poker well even though you have a Card Advantage within the hand (AA and KK play so automatically so many times).

When skills like hand reading are utilized, you’re able to determine when you actually have Card Advantage, allowing you to play your holdings much better than those guessing their equity. Card Advantage is almost always a relative term since it is rare to have the nuts and thus hand reading comes into play in a very big way. The harder you pursue your hand reading skills, the better you’ll be able to determine when to back off or thin value bet effectively.

Studying intently regarding the preferred environment for starting hands as well as their equity versus various villain ranges is another way for a player to increase his own Card Advantage. Remember that top shelf play at NL requires an in depth knowledge of “relative strength” values of hands, rather than absolute values.

Conclusion

This article was written to generate a spark of enthusiasm within players who are looking for ways to expand their skill at NL. Exploring every edge that we may find should be our primary goal in our pursuit of study. Superb players earn optimal winrates by continually pushing their villains outside of their normal comfort zone, thus creating mistakes to be made by the villain. This is how we push otherwise stable solid players to spew off 100BB with 7-7 or A-8 suited, which average players can only dream about doing.

Work to become the master of your game driving forward relentlessly. Will Rogers said “Even if you are on the right, if you just sit there you will get run over”. Don’t let that be you! Take charge of your poker game and enjoy the benefits that come with it. ♠

Matt Glantz, Ambassador to Parx Poker Room (just outside Philadelphia, PA), is serving an integral role in the development of the fastest growing poker room on the East Coast. Matt has shown a consistent passion for growing the game of poker and has demonstrated high-stakes versatility, becoming the World Series’ most consistent performer in big money mixed-game tournaments. Since 2008, he has made four WSOP final tables in mixed game events with buy-ins of $10,000 to $50,000 and is considered one of the top mixed-game cash game players. For more strategy and updates from the tournament trail, check out www.mattglantzpoker.com