Cheap No-Limit Hold'em Cash Games

I am sure the normal progression of a poker player is to work one’s way up to larger and larger size games. I have done the reverse lately. Until this year, I had little playing experience in playing stakes of $1-$2 blinds. I have some experience at $5 to go games, but nearly all of my playing experience has been at games of $10 to-go up to $50 to go. Unfortunately, in my area of Michigan (the Great Lakes Bay Area), $1-$2 blind games are the only size game available in the charity gaming poker rooms. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

I can tell you that there is a large difference between using blinds of $1-$2 and even using blinds of $2-$5, let alone the bigger stakes games. I am still making adjustments to my game to do better in the cheap games. Let’s talk about some of those differences.

The first thing to look at are the players themselves. The $1-$2 blind no-limit players come in a great many varieties. There are plenty of loose ones who play a third of the hands they are dealt; some actually play more than half. There are a number of tight ones who can be relied on to have a good hand when they are in the pot. Only a few of them are good enough to play mostly good hands and then put a lot of pressure on their opponents. What I do not see these days are rookie players who have only recently taken up the game of hold’em and have no idea of hand values. Those days have gone.

The tempo of play in a $1-$2 blinds game can also vary a lot. Sometimes you will get two or three players who are best described as “action junkies,” playing many hands and raising nearly every time they are in. Other days, the game becomes a limp-fest, with few opening raises and more than half the players calling the blind. However, as soon as they see it is going to be a pot with a lot of players in it, they will be happy to stay in for a raise. I think this is the most attractive type of game to be in, where you get charged a penny to draw at the nuts when they have a good hand and they pay a pound to improve when you are the one with a good hand.

Nice as this type of game is, it requires a certain amount of adjustment. Having half a dozen players seeing the flop with you greatly increases the chance of someone beating whatever hand you held to raise the pot. It may be tempting to pop it whenever you have a decent hand like an A-Q or A-K, because they call raises with some real garbage, but I do not like to raise with big unsuited cards when out of position. And I value a suited big-card hand a lot more than an unsuited one, because these players are in there with a lot of hands that are suited crap-cards. If they make a flush, you have a serious chance to double up when making a bigger flush. I vary the size of my raises quite a bit, and also the hand types used to pop it. However, I am happy to have a lot of callers when I am suited, so seldom make an extra-large raise on a hand where I can make an ace-high flush.

Because the betting most of the time is less aggressive than in the bigger stakes games, it is questionable whether slow playing is an effective strategy in a $1-$2 blinds game. Yet I see these players time and time again prefer to check and hope the other players will bet their hand for them. Some players automatically check whenever they improve their hand. In fact, a check out of turn usually indicates a player may be under some tension when this happens, and it is dangerous to think this is the sign of a weak hand that you can bully. One of the worst poker habits is to always play your big hands the same way — especially if that way is to be “sporting” and give the opponents a free chance to hit a card that could cost you a bundle.

Nearly all these players play their big hands the same way. If you are the preflop raiser, they check and call on the flop, then check-raise the turn. If you ever win a pot with one pair when there is a reasonable amount of money still left to wager after the betting has gone this way, you may get the game’s sheriff award, but need to draw out to win. Slow playing the nuts will also occur in a lot of other situations. If the stacks are big, one will sometimes see a player make a seemingly out of the blue large overbet of the pot size, maybe even all-in. Although you will, once in a while, encounter such a bet where the opponent is bluffing, much more often, it is a player who has been doing a bit of playing possum in the early betting and is hoping someone will misread what the out-of-line bet means. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the bettor is bluffing because the board allows so many drawing possibilities that a player with a big hand would certainly bet or raise to protect it. There are plenty of players so used to slow playing that they run all sorts of risks that they will be outdrawn. If you pay them off when they reveal their true colors, that is rewarding idiocy.

We have a few players in the poker room who love to bet their entire stack of $300 preflop when the field has limped around to their big blind, regardless of the merit of their hand. I think their guiding principle is if you want to have a chance to get unstuck in the shortest possible length of time, just be willing to take the worst of it. I have called with hands like A-K suited, A-Q offsuit, two jacks, and so forth. These hands have an overlay against the kind of crapola that my opponents bet all their money on preflop. (Of course, these hands are not attractive for getting all-in against the typical Card Player reader.) The most fearsome hand anyone has held against me is 2-2, where the chance of my winning is around even and there is already a smidgen of dead money in the pot. Unfortunately, my opponents seem to have the ESP to know the outcome beforehand, as to the best of my memory, I have the dismal record of winning about one out of about half a dozen all-ins.

Perhaps the biggest problem players encounter in cheap games is adjusting to the hand values when five or more people take the flop with you. There is no hand you can hold preflop that can feel safe with after the flop with this large a crowd. Bet your hand after the flop, but do not marry it. ♠

Bob Ciaffone’s new poker book, No-limit Holdem Poker, is now available. This is Bob’s fifth book on poker strategy. It can be ordered from Bob for $25 by emailing him at [email protected]. Free shipping in the lower 48 states to Card Player readers. All books autographed. Bob Ciaffone is available for poker lessons.