Capture the Flag: Ryan Laplante

Ryan “Protential” Laplante is a 23-year-old American living in Las Vegas. He has been playing professionally for more than three years, and during that time has recorded two WSOP final tables.

He has played more than 25,000 tournaments and has more than $1.5 million in tournament earnings, but has honed his poker skills at the cash-game tables. Laplante believes ring games are a great way to gain the ability to play postflop.

Card Player had a chance to speak with the CardRunners coach about some basic cash game strategy.

Brian Pempus: Can you talk about the importance of position in cash games?

Ryan Laplante: Position and poker go hand in hand. Poker, simply put, is a game of information. The more information you have over the course of a hand, the larger your edge can become. In cash games, position matters more so than in any other game type, due to the likelihood of there being important turn and river decisions. The extra information you have in these situations (and the more you can control the action) will enable you to more often make plays that will maximize your equity.

BP: Can you talk about the pros and cons of limping in with strong hands, such as A-Q, A-J and 8-8, from early position?

RL: Open limping is nearly always a large mistake in any game type. There are very few situations in which open limping is correct, and none in which open limping in early position is correct. There are many situations in which over limping is correct, however, it is rarely correct to over limp with a fairly strong hand range. I personally would almost never limp with a top 11 percent hand range: 7-7 plus, K-J plus, A-10 plus. You want to over limp hands that have good implied odds and few reverse implied odds. In a multiway pot, I’d rather have a hand like A-6 suited, compared to 9-8 suited, due to being able to make a bigger flush, have a better kicker on trips, etcetera, against other players. However, versus two or one other opponents, I’d much rather have a hand like 9-8 suited, due to there being less risk of reverse implied odds. In multiway limped pots, relative hand strength goes down immensely. I feel as though the mistakes most recreational players make revolve around misjudging their relative hand strength with more players involved.

BP: Let’s go back to the not limping (being the original limper) with top 11 percent hands. Can you talk about why limping in preflop with 7-7, for example, is bad? If you are under the gun (UTG), for example, why is raising better?

RL: If you limp a certain set of hands, you will allow players to very easily range you. If you balance this by occasionally limping the top of your range, you will be costing yourself value by not raising those hands preflop (9-9 plus, A-Q plus, for example). The other downside to limping is that the hand will far more likely end up going multiway, when there are many hands people like to open limp with (like 8-7 suited, for example) in which it would far better be played as a raise and only versus one or two opponents and not five. The final downside to limping is that it makes your raising range look a lot stronger, and thus will make it far more difficult to get value from those hands. Thus, if you want to open limp, don’t. Either fold or raise.

BP: What about open limping with small pairs?

RL: If you only limp small pairs, it will become obvious quickly that you do this, and you run into many of the same problems as above, although I don’t mind having a hand like 6-6 versus five other players. In very soft live cash games you can justify open limping some hands occasionally in early position. However, in nearly all other situations open limping is a big mistake in early position. There are situations, stack depths, player types, in which open limping in late position can be best. However, they are very rare and hard to spot without lots of experience.

BP: Sounds like the concept of set mining is pretty complex and a lot of people over value it. Is that fair to say?

RL: Set mining is a fairly complex topic, and most people misjudge the proper odds/situation required in order to set mine profitably. Open limping with clear intention to set mine is usually a mistake; over limping with intention to set mine is occasionally a mistake. The factors you need to consider when deciding to set mine are: What direct odds are we getting? How often will we see the flop? How deep are we effective? How bad are my opponents, thus how easy will it be to extract max value? What can we expect to make on average when we do flop a set? If we do flop a set, do we have the type of pocket pair that can be over-setted easily? In other words, do we have reverse implied odds?

BP: It seems like most, if not all, recreational players don’t consider these reversed implied odds at all. So, you are saying that even though being set-over-setted is rare, it is something worth considering preflop when the stacks are deep?

RL: Yes, especially versus better opponents. The better a player is the harder it will be to extract value from them when they don’t have a fairly strong hand themselves, in multiway pots especially. Thus, if you end up getting into a large pot with a small pocket pair when you flop a set versus a good player, a decent percent of their range will end up being larger sets.

BP: Can we talk about bet sizing preflop? What considerations do you make from different positions, number of people that have limped in, etcetera?

RL: How to size your opening raise has multiple factors as well. There isn’t really a situation in poker in which you don’t have many factors to consider, except for maybe calling an all-in with A-A. The first three questions are related. How are the players expected to react to your sizing? Will your sizing based on your range be exploited or not? How many limpers are there? What position you are in? How deep effective are most of the players? What hand do we have and what are we trying to accomplish with it? To give a good example: In your average live $1-$2 no-limit hold’em game, my usual early position opening size is usually 5-7 big blinds, however I will make my sizing much larger with the top of my range, 10-10 plus, A-Q suited plus, due to the fact that the players will usually disregard the change in my sizing and thus I can make more with my strong hands by going larger.

BP: What kind of range would you need to have to put in a raise from the button in a live $1-$2 game after there were a handful of limpers? And what kind of sizing would be best here, if you did elect to raise?

RL: Let’s say there were five limpers, and we could reasonably expect to get to 2-3 handed if we made a raise to $25. In this situation, I’d raise hands like: 8-7 offsuit, 9-8 offsuit, 10-9 offsuit, J-10 offsuit, Q-J offsuit, K-J plus, 10-10 plus, A-J plus, and similar style hands. I would be raising hands that play well in position heads up or three-way versus wide ranges, but that don’t play well multiway, and pure value hands. The sizing that would be best would depend on how we thought each opponent would react to our sizing and what our goal was with it. Generally my sizing would be between $20 and $30.

BP: I feel that some $1-$2 players get in trouble on the flop in these spots, since the pot has become relatively large and they may have a hand like 8-7 offsuit and whiff completely. Can you talk about continuation betting (c-bet) considerations in this specific type of scenario?

RL: Whether to c-bet or not, and what size to make it depends on board texture, villain type, villain ranges, our image, and stack depth. The main issue most recreational players run into is that they usually don’t know what factors to consider in each situation, and if they do know the factors of a hand, they don’t understand how each factor changes the situation and to what degree. Poker is a game of logic, strategy, math, and information. If you don’t understand the logic behind a situation, the math behind a situation, and don’t know how to analyze the information of a situation, you are going to have a difficult time making correct decisions. Most professionals understand the above concepts and have studied extensively in order to better analyze each hand as it occurs.

BP: Do you think there is a strategic component to acting super quickly in cash games?

RL: I think versus very good players there can be a positive side to acting in certain manners, and trying to use fake timing tells to control action or get reactions. But, for the most part, that it isn’t really relevant and you shouldn’t try to use that kind of tactic to get an advantage. It is usually best to act in a very well controlled manner and just focus on giving out few tells yourself when playing hands, and trying your best to pay attention to the other players. Picking up reads on recreational players will be far more helpful than spending similar effort on trying to prevent your own tells. ♠