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June 19 ­— You don’t always need to know how you are going to react ahead of time if your opponent raises you

If you are familiar with the training material over on my site CrushLivePoker.com you know that I think that there are a lot of old poker adages that are flat out wrong when it comes to no-limit. Having to call the river when the board does not change, only betting if your hand is strong enough to call a raise are just a few pieces of bad advice that I am still amazed that I hear spouted out from time to time by poker trainers, players, and authors. I have done a lot of live commentary over the years especially at the WSOP and another one of these “bad adages” I often hear other pros say is that you should know what you are going to do beforehand if your opponent raises you in a given situation. I think that this is basically hogwash and I will explain why.

During the WSOP Monster Stack this summer, I got involved in a tough spot about seven levels into the tournament. In any other $1,500 tourney this would not be all that early on, but in the Monster Stack with such a slow structure only about 20 percent of the field had been knocked out. An older gentlemen had limped in at 200-400 blinds with a 50 ante with about 20,000 effective under the gun (UTG) and I made it 1,200 to go on the button with A Q. A very loose aggressive player in the big blind (BB) called and the limper also called. The board came out Q 10 3. The blind checked and the limper lead out at the pot for 2,000. For a number of reasons, including the fact that I did not want to give the guy in the blind good odds to peel, and the pot size was approaching half of my stack, plus I thought the limper would call with worse queens and flush draws, I decided to raise to 5,000. The limper was a gentleman in his late 40s to early 50s and I could tell by the way that he physically handled his chips that he was not the most experienced player (later I found that he was actually quite new to poker). I have been playing professionally for nearly ten years and have picked up on certain betting patterns and actions of novice players. I would say that when a player like this leads out at the pot, that A-Q is the best hand here about 95 percent of the time. Now that does not mean that raising is always the correct play, as we do not want to get all hands weaker than our hands to fold and only better to continue on. It would be a disaster for him to fold 19 of 20 times and only continue one of 20 with a better hand. But I just did not think that this was the case in this situation especially with my rather small raise sizing. Why do I think that I am good here so often? It is just very rare that players like this lead out with a monster hand like a set of treys or top two pair. Also when you look at the distribution of suits on the board and what I held in my hand there is only one combination of Q-10 suited and three combinations of set of threes. Sets of queens and tens were unlikely as those hands most likely raise before the flop. So most likely the guy was leading with the nut-flush draw, a combo draw or a weaker queen.

Much to my surprise, however after the blind folded, the gentlemen thought for about 20 seconds and moved all-in! Now I definitely was not expecting that. Did I know what to do immediately? Definitely not. I went into the tank for a long time thinking about all of the possibilities and combinations. Some would say that I “should have known my decision before I made my raise”. But this of course is rubbish because I am going to be reraised so infrequently why would I waste the mental energy to think one step ahead about a situation that is so unlikely to happen?

You only have a finite amount of memory in your brain — kind of like a computer — and I truly feel that you need to properly ration it. There are going to be many times when you raise someone, especially on later streets, that when you get raised back your opponents’ range is going to be extremely polarized which means that most of the time they are going to only call or fold. You don’t have to think about what you are going to do in advance to counter the very few times that they actually do come back over the top.

June 25 — Suited connectors are pretty hands, but from the blinds they usually lead to losing situations

We have all learned that holdings like 8 7 are supposedly better starting hands than K 10 in no-limit hold’em. And in a deep-stack cash game usually this line of thinking is correct. Suited connectors have a lot of value because of the implied odds nature of their holdings and the fact that you can win big over a preflop raiser’s strong starting hand. You can also drive powerful draws and put a lot of pressure on your opponents through semibluffing if you have proper stack depth. Usually it is very difficult to win a big pot with an offsuit broadway type hand versus another type of strong starting hand. However, what people do not realize is that most of the time when you flop well with a suited connector, you flop a draw not a made hand, like trips or two pair. And draws are very difficult to play out of position.

This is where a lot of beginning and intermediate players get into trouble. They see a hand like 8 7 in the big blind (BB) and think that they easily can call a raise because they are closing the action preflop and they are getting “odds to call” because they are already in for some portion of the raise. Even though this thinking is partially true it really does not make up for the positional disadvantage. Especially in smaller games, where fold equity is very limited against overpairs and top pair, and also where the stacks are restricted and thus short, driving these types of draws through strong semibluff lines can be just throwing money away. Thus you are forced to just fall into a check/call shell and it can sometimes become obvious what you have making it less likely that you will be paid off when you hit your draw. I know I am playing bad when I flop some sort of draw and realize that I have to play the hand rather passively because of my position or the effective stacks. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.