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April 4 — You can really pin down the strength of someone’s hand through their bet sizing, especially if they lead somewhat weak after making an aggressive play.

It is very important to recognize the bet sizing of your opponents, as many times it will give away the strength of their hand. Many recreational players that have hands that are strong but can get drawn out on tend to size their bets a lot larger because they do not want the pain of a bad beat. So when you notice a player make an aggressive action at the pot, then follow up that action with a sizing that does not indicate a ton of strength, many times they are uncomfortable with their holding. The exception to this, of course, is when they deem their hand to be unbeatable now, like if they have made a full house.

Let’s take a look at a hand where I think I did not make the proper play recognizing strength followed by weak sizing—leading to lost value. I was in early position at the Commerce Casino’s $5-$10 $1,500 cap no-limit hold’em game in Los Angeles, CA. The game was fairly good, and the villain in the hand was a rather weak recreational player. I picked up two black kings, and raised it to $35. It folded around to the villain, who had about the same stack that I did, $1,700, and he called. The flop came out 9 6 6. The villain checked, and I decided to bet kind of small, $45, possibly to induce him to make a move with a draw or overplay some weaker made hand. He took a look at the board, went back to his chips, and quickly made it $155. Again, this could very easily have been a play with a flush draw or some other hand that he wanted to protect. It is, of course, possible that he may have flopped trips, but I thought I could figure that out by what he did on later streets, so I decided to call. You have to remember that when playing a deeper stack in no-limit hold’em, you do not want to make a play that folds out all weaker hands and only allows better to continue on.

The turn brought the Q, a total brick, unless he had the queen-high flush draw. Much to my surprise, the villain now bet out only $160, a fairly weak sizing in comparison to the pot and his previous street’s bet. Usually, when someone follows up with a bet of the same size as their previous bet they are not all that strong. This is really where I think I messed the hand up. I was thinking that I wanted to “protect” my stack against a six and didn’t want to get all weaker hands to fold, I decided to call again. The reason why I thought that this play was a mistake was the fact that I think if I had sized a raise to, say $350, draws and other weaker hands might have called. His sizing was not at all consistent with him having trip 6s now, unless the queen filled him up, which was super unlikely. The only reason to call instead of raise would be if I thought he would continue to bluff the river with spades, or if I thought I could make my hand look like a spade draw myself and get an extra street of value at the end.

The river came of the 2, and the big blind checked. I thought about it for a bit, and finally bet $320. My opponent went into the tank for a few minutes, postured, and then folded. His actions made me think that he may have had a weak hand hand like pocket sevens that he was protecting, but figured that I had him beat after I had called his two bets earlier. Again, there are some reasons why calling the turn here might be superior to raising, but when we think it is unlikely that our opponent has trip sixes because of his bet sizing and we do not get the extra street of value on the river, we have definitely lost money.

April 12 — Just because you raise with a combo draw does not mean that you will necessarily get the right price to call off your stack vs your opponents’ range—especially in multi-way pots.

Playing a draw correctly is oftentimes one of the most misunderstood concepts in no-limit hold’em. Sometimes players fall into a check-calling shell when they will not get paid off, and others play their draws far too aggressively when they have no fold equity.

Nowadays, even the newest players to the game understand that having a hand with at least 12 outs usually contains decent equity versus one pair. That means that if you have even a hint of fold equity, playing a big draw fast and strong can be profitable. However, just because you raise a combo draw does not mean that you have to call off the rest of your stack, especially when a pot involves multiple players.

One of the worst situations that you can find yourself in when playing hold’em is when you get involved in a spot versus someone with a made hand and someone who has a draw that dominates your own. That is a recipe for having extremely low equity almost to the point where you can be drawing dead. I saw the following hand happen at the Hollywood Park Casino last week in Los Angeles.

The game was $5-$10 uncapped no-limit hold’em and the stacks were very deep. This game usually plays bigger than a game with a $1,000 or $1,500 stack, but people do not necessarily know how to play any better deeper. In this particular hand, everyone had about $2,500 and the player under the gun raised to $45. Four people in the field called, including the big blind. The flop came out 10 9 2, and the preflop raiser made a continuation bet of $150. At this point, I started to pay close attention because I knew the preflop raiser must have had something that he perceived to be strong, most likely an overpair, but at minimum a high flush draw. The next player to act to his immediate left raised to $450. At this time, I am going to reveal that his hand was 8 7, for the bottom end of an open-ended straight flush draw. Much to my amazement, the next player moved all-in for $2,400 and the player behind him snap shoved his $2,500 stack into the middle. Then, the action got back to the preflop raiser, who tanked for a long time. It looked like he was trying to evaluate the size of the pot. Adding some numbers aloud softly, he finally called. The player who started with the flop aggression instantly put the rest of his $2,500 stack in, and the hands were turned over. The preflop raiser had A J, the player to the left of the under the gun player had K Q, and the player closing the action had a set of nines.

Now many of you probably think that this should be an insta-call from the straight flush draw getting over 3-1 on their money, right? But to take an important theory from Pot-Limit Omaha when you are in a multi-way pot and you suspect that someone has a made hand and also think that someone else can be drawing better than you you can be in huge trouble. In this case, the 8 7 hand had only about 13 percent equity in the hand. The player with K Q is in even worse shape than that. Because he is also up against a dominating draw, but is not open-ended his equity is less than 10 percent.

Now, obviously you cannot know exactly what your opponents hold but you have to take this type of thing into consideration when you get heat coming back over the top of a raise you make with a combo draw—especially when you specifically put someone on a set and another player on a better draw. ♠

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.