The Key To Small-Stakes No-Limit Success

It’s a little presumptuous to call anything the “key” to a game as complex as no-limit hold’em, but I don’t think I’ve overstepped here, because the concept I’m covering in this and a series of future articles is, truly, the key to small-stakes no-limit success.
It’s board texture.

It’s a concept with an unsexy name, but the difference between amateur players who tread water at $2-$5 and those who go onto professional-level play is an understanding of board texture.

In any gambling game, whether you make money or not depends on two things. First, it depends on the odds you receive for the bets you make. If you bet $10, it makes a huge difference whether you will receive $10 if you win or $30 or $50. Second, it depends on how frequently you will win. Winning 50 percent of the time is better than 30 or 10 percent.

The reason board texture is key is because in small-stakes no-limit hold’em, it’s the dominant factor in determining the second variable—how frequently you win. Knowing very little about your opponents, except that they are sitting in a $2-$5 game along with you, you can look at the texture of the board and make reliable estimates about how frequently your bets will win. It’s hard to overstate how powerful this can be.

Small stakes live players generally approach the game with a relatively simple heuristic. They look at their hands and mentally assign each hand a value. For most players, this process isn’t explicit. They aren’t saying to themselves, “I’ve got a top pair of queens with a king kicker. That’s a $273 hand.” Nevertheless, these players will behave consistently as if this is what they’re doing.

For example, if you bet $100, and they have a pair of queens with a king kicker, they will call. If you bet $600 and they have the same hand, they will fold. Their implied valuation for the hand is somewhere between $100 and $600.

Now let’s apply the same concept in a different way. Each of your opponents will have two hand thresholds that apply at nearly every decision point. First, they have the hands that are so good, they will never fold them no matter how much you bet. Second, they have the hands that are so bad, they will always fold them no matter how little you bet.

For example, say the final board is K J 3 10 8. Any hand with the A and another diamond is the nuts, so obviously these hands are all above the, “not folding it no matter what,” threshold. For most players in most situations, queen-high, ten-high, and nine-high flushes would also be above this threshold.

Once you get to small flushes, you might reach the first point where some players are sometimes willing to fold. Say a player has 4 3 on this board. He bets $300 on the river in a $2-$5 game, and you raise him $1,000 more. Some players will call, but some will fold.

Obviously this threshold is stack size dependent. With only $200 behind instead of $1,000, you probably can’t expect to get a fold.

The details of this are beyond the scope of this article. The main point is that for every player, given the remaining stack size and board texture, you can conceive of a threshold of hands, above which your opponents will not fold, and below which they will consider folding to an all-in bet.

That’s the first threshold. The second threshold is hands that are so weak your opponents will fold no matter how little you bet.

On the same K J 3 10 8 board, a hand like A 4 might qualify for most players. Unimproved ace-high looks really weak on this board, and most players wouldn’t call $5 with it—possibly even in a $50 or $100 pot.

These thresholds themselves are not a problem—theoretically they should exist for every player at every point in the game.

The problem is that small stakes players tend to place these thresholds for themselves in the wrong places—sometimes wildly so. When the thresholds are in the wrong places, you can make profitable bets. You can get people to call all-in bets they shouldn’t.

More often in the games I play, you can get people to make bad fold after bad fold after bad fold.

Here’s an example. Say it’s a $2-$5 game with $500 stacks. Three players limp, the small blind completes, and you check the big blind.

The flop comes 7 2 2. You bet $10 on the flop, and one player calls. There’s $45 in the pot.

The turn is the 8. You check, and your opponent checks.

The river is the Q. You bet $10, and your opponent folds.

Notice that I didn’t say what hand you held in the big blind, because it really doesn’t matter. What matters here are the bet and pot sizes, and the threshold concept.

On the flop you bet $10 into $25. It’s likely this is a good bet no matter what you hold. You’re giving yourself 2.5-to-1 odds to win immediately, so if your opponents all fold just 29 percent of the time, you show an instant profit.

But in most games it’s probably optimistic to hope everyone folds quite that often. But they’ll all fold some percentage of the time—maybe 15 or 20 percent. To judge the bet, you must add the value of these pots to two other values:

1. The value of hitting your hand on the turn and river.

2. The value of winning the pot on a future street with a bluff.

With this sort of board texture—paired low with a low third card—against typical $2-$5 fields, these three components add up to a positive expectation almost every time.

The turn comes low, and you check to see what your opponent does. If he has one of the stronger possible hands, he’ll likely bet here. If he’s got one of his weaker hands, he probably should bet as well, but many $2-$5 players will check it back, giving you the all-clear to make a ridiculously profitable river bluff.

On the river you bet $10 to win $45, so you have to win only 19 percent of the time to make the bet pay. You will win easily that often, because for many players, even hands as strong as ace-high will fall below your opponent’s calling threshold. This is a case where the player is putting that threshold in the wrong place. On loose, disjointed board textures like this with very small action, ace-high (and even king-high and possibly worse) should be worth a call. Yet many $2-$5 players will erroneously fold—and do so without a second thought, preserving the play for use in many more limped pots to come.

The key is the board texture. When it’s 7-2-2-8-Q, it’s relatively hard to beat ace-high. Your profit lies within the difference between ace-high’s perceived and actual strength.
You can read more about board textures in my new book, The Course, and you can stay tuned for articles in upcoming issues where I will expand on these ideas. ♠

Ed’s newest book, The Course: Serious Hold ‘Em Strategy For Smart Players is available now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You can also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed at the training site redchippoker.com.