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January 29 — Sometimes you can go you can go for thin value in a three-bet pot.

We all know that if you want to maximize your win rate in live no-limit holdem you have to be able to bet thinly for value. But this does not just apply to normal single-raised pots. You must be willing to go for thin value in three-bet pots as well.

I had a hand that demonstrated this concept taken from a $5-$10 no-limit game from the Bicycle Casino last week.

The villain in the hand was fairly aggressive and likes to sit deep but he has trouble folding overpairs. In a seven-handed game it got folded to me and I opened to $30 on the button with 10 9, $1,600 effective. The small blind folded and the villain three-bet to $100. I decided to make a pretty optimistic preflop call due to sizing, stack depth and with position. The flop came out J 10 9 giving me bottom two pair. Much to my surprise the villain did not come out and make a continuation bet. This struck me as odd because I would have figured he would bet hands like A-K and A-Q and some pure bluffs. So his check indicated to me some sort of medium strength hand like A-10 or A-J, or an overpair playing carefully. I fully expected him to check call, so I bet $130. He obliged and we saw a 6 turn.

This was not the best card in the deck for me, not because I was scared of the flush, but rather that his calling range would tighten up now that the flush completed. But I still thought that he would call with overpairs with a diamond in them, some overpairs without a diamond and a hand like A-K with a diamond. So after he checked, I fired out $290. He thought about it for about 20 seconds and called.

The river brought a beautiful blank, the 3 and he checked for the third time. Now I had a decision to make. I knew that betting three times in position looked very strong and I wondered for a moment if I would get called by a worse hand. A fairly good player would be hard-pressed to call with just an over pair at the end on this run out, facing this action in a three-bet pot but I knew that this particular player was similar to a lot of other live players in the fact that he likes to play off of the strength of his own hand and not his opponents’ range. I thought he would still call with a hand like A-A, K-K, etc. So with the pot being just over $1,000 I fired $605 for value. My opponent now took more time —about a minute and finally called. I tabled my hand and I was good.

When I discussed his hand on my podcast over at CrushLivePoker.com some of my subscribers asked me what I would have done if the villain had check-raised me on the river. If you have read my Card Player articles before you know that I am a big fan of betting for value and folding to raises, especially on the river. However, I don’t always fold. In this particular example, I would’ve found it very, very difficult to fold because of the action in the hand. There is no way that I would think such an aggressive player would check the flop after three betting from out of position with a flush draw and then continue to check call the turn and check the river when he made it. Taking that line would be pretty bad because most players in my position would be happy to check back the river at showdown. Because he could not depend on me to bet at the end if he did check raise I probably would have called it off thinking that he was turning the A into a bluff.

February 3 — There is a huge difference between all in equity and equity against someone’s range all-in.

Sometimes when we are on a downswing we take a look at the large pots that we recently lost. It is easy for us to identify the spots where we got it in good and failed to win. These “bad beat” hands increase our variance and can definitely decrease our win rate but they are not the most telling sign of whether or not you are playing well. What we should actually be more interested in is trying to figure out our equity versus our opponents range in all-in pots. This can be a difficult thing to evaluate in a live setting where you can’t go back and look at hand histories.

There was a hand a few weeks ago from the Commerce Casino $5-$10 no-limit game that demonstrated this concept. I started the hand with $1,600 and the villain who was in the small blind had me covered. One player open limped from the cutoff and I raised to $45 with A Q in position. The small blind, a mid-50s aggressive pro, three-bet me to $245. Even though this was a large three-bet I decided to call because I knew that the villain was capable of re-raising light and I felt like my hand did well against his range of re-stealing.

The flop came out 8 7 6 giving me the nut-flush draw with two overs. The small blind fired a huge continuation bet out of $500 and even though this bet size left little chance of him folding, my draw was so large that shoving, even with just a hint of fold equity, had to be the right play. So I took about 15 seconds and moved all-in. When the small blind did not snap call me I knew I had made the right play. He ended up tanking for about five minutes asking me if I had a set of eights and finally called. The turn fell the 2 and the river brought the A. I tabled my hand and said, “ace”. He then proudly tabled A K and said, “bigger ace.”

Now if we calculate the all in equity between A K of diamonds and A Q on this flop we see that A K is 48 percent. With the pot odds that he was given this is clearly the right call, right? Well, let’s take a look at his equity versus my range.

Let’s say I sometimes call preflop with a range of 6-6 – 8-8, one 10-9 suited, one 6-5 suited and pocket nines. Let’s also include A-K suited, A-Q suited, A-J suited, K-Q suited and J-10 suited. If we run Poker Stove on that range vs his A K we find that his equity is only 18 percent. The fact that I ended up with the bottom of my range does not mean that his call was correct. In fact, given the pot odds it was clearly wrong.

The people that will make a call in this spot and lose will curse their fortune claiming that they run bad and got it in good. But, here as you can see, it doesn’t necessarily matter what their opponent’s holding actually was, it matters if your play was correct against their range. ♠

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.