Poker Strategy For The Rest Of Us: Andreas Torbergsen

In an effort to provide valuable tools and tips that are relevant to even the smallest games, Card Player is pleased to bring you Poker Strategy For The Rest Of Us, which will focus on everyday situations that occur against the poker world’s most casual players.

Pro – Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen

Concept – Preflop Three-Betting Ranges and Playing Draws Out of Position in PLO

Andreas Torbergsen, better known as “Skjervoy” to his opponents online is a high-stakes online pot-limit Omaha player that plays and beats the biggest PLO games available on the web. Torbergsen has won millions playing nose-bleed stakes PLO against some of the toughest competition on the planet. He garnered a lot of attention in among the high-stakes rail birds in September of 2010 by winning over $1 million in a 24-hour time span by playing mostly $500-$1,000 PLO.

Torbergsen also puts in time teaching and growing the game. The Norwegian pro produces PLO instructional videos for CardRunners, a training site that he joined in 2010. He has recently been spending a lot of time creating Nutblocker.com, a PLO and mixed-games strategy community that features strategy articles and personal blogs from some of the top poker minds on the internet.

You can find Torbergsen on twitter at @SkjervoyAT or on his facebook page. Torbergsen sat down with Card Player to break down a micro-stakes hand played by one of our readers.

The Hand

Our hero ($29.60) is in the cutoff in a $.10-.20 online six-max pot-limit Omaha game. A player ($68.52), whom our hero describes as a “huge fish,” raises to $.60. Our hero three-bets to $2.10 with AQ104 and is cold-called by the player on the button ($39.91). The button has been playing fairly tight with a 17 percent VPIP (voluntarily puts chips into the pot percentage) and a 13 percent pre-flop raise percentage.

The original preflop raiser calls as well and they see a KQ3 flop three-ways. The original preflop raiser checks and our hero continues with a bet of $4.20. The button calls and the other player folds and the turn is the 9. Our hero bets $12 and the player on the button moves all in for $33.61. Our hero calls and the river is the 7. The button shows QJ105, giving him the nut straight and he and scoops the pot.

The Interview

Steve Schult: Let’s start with preflop. How do you feel about three-betting this hand?

Andreas Torbergsen: The preflop three-bet is debatable. We want to play lots of hands with position on a weak player, but our hand is not exactly the type of hand we want to isolate with. The tight player on the button will probably fold a lot anyway, which gives us less incentive to ‘buy the button’ by three-betting.

AQ104 plays well with position on a weak player, but it doesn’t have a clear preflop equity or postflop playability advantage over hands good enough to call our three-bet. It doesn’t play well against a four-bet from any player, which will sometimes happen. Building a big pot with a marginal hand can also put us in difficult big-pot postflop situations against the deep-stacked player sitting behind us, should he call.

On the other hand, the deeper we are, and the weaker the player we’re isolating, the more speculative hands we can three-bet profitably in position. We should think about how the raiser plays, and whether or not he has any easily exploitable tendencies. He could be folding too much to three-bets preflop, or playing meekly and tightly on the flop after calling them. If he tends to make big mistakes like that in three-bet pots, we can ‘print money’ by three-betting light to isolate him, if the other players let us get away with it.

That is a big if, however, and it’s important that we include all the other players at the table when we make our plan for the hand. We expect them to be aware of the dynamics of the situation. Like us, they should attempt to get involved a lot when the weak player is in the pot. If we expect to often succeed with an isolation three-bet, or otherwise create a postflop advantage by three-betting, this play certainly has merit, but that’s not the only scenario we need to plan for.

Sometimes we will get 4-bet by the raiser or one of the three players behind us. When that happens, our default is to fold because we do poorly against the hands that four-bet. The raiser can certainly have aces, and the probability of a random hand behind us having aces (excluding trips or quads) is 2.50 percent with no other cards seen. When one ace is removed from the deck (we hold the A) the probability drops to 1.25 percent. With one raiser in front of us and three random hands behind us, the probability of getting four-bet by someone’s A-A can be estimated numerically using the Odds Oracle poker simulation software:

• If the preflop raiser opens top 30 percent of hands and all players will four-bet all aces (and only aces), we’ll get four-bet 9.45 percent of the time
• If the preflop raiser opens top 30 percent of hands and all players will four-bet top 5 percent of hands (all aces and some other premium high-card hands), we’ll get four-bet 22.91 percent of the time.

The last calculation was added to illustrate an important point when you’re playing in tough games. If you are three-betting the weak player with a wide range of speculative hands, the players behind you will realize that. Their response will be to widen their four-betting ranges. Against widened (but not super wide) four-betting ranges we’ll face a tough decision quite frequently, where the default is still to fold.

When the four-bet comes and we fold, we sacrifice the postflop value of the hand. Sometimes a three-bet will get called by others and we play a bloated, multi-way pot with a hand that doesn’t have all that many good flops to stack off on. With hands that have few very good flops, but good implied odds when they hit one of those flops, it’s often best to keep the pot small and multi-way preflop. The main component of our game plan is then to delay aggressive action until we have connected well with the flop.

SS: What kind of range would we want to be three-betting a fish with?

AT: In general, we want to isolate a weak player with our very best hands that play well both heads-up and multi-way, and we also want to add many speculative hands that play well heads-up in position, but not multi-way. The most obvious value three-bets are premium aces like AAJ9 where any outcome from a three-bet is fine with us. Premium rundowns like QJ109 also play very well both heads-up and multi-way, and can gain a lot from isolating in position with a three-bet. Regardless of what happens after a three-bet, QJ109 plays fine, including getting four-bet (in which case we’ll call and see a flop).

An example of a more speculative isolation three-bet would be a double-suited and somewhat raggedy rundown like J975. Hands like this perform well heads-up in position in a three-bet pot, because they often flop well enough to continue against a single opponent, and by three-betting we also create some fold equity. But in general they aren’t hands that play well in multi-way pots. The reason is that the best hands we can hope to build postflop with such holdings often aren’t the nuts. This puts us at a clear disadvantage in a family pot.

So with speculative hands with little nut-making potential we tend to play a three-bet-or-fold strategy with several players left to act. We three-bet to isolate when it’s profitable to do so, and otherwise we fold. The more tight and passive the players behind us, the more speculative hands we can isolate with. If we choose our speculative three-betting hands to be of the double suited and coordinated type like J975, they also play pretty well heads-up in four-bet pots against likely aces (especially when we’re deep-stacked), so we are not necessarily setting ourselves up for having to fold, should we get 4-bet.

Finally, the hands we like to flat in this scenario are of the type decent-but-not-great with some nut potential. When we invite multi-way action by flatting, we want hands that can make the nuts, since we can rarely win a big multi-way pot without it. The strongest ‘nutty’ hands (like the AAJ9 and QJ109 mentioned previously) are good to three-bet for value, because they have so many good flops to continue on, also when they don’t hit their very best flops. But there are also hands with nut potential that don’t necessarily gain from building a big pot early, because they don’t have many good flops to continue on, except the very best ones.

A decent suited-ace-with-a-dangler like our 10QA4 falls into that category, as would a single-suited and raggedy pair of kings like KK74. Both hands have some very good flops and a lot of mediocre ones. They therefore play well against many opponents in a singly-raised pot with a game plan of waiting patiently for the best flops and the occasional opportunities to win the pot unimproved. If the raiser plays very weakly, and the players behind us are sufficiently tight, we can also choose to widen our speculative three-betting range by adding hands like this, but our default play with them is to flat and see a flop cheaply. We hope the players behind us fold, but it’s fine if they don’t, as this increases our implied odds when we flop big.

SS: We hit a pretty strong flop for our hand. How much equity do we expect to have against two opponents on this board?

AT: We hit one of our best flops with second pair, the nut flush draw, a gutshot, and a backdoor draw to a wheel straight. This is pretty much a monster in a three-bet pot. Even if we only have second pair made right now, our strong draw would be around 50-50 should we get stacks in heads-up against a range of sets and two pair hands. And there are many weaker hand/draw combinations that our opponents could stack off with as well, some of which we crush.

I will use parts of their stack-off ranges to illustrate the equity we have against various hands we could be up against (ProPokerTools is a free equity calculator that you can use for this):

• 67.32% against AJ109 (nut wrap with a flush draw)
• 52.15% against top pair/top kicker A-K with random side cards
• 50.84% against top-and-bottom two pair K-3 with random side cards
• 50.06% against AKJ9 (top pair/top kicker with a nut gutshot and a flush draw)
• 48.44% against top two pair K-Q with random side cards
• 35.74% against top set K-K with random side cards

The worst case is to get it in against a set, but that will rarely happen. Sets are not very likely to begin with, and we have a queen in our hand (makes Q-Q less likely for someone else). Furthermore, our opponents are unlikely to hold many 3-3-x-x hands, since the preflop raiser opened from early position (even a very weak player has some preflop standards), and the button is a tight player. Against two pair, one pair + draw, and draw-only combinations we do well, sometimes flipping, sometimes getting it in very good.

To estimate how much we stand to gain by betting and stacking off on the flop, we could assign stack-off ranges to our opponents and calculate our average equity for getting all-in against one or both of them. However, the probability of our opponents showing up with various hands on the flop depends on their ranges for flatting the three-bet preflop (for example, neither is likely to hold A-A, since they didn’t four-bet).

To get this right, we would first have to come up with accurate estimates of their three-bet flatting ranges. Since we have a clear-cut stack-off situation with a big nut draw on the flop, we can skip the extra math and use a more qualitative line of reasoning.

Regardless of the stack-off ranges we’re facing, it’s important to realize that because of the dead money in the pot, we don’t need to have strictly > 50 percent equity to stack off profitably heads-up or > 33 percent three-way. Betting also gains from sometimes winning the pot right there.

Since we have a strong draw to the nuts, we would also be very happy to get stacks in three-way, and we would be a clear equity favorite in that case. Which of our outs will win the pot for us in the end does not matter. What matters is that we will have good equity when stacks go in, and we have some fold equity as well.

SS: It seems like an automatic continuation bet given that we are the preflop aggressor and have a strong draw to the nuts. Is this assumption wrong? What do you think of his sizing and would you ever consider checking?

AT: Having concluded that getting stacks in on the flop is a good outcome for us, our plan for the flop is to play aggressively. This way we also maximize our fold equity, which can contribute a lot to the value of the hand. If both players fold or if we get stacks go in on the flop, we are making money and have no further decisions to make. If we get called, we will deal with that situation on the turn.

If we check, it would be to check-raise the button and get stacks in that way, but can we expect him to bet often? And if he does bet, do we gain an advantage over betting ourselves? Probably not because the pot is multi-way and therefore ‘protected’ against bluffs. So we don’t expect the button to bet light. Furthermore, this high-card flop is likely to have connected with our three-betting range. A thinking player will know this and bluff less often than on a low flop like 8d6h4c where we are likely to have missed.

SS: We get called only by the button. What are you starting to put him on when he flats our continuation bet?

AT: His call is consistent with a decent-but-not-great hand that is too strong to fold, but not good enough (at least in his mind) to raise and stack off with. We can mostly discount sets and two pair hands (sets and top two pair would usually raise, and a tight player is unlikely to have many K-3 and Q-3 hands in his range). He could be slow-playing a rare monster hand like top set + flush draw to induce action, but a hand like top pair and a weak draw is much more likely.

SS: The turn card is a brick for us. Do you still continue to bet here? What cards do you continue betting and which cards do you check? If you are checking, are you check-raising, check-calling, or check-folding? Does it matter on his bet sizing?

AT: In practice, my turn and river play would vary between opponents, and I would use my specific reads on the button player to maximize the value of my hand. However, it should be clear that if we are betting this turn, we are semi-bluffing and hoping button will fold some hands incorrectly. We are also not folding to a raise with this many outs. When we are committed in the moment we bet, and we don’t have a perceived bet-fold range in the eyes of our opponent either, we should simply pot-call to maximize fold equity.

If we don’t want to bet, we check and respond to button’s play in the most profitable way. The hand branches out to many different decision points after that, and we will just have to deal with each and every one of them as they come.

As a final note, I would like to say that when you’re playing somewhat uncomfortable situations from out of position, you should keep your overall strategy in mind. It’s important to realize that you won’t automatically get pushed around every time you check and signal weakness. As long as you maintain a balanced checking range with some hands good enough to check-call and check-raise, the button player can not get way out of line by bluffing at every opportunity. He will have to check back some hands as well, and you get to play the river with more information about his range. Then it’s your job to put this information to good use and make the most profitable river decisions you can.

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