Choosing a Target

The first step in choosing your value target is to think about what you want Villain to have, which generally would be hands just slightly weaker than yours. In this case, that would be two-pair, overpairs, and then top pair with a good kicker, in that order.

Then you have to think about how these hands fit into Villain’s range. I actually want to back up a moment and pretend we’re going through this process before checking the flop, because that’s when you should do it. So for the moment I’m going to assume we don’t yet have the information about Villain’s flop action – we’ll return to that later.

None of the two-pair combos is at all likely given Villain’s pre-flop raise, but the overpairs as well as AQ and KQ are squarely in her range. They’re going to play more or less the same way, so at least for the moment we can think of all of them collectively as the value target.

Finally, we have to make sure that it actually matters what we do when Villain has these hands. In this case I think it clearly does – we aren’t guaranteed to stack her even on a safe runout, and there are a lot of ways in which the board could get scary, so we definitely can’t treat it as an automatic stacking if she has AA. If we held 99 here, we could more safely say that if she has 55 there’s a good chance we’ll stack her no matter what and we might choose to dig deeper than that next-weakest hand for our value target. But with 55, we need to put some thought into the best way to get her stack.

It’s worth mentioning that we’ve so far ignored the Button in this analysis. That’s because he’s much less likely to have a hand that can pay us off than is the pre-flop raiser. If, later in the hand, he shows interest in the pot, we might have to reassess, but for now we should focus on getting paid by the player most likely to have a hand that can pay us.

Value Planning

Now that we have our target, we have to decide how to maximize value against those hands. Piefarmer does a great job of walking through the logic:

Hero’s hand is worth 3 or more bets if the board texture does not change. Villain has the initiative, so we need to decide if we should take it away. Snce our target has a good one pair hand on a draw heavy board, front loading value should be considered. However, villain may not be a good hand reader. Slowplaying is not ideal here because we have a value target and our hand may lose value if the draws hit.

If Villain has one strong pair, then we want to shovel money into the pot as quickly as possible. What’s the best way to do that?

Several of you had the interesting suggestion of taking the lead and betting the flop. If you believe a bet will induce a raise over which you can shove, then I like that play. However, if Villain just calls, which seems very possible, then you’re stuck needing to bet the turn and river to get stacks in, and by the time you get to the river Villain probably won’t feel nearly as good about her overpair as she does now.

If you’re confident she’ll bet, which I’m confident she will if she has the hands we want her to have, then check-raising and shoving the turn enables you to get the money in sooner, which is a good thing. If you’re really lucky, she may even shove over your raise, enabling you to get it in on the flop.

Bet Sizing

Although we’ve established a tentative value target and value plan, it’s good to reassess whenever you get new information. So what can we glean from Villain’s bet sizing? TaddisvonBaddis takes it for weakness:

IMO these types of players, when playing AA/KK or AQ here would bet larger to “protect their hand” and “charge the draws”. Even if they aren’t even thinking to that extent and are merely concerned with their own hand regardless of board texture, this is not a bet size that screams AA or KK or AQ to me. Rather, it looks like a continuation bet with AK/AJ or JJ/TT/88 type hands.

notCIA, however, has just the opposite interpretation:

My first thought was a check raise would look so strong to her and then I realized how small her c-bet was, as if she’s inviting someone to come along or even pop it. I’d say AA, KK, QQ, 99, AQ, KQs from her possible pre-flop range, also fit her flop bet, and will often at least call (of course, hero is dominated by QQ, 99) a check raise from the hero who originally limped pre-flop.

And Duggs dismisses it entirely:

I dont take too much out of the sizing because scared amateurs typically dont accurately estimate the size of the pot and this probably looks like a standard bet size to her. The fact she cbet only serves to weight her range away from air slightly imo. since she is more likely to give up with air than she is too slow play value hands.

I’m not completely agnostic on this point – in fact I’m inclined to agree with Taddis – but there’s certainly some ambiguity. And given that we can’t be sure, it’s worth thinking about what we have to gain in each case. On this point, I agree with notCia that, “If her c-bet was from weakness, hero is not going to get anything more from her in any case.”

There’s no sense in slowplaying against her weak range because it will have difficulty improving to something second-best to pay you off. If she has AK, one or more of her pair cards will probably also put three hearts out there. If she has JJ or TT, she can improve only by turning a set or an open-ended straight draw, one of which is of course disastrous for you and the other hardly a bonanza. So even if you think she’s a little more likely to be weak than strong, it still makes sense to proceed as though she were strong simply because the potential payoff if you’re right is so much higher.

I opted for a raise that would enable me to shove the turn without overbetting the pot. This way even if the turn is a scary card and she folds, at least I’d get a bigger flop bet into the pot. There’s a case to be made for check-raising smaller and then overbet shoving the turn, but it results in you winning less if she folds the turn. And I’m not a fan of a very small check-raise followed by small turn and river bets, because our goal is to get the money into the pot before the river.

Results

I raised to 900, and she folded. If you have a good value plan, then don’t assume that failure to win a big pot with a big hand indicates a mistake on your part. It’s just bad luck that Villain didn’t have the right part of her range this time.

But not I! As usual, I loaded my bag with my own food to limit my enslavement to the Atlantis’ establishments. I don’t mind going to an expensive restaurant occasionally when the food and company are both good, but I’m not looking to get gouged on every meal. This time I brought five just-add-hot-water rice bowls, peanut butter, jelly, bread, two boxes of granola, coffee (which is actually available free in the rooms, I just wanted better coffee), my new Aeropress, plastic utensils, two boxes of granola bars, and several other snacks.

To save space in the bag, I took the bags of granola out of their boxes before packing them. Somehow one managed to split open in my bag, so there was granola all over everything, but cleaning that up was still less of a hassle than trying to find a quick and decent meal in this place at any price. Miklos went to a grocery store yesterday and brought back some milk that we’re now storing in our ice bucket (can’t risk displacing anything in the mini bar since they use those sensors that charge you automatically).

Of course that cut my cereal supplies in half, but thankfully PokerStars is hosting a series of seminars that include free breakfast! Yesterday morning Vanessa Selbst and Barry Greenstein talked about learning mixed games, and today Shaun Deeb and Jason Mercier explained the basics of Open-Faced Chinese Poker. The presenters only get half an hour, so there’s not a lot of depth, but it was interesting to hear a long-time veteran of the game like Barry talk about how he survived so long as a pro and why he thought being able to play many games well was important. The food wasn’t bad either.

After yesterday’s seminar I stopped by the tournament room to wish well to Miklos and a few others playing today. The first guy besides Miklos to arrive at his table was enough for me to say that his table was already better than mine, and they just kept coming. That was all based on stereotyping, but Miklos has since confirmed that it is indeed a very good table, so I was pretty jealous of that. He finished Day 1 with a stack just shy of average and as of now is still in the hunt on Day 2.

On the plus side, I got to spend the better part of the last two days outdoors. The first thing I did was lie on the beach and listen to the vendors harass the tourists: “Hello honey. Want hair braids? Jewelry? Be a real Bahama Mama?”

“Jet ski! Are you ready?”

“Real Cuban cigars! Smoke them now or later.”

I must have had a good don’t-fuck-with-me face, because none of the vendors approached me. I did, however, overhear a woman falling hook, line, and sinker for a story about a very popular catamaran tour. Tickets were $60, and though it was sold out for today, she could put down a $10-per-ticket deposit to reserve a seat for tomorrow’s tour. It occurred to me that perhaps I should point out the foolhardiness of handing $20 to a stranger on the beach in exchange for this supposed reservation, but then I thought about how I would feel if someone walked over to my poker table and told a fishy opponent to fold to my value bet.

Time to go check out the cash games…

Particularly in big-bet games like no-limit hold‘em and pot-limit Omaha, failing to build the pot and missing out on a bet are potentially very large costs to slowplaying. If your opponent would have been willing to call three bets with an inferior hand, but you check the flop and then bet the turn and river, you have not only cost yourself a bet, you have cost yourself the largest bet….

An often overlooked advantage of slowplaying is that it helps to balance your ranges and protect weaker hands that you would check in similar spots. If your opponent knows that you are capable of checking strong hands, he will probably bluff and value bet you less, making it easier for you to show down marginal hands cheaply. If he doesn’t make this adaptation, then you’ll win more money with your slowplayed hands when your opponent stubbornly bluffs into them with weak hands that would have folded had you bet.

As always, I’m eager to hear what you think, so please leave comments to let me know!

For those who have difficulty seeing suits, they’re not terribly relevant here. Hero’s hand is suited but doesn’t even have a backdoor on the flop, and there’s no flush draw possible on the flop but a second spade comes on the turn.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 400/800 Blinds 80 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t37804)
UTG (t23094)
UTG+1 (t55662)
MP1 (t53809)
MP2 (t3215)
CO (t24644)
Button (t37332)
Hero (SB) (t23870)

Hero’s M: 12.97

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, 5
6 folds, Hero bets t2400, BB calls t1600

Flop: (t5440) 6, K, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets t2880, BB calls t2880

Turn: (t11200) K (2 players)

What’s your plan on the turn, and what’s your plan for how to proceed depending on how your opponent responds? Please post your thoughts in the comments section below.

As usual, I’ll leave this post up all week and then give you results and my thoughts on Friday.

A: Very good question. As with many tough decisions, this one is easier if you think in terms of not just whether or not to continuation bet with the cards you currently hold but what your plan will be for the entire hand. How you would play other hands in the same spot is also an important consideration.

Let’s start by thinking about JT. Two-pair is a strong hand, even on a flop like this one where it’s nowhere near the nuts. Depending on your opponent and how the board runs out, I can certainly envision scenarios where you’d be looking to bet three times for value.  That’s a reason to bet now, because you can’t bet three streets if you don’t bet the flop.

Of course, there are lots of turn cards that will greatly reduce the value of your hand. I’m thinking especially for an A, K, Q, 9 or spade. That might sound like a reason to check and wait for a safe turn before building the pot. However, these cards are bad not just because they potentially give your opponent a better hand but also because they make the board scarier for hands you are beating. AJ will almost certainly call a bet on the flop, but it may fold if the turn is a spade. The fact that board could get worse for you is a reason to bet now, before that happens. So my default play is to bet JT on this flop, even though it is in some sense a medium-strength hand.

With As Js, on the other hand, I like a check. Granted you have a lot of equity with the pair + flush draw, but I see two important considerations:

1. You ought to continuation bet almost all of your flush draws on this board. Thus, when you do check behind, spades become excellent bluffing cards for your opponent. Flush draws that also have some showdown value, which in this case is really only pair + flush draw, are the most obvious ones to check. This isn’t nearly enough to alleviate the problem of exposure to bluffs on flush card turns, but it helps.

2. Part of the reason As Js is a good candidate for (1) is that, although you have a lot of equity, betting doesn’t dramatically affect that equity. In other words, you don’t cause hands with a lot of equity to fold, nor do you cause hands with very poor equity to call, particularly not across multiple streets (worse pair + draw combos being the only exception). This by itself isn’t a reason to check, but it is a reason why you aren’t losing terribly much if you choose to include this hand in your checking range for the purpose of (1).

This is a step in the right direction, but it’s actually really difficult to balance both your betting and checking ranges. You simply don’t have enough big hands to distribute across both ranges. In Easy Game, Andrew Seidman actually advocates giving up on this goal entirely and continuation betting everything. In my opinion this is an extreme response to a problem that few opponents are good enough to exploit, but it’s an interesting idea that may have more relevance against really tough competition.

If you’re interested in learning more about this kind of “value planning” and the process by which you decide which streets to bet and why, there’s still space available in next week’s Maximizing Value seminar.

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

Balance is one of the most misunderstood concepts in tournament poker. Many players believe that playing in a balanced way matters only when dealing with players they encounter on a regular basis. In a tournament setting, where they expect to play a few hours at most with a given opponent, they see no reason to worry about balancing their ranges.

This logic gets it backwards. Balance matters more when playing against unknown opponents with unknown tendencies. It is the best way to play when you don’t know what to expect. After examining what exactly balanced play means, this article will consider situations in which it is and is not useful.

Hopefully this article helps to clarify a frequent point of misunderstanding. Please let me know what you think!

Being “underrepresented” or “too weak” are not bad things in and of themselves. And before acting on feelings like these, you should articulate exactly how they could end up costing money. In other words, what would your opponent need to do to take advantage of this “mistake” that you are considering?

I’m always curious to know what you think, so please read the full article and leave me a comment!

Recently a friend of mine and I were batting around a question about the pros.

Essentially it came down to this:
“Do pros grinding online make more money from value bets, or from bluffs?”

I don’t want to go any further into our analysis, but I was wondering what you think.

In one sense, the answer is easy: value bets make more money than bluffs. Strong hands make more money than weak ones. It’s pretty rare that I win a guy’s whole stack on a bluff, but I do it all the time with value bets.

The real answer, though, is that your value never comes solely from one or the other. Here’s a simple demonstration:

You hold As Ks on a Qs Ts 8h 4d 2s board. There is $100 in the pot, and $100 left in the effective stacks. You shove, and your opponent calls 50% of the time. So, half the time you win $100, and half the time you win $200, for a final EV of $150.

Somehow, you realize that your opponent is only calling 50% of the time. So, you decide to start shoving 9h 7h as a bluff. Half the time you lose $100, and half the time you lose $100. Break-even play, right?

Except that your opponent catches you in the bluff, and starts calling 75% of the time. Now your EV is $175 when you shove As Ks.

But did that extra EV come from the bluff or the value bet? In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. I would argue that no bet has value in a vacuum. Even your whole range in a given spot can’t really have an EV, since it is dependent on what has happened earlier in the hand and what may happen later in the hand (in the example above, there was $100 already in the pot, which may have gotten there semi-bluffing on earlier streets, but it’s being accounted as EV from a bet now).

Value is a function of your entire strategy. Everything you do, everything you have done, everything you could do and might do and will do in the future. This is why we had so much difficulty trying to enumerate all the potential sources of value in a bet.

$5/$10 NLHE, $1100 effective stacks. Action folds to a decent TAG regular in the SB, he opens to $30, I make it $90 with AJo, he makes it $200, I call. Flop is AJ4 rainbow. He bets about $200, I call. Turn is an off-suit 6 7. He checks, I check. River is a 9, he checks, I shove something like $650 into the $800 pot, and he calls with A6s.

There are two major disadvantages to slowplaying that I think I can pretty well avoid in this situation:

1. Losing the Pot. Giving a free card risks improving your opponent to a better hand or letting a scare card fall that enables your opponent to bluff you out of the pot.

2. Losing Additional Bets. When your opponent has a second-best hand that can pay off multiple bets, slow-playing can cost you one or more bets. In big bet games, this is especially bad since the pot size grows geometrically. In other words, the bet that you miss is usually a lot bigger than the bet that you get.

These two risks are somewhat in tension with each other. On the one hand, it is safer to slowplay in a small pot, since if you do accidentally let your opponent draw to a better hand for free, at least you haven’t cost yourself a large pot. On the other hand, a small pot usually means a lot of money left in the effective stacks, and slowplaying may prevent you from building the pot in a way that will enable you to take your opponent’s entire stack.

In practice, negotiating this tension means estimating how often Villain will have  a hand that can stand up to heavy pressure right away, how often a free card will cost you the pot ‘(and possibly more bets as well), how often a free card will improve Villain to a second-best hand that can pay you off, how often your slowplay will induce a bluff from a hand that would have folded, how often your slowplay will induce a call or value bet from a hand that would have folded, and even how slowplaying this hand will protect your range in the future. In other words, you have to play poker.

In the hand above, the pot was large and I was in position, so there was  no risk of not getting the money in by the river.  Whether I shove the turn or check the turn and call or shove the river, all the money gets in. There were also very few draws possible, so while Villain could make a very unlikely three-of-a-kind, a free card was more likely to give him something like a worse two pair. The only way his two pair could beat mine would be with AK or AQ, and since those hands aren’t folding the turn anyway, the result is the same whether I slowplay or not.

The biggest risk of slowplaying here is that checking the turn and betting the river actually looks stronger than just betting the turn. When I bet the turn, my hand looks either like a float that is now bluffing or a monster hand. When I check the turn and bet the river, a bluff looks a lot less likely (since I probably would have bet the turn), so it’s more likely that I have showdown value. That means I either flopped a monster, flopped a weak made hand that improved, or am turning a weak made hand into a bluff. There’s not much reason for the latter, so I think the river bet should actually be read as quite strong.

I don’t think Villain’s call on the river is a good one, and I didn’t take this line hoping to get called light on the river. Rather, I thought I might induce bluffs or even value bets from hands that would fold to a turn bet. But hey, this works too.

It’s a tournament, and blinds are 100/200. Hero raises to 475 UTG with KK, and good loose aggressive regular calls out of the SB. The flop comes Qd 4s 9d. SB checks, Hero bets 625, Villain calls.

The turn is the 4d, pairing the board and putting three diamonds out.  Both players check. (I don’t think it matters much, because the turn decision isn’t the important thing here, but Hero has the Kd.)

The river is the 4h, giving Hero Kings full of Fours. Villain checks, Hero bets 1400 into a 2300 pot, and Villain shoves for 11080. Hero has him covered.

Most of the forum seemed to think this was a call, and in many cases not a particularly close one. To me, it’s a clear fold.

Not everyone articulated it this way, but the general sense seemed to be that a pair of K’s is at the top of Hero’s range, and that folding hands at the top of your range isn’t what you do against a LAG.

The problem here is that Hero actually has two very separate ranges: a bluff range and a value range. KK is actually only around the middle of Hero’s value range, which I would set at roughly TT+. Unless Villain is floating the flop from out of position, a possibility made even less likely since Hero can account for two of the K’s, meaning he won’t see stuff like AK/KJ/KT very often, Villain probably has showdown value. He called a bet on the flop, and the most obvious draw came in on the river.

This means that Villain will primarily combat Hero’s bluff range by calling rather than by check-raise bluffing. When Villain check-raises, it no longer matters much where KK fits in Hero’s full range, because Villain isn’t really playing against the bluff portion of that range any longer. Villain’s shove is rarely a bluff, so it matters only where KK fits relative to Hero’s value range, and more importantly relative to Villain’s value range.

If you’re thinking that this is just a very fancy way of saying that Hero has a bluff catcher in a spot where Villain is rarely bluffing, you’re correct. The thing is that many people tend to use this flawed “top of my range” or “hand under-represented” logic (which are really the same argument, in my opinion) to justify some calls that I would say are clearly bad. Yeah, your hand can be a bluff quite often, but Villain can usually combat that by calling. When he shoves, KK is in trouble.

UTG ($1027)
MP ($980)
CO ($1442.40)
Hero (Button) ($1471.25)
SB ($1000)
BB ($1336)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, J
UTG bets $35, MP calls $35, CO calls $35, Hero raises to $165, 4 folds, CO calls $130

Flop: ($415) K, 9, 9 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($415) 5 (2 players)
CO bets $130, Hero calls $130

River: ($675) 8 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $376, CO raises to $1147.40 (All-In), Hero calls $771.40

Total pot: $2969.80 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had J, J (two pair, Jacks and nines).
CO had K, A (two pair, Kings and nines).
Outcome: CO won $2966.80

I’m not a big fan of my river bet to begin with, and if he’s capable of this, it’s awful. I just didn’t expect him to check any big hands on the river, since it looks so much like I’m just trying to pot control/show my hand down cheaply. In other words, I don’t think he can expect me to bet the river too often.

This one was against a really awful player:

No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (2 handed) – Hold’em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($1705.40)
SB ($240.80)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, J
SB bets $15, Hero calls $10

Flop: ($40) 3, 7, 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: ($40) J (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: ($40) J (2 players)
Hero bets $10, SB raises $40, Hero calls $30

Total pot: $120

Results:
SB had 9, 5 (flush, Jack high).
Hero had Q, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: SB won $119.50

I didn’t think he would check a good spade on the flop, and I guess I was right….

Professional No Limit Hold ‘Em, Volume 1 (PNLHE) is one of my all-time favorite poker books and the one that I recommend to anyone looking to get started to the game. I eagerly awaited the publication of Volume 2, which was rumored to deal with short-handed games and more advanced concepts, and mourned its loss when its authors parted ways with Two Plus Two Publishing.

Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn ultimately self-published the book now known as Small Stakes No-Limit Hold ‘Em (SSNL), and it’s even better than I’d hoped.

Read the full review including my “Two-Minute Recommendation” in the Book Reviews Section of the site.

Read the full review

The question, then, is how many worse hands Villain plays like this for value. After discussing the hand for a while, we decided there actually weren’t many. AT+ mostly 3-bets pre-flop, 98 and 68 probably aren’t betting the turn, 96 needs to be discounted for lack of a flop raise, and does A7 go for two streets of value? I think it ought to, but most players probably chicken out and check the river or bet smaller.

So I think this is a shove against really good value betters but a call against pretty much any 2/4 player.

No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) – Hold’em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($620.90)
Hero (SB) ($458.70)
BB ($440)
UTG ($359)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, 8
2 folds, Hero bets $10, BB calls $8

Flop: ($24) 9, A, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $16, BB calls $16

Turn: ($56) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $40, Hero calls $40

River: ($136) 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $100, Hero raises $390.70 (All-In), BB calls $272 (All-In)

Total pot: $880

Results:
Hero had Q, 8 (two pair, Queens and eights).
BB had A, 8 (two pair, Aces and eights).
Outcome: BB won $878