Final table of this year's WSOP main event (10,000$ buy-in).
22.5.07
High Stakes Poker (Season 1, Episode 8) - Part 4/5
Starts with Daniel's Negreanu versus Mimi Tran straight versus striaght for 300k USD.
Right after Daniel Negreanu wins a 150k hands. Insane high stakes action.
Following by a really nice fold by Freddy Deeb on the river.
Then Bob stupid (loook in wikipedia) gets into the conversation.
21.5.07
Stealing the blinds theorem
Taken from Poker on the 2+2 forum boards
" Well, if somebody hadn't changed my title, I'd be a Pooh-Bah now. Due to some…er, “irrational exuberance” on my part, I’m forced to make a SECOND Pooh-bah post. I haven’t had quite as much time to think about it the second time around, but I’ve decided to address an important and often-misunderstood topic in small-stakes no-limit poker: blind stealing. To those of you who consider blind stealing an insignificant part of the no-limit poker game, or perhaps just an “image move” to help get paid off on your big hands, think again – blind stealing can be an extremely valuable part of your poker arsenal.
I’ll admit it: I’m a ruthless, heartless, helpless, hopeless, habitual blind thief. I stole blinds when I played limit hold’em, I stole blinds when I played tournaments, I steal blinds when I play no-limit hold’em. I’ve stolen blinds from my eight-year-old cousin and from an 85-year-old great-grandmother. I steal blinds when I’m playing my 16/9 full-ring TAG game and I steal blinds when I’m playing my 35/20 6-max LAG game. I’ve always stolen blinds, and I always will.
Furthermore, I’m reasonably good at it. In the last 17,500 hands, I’ve attempted to steal the blinds a whopping 38.31% of the time – that works out to be 313 steal attempts out of 817 opportunities. Over those 313 blind-steal attempts, I’ve maintained a healthy win rate of 1.10 PTBB/hand: that’s 110 PTBB/100. Despite the fact that I’ve only attempted a blind steal one time every five orbits, those steal attempts have generated over 30% of my total profits at the no-limit poker tables. Like I said: done right, blind stealing is a VERY important contributor to your overall win rate.
So, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s turn to the issue at hand: how do you steal the blinds successfully? What’s the formula, what’s the method, what’s the approach? The answer is that it’s quite easy, and despite that, it’s wildly successful.
Pokey’s Rules for Blind Theft:
1. Know yourself and know your target. Blind steals rely heavily on folding equity. The more frequently you try to steal the blinds, the weaker the average hand you’ll have when you attempt a steal. That means that for the frequent blind thief, you’re hoping NOT to get to a showdown. The good news is that the odds of your remaining opponents having a decent hand are slim – there are only two or three players left to act, and they have random hands. The odds none of the remaining players have “good” hands are as follows:
- “Super Premium Hand,” AA-JJ, AK: 94.1% chance with two players left to act, and 91.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Premium Hand,” AA-TT, AK, AQ: 90.8% chance with two players left to act, and 86.6% chance with three players left to act.
- “Great Hand,” AA-99, AK, AQ, KQ: 87.8% chance with two players left to act, and 82.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Very Good Hand,” all Great Hands plus 88, AJ: 84.6% chance with two players left to act, and 77.9% chance with three players left to act.
- “Good Hand,” any pair, any two broadway: 67.4% chance with two players left to act, and 55.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Above Average Hand,” any ace, any suited, any pair, any two broadway: 29.5% chance with two players left to act, and 16% chance with three players left to act.
Note what this means: the “looser” your remaining opponents, the harder it will be to successfully steal the blinds preflop. If your blind steals are a standard 4xBB, then you will wager 4xBB to win 1.5xBB, so if you immediately win 3 times out of 11 you will show an immediate preflop profit, even if you never win a hand when you don’t win preflop. Since 3 out of 11 is 27.3%, if our opponents are likely to fold 72.7% of the time, we win immediately. So against players who will only play “very good hands” versus a steal attempt, you should be stealing with literally any two cards from either BB or CO, and doing so will show an instant profit even before the flop. Of course, the hand range your opponent will consider worthy of a preflop call will expand as you attempt steals more frequently, so you need to remain aware of both your table image and your opponent’s play style.
2. Aggression, aggression, aggression. When you get called preflop, this is not a tragedy – it’s an opportunity. Most opponents crumble quickly against steady aggression; to successfully steal blinds, we need to apply that steady aggression. However, we need to do so CAREFULLY so as to make sure that our attempts are profitable. The flop is going to improve our hand about one time in three. Let’s assume that when we’re called, we’re typically behind. This will be the case when we are relentless with our steal attempts and our opponents are conservative with their calls. While this sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy, it’s actually not bad at all. Consider that even if our opponent is playing as incredibly tight, some of his hand range will include unpaired preflop hands like AK. So, what are the odds that by the flop our opponent’s hand is at least strong enough to beat unimproved pocket deuces?
- If our opponent is only playing “Super Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 73% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 64% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Great Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 59.4% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Very Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 56.7% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 49% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Above Average Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 40.1% of the time.
Now we get into the art of blind stealing: how large should our flop bet be? We want to make sure our flop bet is at the same size whether we’ve flopped well or not, but we’re balancing competing issues: how often our opponent will improve, how often we will have a strong hand, how often our opponent will improve and still fold, how often our opponent will improve and we’ll improve more, how often we’ll improve but our opponent will improve more, etc. As complicated as this all sounds, we’ve got a few things going for us: namely, that we have played the hand aggressively so far and that we will have position on this and every remaining street in the hand.
For people who steal infrequently (say, 20% of the time or less), your flop bets should be sizeable. Given that you are only attempting a steal 20% of the time, you will be stealing with reasonably solid hands yourself: collectively, all suited aces, any pair, and any two broadway cards make up 20.4% of possible holdings, meaning that your hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 47.6% of the time. The odds that your hand is worth pursuing is therefore significant enough to warrant a full pot-sized continuation bet from you; if your opponent folds, great, and if not, you have a valuable hand often enough to make this a highly profitable hand for you.
However, I don’t recommend stealing “only” 20% of the time. I recommend stealing much more often than that. As an example, my steal rate of 38.3% corresponds roughly to stealing with “any pair, any ace, any king, any two broadway cards, and any suited connector down to 87s.” If that’s your steal range, the chances that on the flop you have at least a pair will be noticeably lower (something like 42.8%). The answer is not to bet less often on the flop; rather, the answer is to bet a smaller quantity on the flop. While a pot-sized bet needs to win 50% of the time to be immediately profitable, a 2/3-pot sized bet only needs to win 40% of the time to be immediately profitable.
Notice what this means: if your opponent plays very tightly against your preflop raise, the odds that he has a decent hand on the flop go up, lowering the value of your flop bets. However, the odds that he CALLS your preflop bet go DOWN, raising the value of your PREFLOP bets. At this stage of the hand, we’ve already had two chances to win the pot: one if our opponent folds to the preflop bet and one if our opponent folds to the flop bet.
Consider the value of a steal attempt from the big blind against the various opponents, assuming they will (a) fold preflop if their hand is outside of the specified range (winning 0.75 PTBBs), and (b) only call the flop with a hand that can beat 22 (when they fold, we win 2.75 PTBBs, and when they fold, we lose 5.5 PTBBs). This assumes our betting is 2 PTBB preflop and 3.5 PTBB on the flop. If we consider only the tightest and loosest opponents, we see this:
- Super Premium Hands: 94.1% of the time they fold preflop, 27% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.941*(+0.75) + (0.059*0.27)*(+2.75) + (0.059*0.73)*(-5.5) = +0.51 PTBB.
- Premium Hands: 90.8% of the time they fold preflop, 36% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.908*(+0.75) + (0.092*0.36)*(+2.75) + (0.092*0.64)*(-5.5) = +0.45 PTBB.
Skipping ahead to the loosest players:
- Good Hands: 67.4% of the time they fold preflop, 51% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.674*(+0.75) + (0.326*0.51)*(+2.75) + (0.326*0.49)*(-5.5) = +0.08 PTBB.
- Above Average Hands: 29.5% of the time they fold preflop, 59.9% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.295*(+0.75) + (0.705*0.599)*(+2.75) + (0.705*0.401)*(-5.5) = -0.17 PTBB.
Once again, this demonstrates a bizarre truism: the less likely your opponent is to fold, the less profitable your blind-stealing will prove to be in terms of folding equity. Note well two points, however: first, this assumes that our opponent is calling EVERY time he has a hand that is at least as strong as a pair of deuces; thus, the opponent holding 22 on a board of AKQ is assumed to call our continuation bet. Also, our EV calculations have thus far assumed that whenever we have not won with the flop bet, we lose every time. This should prove FAR from true, especially against the loosest of our opponents. A safe bet is that we will win at LEAST 1/3 of the time when our flop bet is called, and that safely makes all of these calculations +EV.
After the flop, easy and simple rules must be thrown out the window. From here on in, there is too much “art” in the play to be easily categorized in a summary like this. I do want to point out a few simple points that might make help you in your blind-stealing adventures:
1. Much like bears in the woods, your opponents are more afraid of you than you are of them. This is your hand – you’ve raised preflop and bet the flop. You’re SCARY, here. Given that your opponent has exhibited NO aggression at this point, your folding equity remains solid. Use that ruthlessly. If a scare card hits on the turn and your opponent checks to you again, fire that second (third?) barrel! Don’t be afraid to bet the turn ace, the turn king, the turn pair, the turn flush card, the turn straight card, or the turn blank if you think your opponent is running scared. This is another place where knowing your enemy helps.
2. If your opponent gets aggressive, TRUST him. There is no shame in folding your blind steal attempt. If the flop comes A83r and your opponent bets the pot, or check-raises big, feel free to fold your KQo. In fact, feel OBLIGATED to do so. Blind stealing is decidedly a “small pot game” strategy; if you are risking your stack on a blind steal, you’ve screwed up big-time. Similarly, if you are stealing with total garbage (86s or some such) and someone reraises, GET OUT. Fold immediately, and without hesitation. Don’t bother seeing what the flop brings – there’s no profit in it.
3. Take free cards if they are beneficial to you. One strength of this strategy is that you’ll often have good draws on the flop, and your opponent will usually offer you a free card on the turn. If you’ve got a good draw, feel free to take it. Don’t ALWAYS take it, though – I’ve often fired another barrel with a hand like Tc9c when the board looked like QcJd4s4c. Not only did that turn card 4c improve my hand by giving me nine more outs, but it also scared the doody out of my opponent, making him think that I just turned trips. Why not take advantage of the fear? Instead of playing for my 2-to-1 draw, I can bet immediately and win the pot a significant chunk of the time, and STILL win 1/3 of the time at showdown (usually for even more money, since my opponent won’t see my straight or flush coming).
4. Don’t get discouraged if your steals fail. We’re often worried that because our opponent played back at us the last time we tried to steal, we need to tighten up considerably. Don’t. Our opponents don’t adjust NEARLY as much as we think they do. Just because you got reraised preflop the last time you tried to steal doesn’t mean that they’ve got your number; more likely, SB had AA when he fought back. Now he’s got 92o, and he does NOT have a pair of balls. Hit him again, and keep hitting him.
5. Know your image! While players don’t adjust very well or very far or very effectively, they DO adjust. If you’ve picked up the pot with preflop bets and flop bets the last four hands in a row, fold your 98s in the CO this time. You are not a slave to your cards; understand your table image, understand that your opponents are getting pissed off at you, and understand that your folding equity falls every additional time you win a pot without showing your cards. After you’ve folded preflop three or four times in a row, you can go back to stealing and bullying, but give your opponents a tiny chance to catch their breaths between steals.
6. DO NOT SLOWPLAY. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your entire strategy here is a bluff that depends entirely on your playing your monsters and your junk identically. There’s always the temptation when you have AA preflop and catch A55 on the flop to suddenly change gears. Don’t! With any luck, your opponent won’t believe you, and will call all-in with QQ unimproved. Not only will you stack him, but you’ll also get even more respect the next time you play fast on a board of A55…only this time you’ll have 98s….Fast play of big hands is CRUCIAL to the success of this strategy. Not only does it boost the shania of all your weak junk by elevating your folding equity, but it also gets paid off much more frequently than it would if you were only nut-peddling.
To those of you who read this entire thread, I thank the both of you, and I hope this gave you some additional insight into the ins and outs of blind stealing. Give it a shot – you may find it more lucrative than you ever imagined it could be.
Geez, I've made some lengthy posts in the past, but this one was longer than Ghandi. Sorry about that."
" Well, if somebody hadn't changed my title, I'd be a Pooh-Bah now. Due to some…er, “irrational exuberance” on my part, I’m forced to make a SECOND Pooh-bah post. I haven’t had quite as much time to think about it the second time around, but I’ve decided to address an important and often-misunderstood topic in small-stakes no-limit poker: blind stealing. To those of you who consider blind stealing an insignificant part of the no-limit poker game, or perhaps just an “image move” to help get paid off on your big hands, think again – blind stealing can be an extremely valuable part of your poker arsenal.
I’ll admit it: I’m a ruthless, heartless, helpless, hopeless, habitual blind thief. I stole blinds when I played limit hold’em, I stole blinds when I played tournaments, I steal blinds when I play no-limit hold’em. I’ve stolen blinds from my eight-year-old cousin and from an 85-year-old great-grandmother. I steal blinds when I’m playing my 16/9 full-ring TAG game and I steal blinds when I’m playing my 35/20 6-max LAG game. I’ve always stolen blinds, and I always will.
Furthermore, I’m reasonably good at it. In the last 17,500 hands, I’ve attempted to steal the blinds a whopping 38.31% of the time – that works out to be 313 steal attempts out of 817 opportunities. Over those 313 blind-steal attempts, I’ve maintained a healthy win rate of 1.10 PTBB/hand: that’s 110 PTBB/100. Despite the fact that I’ve only attempted a blind steal one time every five orbits, those steal attempts have generated over 30% of my total profits at the no-limit poker tables. Like I said: done right, blind stealing is a VERY important contributor to your overall win rate.
So, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s turn to the issue at hand: how do you steal the blinds successfully? What’s the formula, what’s the method, what’s the approach? The answer is that it’s quite easy, and despite that, it’s wildly successful.
Pokey’s Rules for Blind Theft:
1. Know yourself and know your target. Blind steals rely heavily on folding equity. The more frequently you try to steal the blinds, the weaker the average hand you’ll have when you attempt a steal. That means that for the frequent blind thief, you’re hoping NOT to get to a showdown. The good news is that the odds of your remaining opponents having a decent hand are slim – there are only two or three players left to act, and they have random hands. The odds none of the remaining players have “good” hands are as follows:
- “Super Premium Hand,” AA-JJ, AK: 94.1% chance with two players left to act, and 91.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Premium Hand,” AA-TT, AK, AQ: 90.8% chance with two players left to act, and 86.6% chance with three players left to act.
- “Great Hand,” AA-99, AK, AQ, KQ: 87.8% chance with two players left to act, and 82.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Very Good Hand,” all Great Hands plus 88, AJ: 84.6% chance with two players left to act, and 77.9% chance with three players left to act.
- “Good Hand,” any pair, any two broadway: 67.4% chance with two players left to act, and 55.3% chance with three players left to act.
- “Above Average Hand,” any ace, any suited, any pair, any two broadway: 29.5% chance with two players left to act, and 16% chance with three players left to act.
Note what this means: the “looser” your remaining opponents, the harder it will be to successfully steal the blinds preflop. If your blind steals are a standard 4xBB, then you will wager 4xBB to win 1.5xBB, so if you immediately win 3 times out of 11 you will show an immediate preflop profit, even if you never win a hand when you don’t win preflop. Since 3 out of 11 is 27.3%, if our opponents are likely to fold 72.7% of the time, we win immediately. So against players who will only play “very good hands” versus a steal attempt, you should be stealing with literally any two cards from either BB or CO, and doing so will show an instant profit even before the flop. Of course, the hand range your opponent will consider worthy of a preflop call will expand as you attempt steals more frequently, so you need to remain aware of both your table image and your opponent’s play style.
2. Aggression, aggression, aggression. When you get called preflop, this is not a tragedy – it’s an opportunity. Most opponents crumble quickly against steady aggression; to successfully steal blinds, we need to apply that steady aggression. However, we need to do so CAREFULLY so as to make sure that our attempts are profitable. The flop is going to improve our hand about one time in three. Let’s assume that when we’re called, we’re typically behind. This will be the case when we are relentless with our steal attempts and our opponents are conservative with their calls. While this sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy, it’s actually not bad at all. Consider that even if our opponent is playing as incredibly tight, some of his hand range will include unpaired preflop hands like AK. So, what are the odds that by the flop our opponent’s hand is at least strong enough to beat unimproved pocket deuces?
- If our opponent is only playing “Super Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 73% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 64% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Great Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 59.4% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Very Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 56.7% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 49% of the time.
- If our opponent is playing “Above Average Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 40.1% of the time.
Now we get into the art of blind stealing: how large should our flop bet be? We want to make sure our flop bet is at the same size whether we’ve flopped well or not, but we’re balancing competing issues: how often our opponent will improve, how often we will have a strong hand, how often our opponent will improve and still fold, how often our opponent will improve and we’ll improve more, how often we’ll improve but our opponent will improve more, etc. As complicated as this all sounds, we’ve got a few things going for us: namely, that we have played the hand aggressively so far and that we will have position on this and every remaining street in the hand.
For people who steal infrequently (say, 20% of the time or less), your flop bets should be sizeable. Given that you are only attempting a steal 20% of the time, you will be stealing with reasonably solid hands yourself: collectively, all suited aces, any pair, and any two broadway cards make up 20.4% of possible holdings, meaning that your hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 47.6% of the time. The odds that your hand is worth pursuing is therefore significant enough to warrant a full pot-sized continuation bet from you; if your opponent folds, great, and if not, you have a valuable hand often enough to make this a highly profitable hand for you.
However, I don’t recommend stealing “only” 20% of the time. I recommend stealing much more often than that. As an example, my steal rate of 38.3% corresponds roughly to stealing with “any pair, any ace, any king, any two broadway cards, and any suited connector down to 87s.” If that’s your steal range, the chances that on the flop you have at least a pair will be noticeably lower (something like 42.8%). The answer is not to bet less often on the flop; rather, the answer is to bet a smaller quantity on the flop. While a pot-sized bet needs to win 50% of the time to be immediately profitable, a 2/3-pot sized bet only needs to win 40% of the time to be immediately profitable.
Notice what this means: if your opponent plays very tightly against your preflop raise, the odds that he has a decent hand on the flop go up, lowering the value of your flop bets. However, the odds that he CALLS your preflop bet go DOWN, raising the value of your PREFLOP bets. At this stage of the hand, we’ve already had two chances to win the pot: one if our opponent folds to the preflop bet and one if our opponent folds to the flop bet.
Consider the value of a steal attempt from the big blind against the various opponents, assuming they will (a) fold preflop if their hand is outside of the specified range (winning 0.75 PTBBs), and (b) only call the flop with a hand that can beat 22 (when they fold, we win 2.75 PTBBs, and when they fold, we lose 5.5 PTBBs). This assumes our betting is 2 PTBB preflop and 3.5 PTBB on the flop. If we consider only the tightest and loosest opponents, we see this:
- Super Premium Hands: 94.1% of the time they fold preflop, 27% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.941*(+0.75) + (0.059*0.27)*(+2.75) + (0.059*0.73)*(-5.5) = +0.51 PTBB.
- Premium Hands: 90.8% of the time they fold preflop, 36% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.908*(+0.75) + (0.092*0.36)*(+2.75) + (0.092*0.64)*(-5.5) = +0.45 PTBB.
Skipping ahead to the loosest players:
- Good Hands: 67.4% of the time they fold preflop, 51% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.674*(+0.75) + (0.326*0.51)*(+2.75) + (0.326*0.49)*(-5.5) = +0.08 PTBB.
- Above Average Hands: 29.5% of the time they fold preflop, 59.9% of the time they fold on the flop.
EV = 0.295*(+0.75) + (0.705*0.599)*(+2.75) + (0.705*0.401)*(-5.5) = -0.17 PTBB.
Once again, this demonstrates a bizarre truism: the less likely your opponent is to fold, the less profitable your blind-stealing will prove to be in terms of folding equity. Note well two points, however: first, this assumes that our opponent is calling EVERY time he has a hand that is at least as strong as a pair of deuces; thus, the opponent holding 22 on a board of AKQ is assumed to call our continuation bet. Also, our EV calculations have thus far assumed that whenever we have not won with the flop bet, we lose every time. This should prove FAR from true, especially against the loosest of our opponents. A safe bet is that we will win at LEAST 1/3 of the time when our flop bet is called, and that safely makes all of these calculations +EV.
After the flop, easy and simple rules must be thrown out the window. From here on in, there is too much “art” in the play to be easily categorized in a summary like this. I do want to point out a few simple points that might make help you in your blind-stealing adventures:
1. Much like bears in the woods, your opponents are more afraid of you than you are of them. This is your hand – you’ve raised preflop and bet the flop. You’re SCARY, here. Given that your opponent has exhibited NO aggression at this point, your folding equity remains solid. Use that ruthlessly. If a scare card hits on the turn and your opponent checks to you again, fire that second (third?) barrel! Don’t be afraid to bet the turn ace, the turn king, the turn pair, the turn flush card, the turn straight card, or the turn blank if you think your opponent is running scared. This is another place where knowing your enemy helps.
2. If your opponent gets aggressive, TRUST him. There is no shame in folding your blind steal attempt. If the flop comes A83r and your opponent bets the pot, or check-raises big, feel free to fold your KQo. In fact, feel OBLIGATED to do so. Blind stealing is decidedly a “small pot game” strategy; if you are risking your stack on a blind steal, you’ve screwed up big-time. Similarly, if you are stealing with total garbage (86s or some such) and someone reraises, GET OUT. Fold immediately, and without hesitation. Don’t bother seeing what the flop brings – there’s no profit in it.
3. Take free cards if they are beneficial to you. One strength of this strategy is that you’ll often have good draws on the flop, and your opponent will usually offer you a free card on the turn. If you’ve got a good draw, feel free to take it. Don’t ALWAYS take it, though – I’ve often fired another barrel with a hand like Tc9c when the board looked like QcJd4s4c. Not only did that turn card 4c improve my hand by giving me nine more outs, but it also scared the doody out of my opponent, making him think that I just turned trips. Why not take advantage of the fear? Instead of playing for my 2-to-1 draw, I can bet immediately and win the pot a significant chunk of the time, and STILL win 1/3 of the time at showdown (usually for even more money, since my opponent won’t see my straight or flush coming).
4. Don’t get discouraged if your steals fail. We’re often worried that because our opponent played back at us the last time we tried to steal, we need to tighten up considerably. Don’t. Our opponents don’t adjust NEARLY as much as we think they do. Just because you got reraised preflop the last time you tried to steal doesn’t mean that they’ve got your number; more likely, SB had AA when he fought back. Now he’s got 92o, and he does NOT have a pair of balls. Hit him again, and keep hitting him.
5. Know your image! While players don’t adjust very well or very far or very effectively, they DO adjust. If you’ve picked up the pot with preflop bets and flop bets the last four hands in a row, fold your 98s in the CO this time. You are not a slave to your cards; understand your table image, understand that your opponents are getting pissed off at you, and understand that your folding equity falls every additional time you win a pot without showing your cards. After you’ve folded preflop three or four times in a row, you can go back to stealing and bullying, but give your opponents a tiny chance to catch their breaths between steals.
6. DO NOT SLOWPLAY. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your entire strategy here is a bluff that depends entirely on your playing your monsters and your junk identically. There’s always the temptation when you have AA preflop and catch A55 on the flop to suddenly change gears. Don’t! With any luck, your opponent won’t believe you, and will call all-in with QQ unimproved. Not only will you stack him, but you’ll also get even more respect the next time you play fast on a board of A55…only this time you’ll have 98s….Fast play of big hands is CRUCIAL to the success of this strategy. Not only does it boost the shania of all your weak junk by elevating your folding equity, but it also gets paid off much more frequently than it would if you were only nut-peddling.
To those of you who read this entire thread, I thank the both of you, and I hope this gave you some additional insight into the ins and outs of blind stealing. Give it a shot – you may find it more lucrative than you ever imagined it could be.
Geez, I've made some lengthy posts in the past, but this one was longer than Ghandi. Sorry about that."
4betting Preflop theorem
From Tannenj on 2+2 forum boards.
"This post was inspired by this thread, some brief AIM conversations with this guy, and a curiosity I’ve noticed I have about preflop play since I started datamining and dabbling with 400 NL -- a level known for a distinct spike in aggression, especially preflop -- a few weeks ago. The following discussion isn’t meant to be a be all, end all on preflop 4betting. If something like that could exist, poker wouldn’t be the fascinating game that has captivated the majority of this forum. Rather, I hope this post provides some food for thought about why to 4bet and helps some of SSNL with regard to how to think about villains’ ranges and how they should affect preflop decisions. If you read this post and think you got something out of it, you might like my Pooh-Bah Post.
Why 4bet?
It’s fairly simple, really. Two reasons (no order):
1. For value:
Not much explanation necessary. If A) you think you have the best hand and B) the villain has 3bet and you think it’s likely that he’ll call or shove over the top of your 4bet with a worse hand, the play is generally to 4bet for value. There are times when it makes sense to just call a 3bet with hands like AA and KK, but for the purpose of this article I’ll advocate an aggressive preflop strategy and assume that A) many villains 3bet light, B) to counter this, it’s helpful to have the light 4bet in your arsenal, and C) to balance light 4betting, you want to 4bet for value with AA and KK, and at times, AK, QQ, etc.
2. As a bluff:
As I touched on, this article assumes that villains 3bet light. In reality, at 200 NL, most villains don’t 3bet very light. I’ve found that some TAGs 3bet very light/frequently, especially if A) they suspect you’re raising light from late position or B) they have position on you. At 400 NL, most TAGs 3bet light. This is a personal observation, and my experience at the level is relatively limited. If you have played 400 NL, you might disagree. At the very least, however, there’s a significant increase in preflop aggression from the 1/2 games to the 2/4 games.
Say you’re sitting with a 26/22 LAGTAG and he’s 3betting the crap out of your open raises. You have a few options:
1) Leave the table. This is often a reasonable approach, especially if he has position on you. Too many of us play poker with our egos, and I’ve been guilty of doing so myself. We play to make money, and if the light 3bettor is competent postflop, it can be pretty tough to make money. However, we also play to have fun and to improve, so it often makes sense to stay at the table -- especially if there are one or two weak players sitting.
2) Open up your calling range. This can be useful, especially if you’re in position. Even out of position, it can make sense to mix in some speculative calls with the knowledge that A) you’ll hit sometimes and B) you can check-raise a bunch of flops profitably to throw the villain off guard.
3) Throw in some light 4bets. This is what I’ve been setting up for, and it’s a key component of this article. The situation follows: A) the villain knows you’re a TAG (or a LAG) and are opening with a pretty wide range, B) as a result, he’s 3betting with a wide range, and C) being 4bet with the bulk of the hands with which he’s 3betting is going to put the villain in some very tough spots.
If a villain is 3betting light, your 4bets should have a ton of fold equity (perhaps not after the villain realizes what’s happening, but at least for the first session or two). Against some villains, 4betting light is major +EV. With that said, much of the importance of the move is rooted in metagame. It’s very bad for your raises to be constantly 3bet, and in general, a villain will be less likely to 3bet after he notices that you’re willing to 4bet his 3bets.
Easy stuff. Show me some math:
When I decided to write this article, the purpose I had in mind was to explore the small 4bet. As I explained, there are two reasons for the preflop 4bet (or any bet or raise, really): for value, and as a bluff. The first one is easy; when betting and raising for value, it’s tough to run into trouble.
4bet bluffing preflop is trickier. The issue is that poker is a game of math. There’s this stuff called pot odds, and more often than not, it dictates your decisions in this game if your goal is to play soundly.
When you 4bet light, you’re hoping the other guy folds. Unfortunately, though, he won’t always fold. I suppose there will be times when he’ll call (especially if he’s bad -- but really, you shouldn’t be doing light 4betting against bad players). Much more often, however, he’ll shove. And when he shoves, things get fuzzy, because A) at this point, you’re being laid major odds, and B) obviously, you can’t know what hand he has (unless you’re Phil Hellmuth and have world class “reading ability”).
When things get fuzzy, it becomes more likely that you’ll make a mistake. When you make a mistake, you give up expected value. The more expected value you give up, the lower will be your win rate. I hope the following calculations illustrate some of the reasoning behind small preflop 4bets:
What follow are some assumptions I made for the purpose of my PokerStoving. At the risk of stating the (very) obvious, these things will rarely be exactly the case. This is a theory article.
1) effective stacks are always 100 big blinds.
2) players won’t call your preflop 4bet; if they continue with the hand, they’ll 5bet all in.
3) Nit will 5bet all in with AA and KK and fold everything else (note: you might be thinking, “If this guy is a nit, why are you 4betting his 3bets light?” The response is, “Whatever, it’s theory. For the purpose of this article, ‘Nit’ doesn’t mean he doesn’t 3bet light, it’s just a name I’m giving him to differentiate his 5betting range. For the purpose of this article, don’t worry about 3bets, how they should affect these players’ 5betting ranges, etc. -- just go with the assumptions, even if some of them seem contrived.”).
4) Conservative TAG will 5bet all in with the above two hands plus AKs, AKo, and QQ (and fold all other hands).
5) Aggressive TAG will 5bet all in with the above hands plus AQs, JJ, and half the combinations of TT (and fold all other hands).
6) LAG will 5bet all in with the above hands plus AJs, half the combinations of ATs, the other two combinations of TT, 99, half the combinations of 88, and half the combinations of 87s (and fold all other hands).
I came up with these ranges in the span of a few minutes; if you think they seem “random,” you’re right. There’s little rhyme or reason to them, they’re just four ranges that start out tight and gradually increase in scope. Obviously, the number of ranges with which the following calculations can be performed is essentially infinite. Adding a broader range of ranges (ugh) to this analysis definitely has some merit, and hopefully someone will do this if it’s decided that the initial investigation is worthwhile.
First, let’s look at some scenarios in which you 4bet pot. Note that none of these 4bets are for value; each one is a bluff. The best hand you hold in the following scenarios is TT. Even TT is a dog against the widest of the villains’ 5betting ranges, so when you 4bet with this hand, you’ve decided to turn your hand into a bluff. TT does have solid equity against the range of LAG, but it’s important to realize what’s occurring. Turning TT into a bluff by 4betting isn’t necessarily a poor play; it is not, however, a value raise.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You have to call $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
100/3.22 = 31.06.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 22.496% 22.29% 00.20% 18321336 168354.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 77.504% 77.30% 00.20% 63532548 168354.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 31% equity to call, and you only have about 22.5%. You can fold the hand without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.144% 30.92% 00.22% 72010208 515570.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 68.856% 68.63% 00.22% 159831996 515570.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes. You need a little over 31% equity to call, and you have it almost exactly. You’re priced in to call with only about 31% equity; you’ll get stacked more than twice as often as you’ll suck out, but calling is correct because folding would be a slight mathematical error.
Since you’re priced in to call all in after making a pot 4bet with 65s against the range of Conservative TAG, you’ll be priced in with the same hand after the same action against both Aggressive TAG and LAG as well. These guys have wider 5bet shoving ranges, so folding against them becomes a significantly bigger mistake. The good news is that your 65s has more equity against their ranges. The bad news is that they’ll 5bet shove on your 65s more often, and your hand is still a pretty big dog against the group of hands with which they’ll be pushing.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Still $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.057% 18.86% 00.20% 23252328 242334.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 80.943% 80.75% 00.20% 99548892 242334.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. TT is generally a much better hand than 65s, but Nit’s range is so narrow that TT actually performs worse than 65s against the hands Nit could be holding. You need more than 31% equity to call and only have about 19%, so you can pitch it without making a mathematical error.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.413% 36.21% 00.20% 126502032 693396.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 63.587% 63.39% 00.20% 221421192 693396.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes, 36.4% is enough equity that you should be calling. Like in the first scenario, since you’re priced in against this guy, you’ll also have to call against the remaining two fictional players. It’s notable that even against LAG, your TT is a slight dog (about 45.5/55.5).
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 11.486% 11.15% 00.34% 20613120 628650.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 88.514% 88.17% 00.34% 163058412 628650.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 20.751% 20.26% 00.49% 99910656 2423022.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 79.249% 78.76% 00.49% 388386852 2423022.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a bit more than 31% equity to call, and you’re only getting about 21%.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Aggressive TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 26.751% 26.33% 00.43% 194732364 3147627.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 73.249% 72.82% 00.43% 538687710 3147627.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No, you’re still not getting enough equity against the range you’re facing.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 32.027% 31.67% 00.35% 351420780 3937734.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 67.973% 67.62% 00.35% 750276744 3937734.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, AhTh, AsTs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes. This range is wide enough that you have to call, and when you do call, you’re a big dog.
Now, let’s look at some similar scenarios. Your hands will remain the same, as will the villains’ ranges. However, in the following hands, you make a small 4bet to 2.25 times the villain’s 3bet ($54) instead of 4betting pot. Such a 4bet risks less money while still denying villains the odds to set mine against you and to call with speculative hands. In addition, it makes calling a 5bet shove less attractive from a pot odds perspective, so you won’t be mathematically obligated to call shoves as often after making a light 4bet.
Important note: you might be thinking, “Fair enough, but a small 4bet doesn’t have the same fold equity as a 4bet to pot.” IN REALITY, THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE THE CASE! For the purpose of this article, IT IS NOT THE CASE. If I were to assume that the villains’ 5betting ranges change when you decrease the size of your 4bet, the examples would become extremely lengthy and complicated. For the purpose of this article, assume that a small 4bet has the same fold equity as a big 4bet.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You have to call $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
100/2.76 = 36.23
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 22.496% 22.29% 00.20% 18321336 168354.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 77.504% 77.30% 00.20% 63532548 168354.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 36% equity to call, and you only have about 22.5%. You can fold the hand without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.144% 30.92% 00.22% 72010208 515570.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 68.856% 68.63% 00.22% 159831996 515570.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 36% equity to call, and you only have a bit more than 31%. Note that when you 4bet pot, you were mathematically forced to call off your stack after the 4bet bluff with this hand. When you make the small 4bet, though, you can fold to the shove without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 30.045% 29.82% 00.22% 95998006 721187.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 69.955% 69.73% 00.22% 224472772 721187.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You still don’t have enough equity to call. In fact, your equity has dropped slightly despite the fact that the range you’re facing has widened.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 29.368% 29.06% 00.31% 133367872 1400403.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 70.632% 70.33% 00.31% 322728794 1400403.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, AhTh, AsTs, 8h7h, 8s7s, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. Even against LAG’s range, you can fold 65s to the shove after 4betting.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.057% 18.86% 00.20% 23252328 242334.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 80.943% 80.75% 00.20% 99548892 242334.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You weren’t priced in to call against this guy even after making a pot 4bet, so clearly you’re not priced in now that your pot odds have become less favorable.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.413% 36.21% 00.20% 126502032 693396.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 63.587% 63.39% 00.20% 221421192 693396.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes, barely. Note that TT also became a call against this guy when you were 4betting pot, but that then, the decision wasn’t a close one. Math dictates that with TT, the four villains’ 5bets should be dealt with the same way despite the difference in 4bet size (since you’re priced in against Conservative TAG, you’ll be priced in against Aggressive TAG and LAG too). However, folding would only be a very minor mistake because the small 4bet leads to much less favorable pot odds on a call.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 11.486% 11.15% 00.34% 20613120 628650.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 88.514% 88.17% 00.34% 163058412 628650.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No way. You need more than three times the equity you have before calling becomes the right play.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 20.751% 20.26% 00.49% 99910656 2423022.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 79.249% 78.76% 00.49% 388386852 2423022.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No, and it’s still not close.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Aggressive TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 26.751% 26.33% 00.43% 194732364 3147627.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 73.249% 72.82% 00.43% 538687710 3147627.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Nope. 26.8 < 36.2.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 32.865% 32.51% 00.36% 360688620 3972930.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 67.135% 66.78% 00.36% 740938512 3972930.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, 8h7h, 8s7s, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. Even against this guy you can fold and avoid getting all in preflop as a 67/33 dog.
Analysis
When you 4bet pot with 65s, you were able to fold to a shove from Nit, but you were priced in to call against the other three players. When you 4bet bluffed small with 65s, meanwhile, you were able to fold against all four players’ shoves without making a mathematical mistake.
When you 4bet pot with pocket tens, you were able to fold to Nit’s shove, but you had to call against the other three. The same was the case when you decreased the size of your 4bet with the tens: folding was correct against Nit, but you had to call against the other three (though against Conservative TAG -- the player with the next narrowest range -- the decision to call in this spot was extremely close).
When you 4bet pot with KQo, you were able to fold to shoves from the first three players, but you were priced in to call against LAG. However, when you made your 4bet bluff smaller with this hand, you were able to correctly fold against all four players.
When holding TT, decreasing the size of your 4bet changed nothing with regard to the correctness of calling a 5bet shove against the given ranges. However, when holding the other two hands, the smaller 4bet provided you with increased leverage; with 65s and KQo, decreasing the size of your 4bet made it possible to correctly fold to 5bet shoves in spots where you would’ve had to call if your 4bet were bigger.
The results were especially drastic with 65s, the small suited connector. With this hand, you were priced in to call three times out of four when making a 4bet to pot. When you made a small 4bet, though, you were priced in zero times out of four.
Being mathematically forced to call off most of your stack is bad when you know you are a significant dog in the pot. Being able to 4bet bluff with the knowledge that you can fold to a 5bet all in is a nice luxury. Decreasing the size of a 4bet makes this process possible, perhaps at the expense of some fold equity. How much fold equity (if any)? Tough to say.
Won’t villains adjust to my small 4bets?
Probably not, especially at 200 NL. But yes, if you’re pulling this crap often with junk, smart villains should notice eventually and begin to shove over your 4bets with a wider range. If they adjust, you adjust. 4betting small with premium hands is a good adjustment and is important for balance.
So, according to this article, does it never make sense to 4bet pot?
It never makes sense to 4bet pot according to the assumptions in this article. If I had some way of knowing that light 3betters react the same way to small 4bets as to pot 4bets, I’d eliminate the pot 4bet from my arsenal because if this were the case, 4betting pot would be inferior to both 4betting small and to 4bet shoving, in my opinion.
However, it’s impossible to prove that fold equity is the same regardless of 4betting size.
With the information I have, I’ll probably begin to replace pot 4bets with a combination of small 4bets and 4bet shoves. Note that it’s important to make both small 4bets and 4bet pushes with both hands that are marginal and hands that are powerful."
"This post was inspired by this thread, some brief AIM conversations with this guy, and a curiosity I’ve noticed I have about preflop play since I started datamining and dabbling with 400 NL -- a level known for a distinct spike in aggression, especially preflop -- a few weeks ago. The following discussion isn’t meant to be a be all, end all on preflop 4betting. If something like that could exist, poker wouldn’t be the fascinating game that has captivated the majority of this forum. Rather, I hope this post provides some food for thought about why to 4bet and helps some of SSNL with regard to how to think about villains’ ranges and how they should affect preflop decisions. If you read this post and think you got something out of it, you might like my Pooh-Bah Post.
Why 4bet?
It’s fairly simple, really. Two reasons (no order):
1. For value:
Not much explanation necessary. If A) you think you have the best hand and B) the villain has 3bet and you think it’s likely that he’ll call or shove over the top of your 4bet with a worse hand, the play is generally to 4bet for value. There are times when it makes sense to just call a 3bet with hands like AA and KK, but for the purpose of this article I’ll advocate an aggressive preflop strategy and assume that A) many villains 3bet light, B) to counter this, it’s helpful to have the light 4bet in your arsenal, and C) to balance light 4betting, you want to 4bet for value with AA and KK, and at times, AK, QQ, etc.
2. As a bluff:
As I touched on, this article assumes that villains 3bet light. In reality, at 200 NL, most villains don’t 3bet very light. I’ve found that some TAGs 3bet very light/frequently, especially if A) they suspect you’re raising light from late position or B) they have position on you. At 400 NL, most TAGs 3bet light. This is a personal observation, and my experience at the level is relatively limited. If you have played 400 NL, you might disagree. At the very least, however, there’s a significant increase in preflop aggression from the 1/2 games to the 2/4 games.
Say you’re sitting with a 26/22 LAGTAG and he’s 3betting the crap out of your open raises. You have a few options:
1) Leave the table. This is often a reasonable approach, especially if he has position on you. Too many of us play poker with our egos, and I’ve been guilty of doing so myself. We play to make money, and if the light 3bettor is competent postflop, it can be pretty tough to make money. However, we also play to have fun and to improve, so it often makes sense to stay at the table -- especially if there are one or two weak players sitting.
2) Open up your calling range. This can be useful, especially if you’re in position. Even out of position, it can make sense to mix in some speculative calls with the knowledge that A) you’ll hit sometimes and B) you can check-raise a bunch of flops profitably to throw the villain off guard.
3) Throw in some light 4bets. This is what I’ve been setting up for, and it’s a key component of this article. The situation follows: A) the villain knows you’re a TAG (or a LAG) and are opening with a pretty wide range, B) as a result, he’s 3betting with a wide range, and C) being 4bet with the bulk of the hands with which he’s 3betting is going to put the villain in some very tough spots.
If a villain is 3betting light, your 4bets should have a ton of fold equity (perhaps not after the villain realizes what’s happening, but at least for the first session or two). Against some villains, 4betting light is major +EV. With that said, much of the importance of the move is rooted in metagame. It’s very bad for your raises to be constantly 3bet, and in general, a villain will be less likely to 3bet after he notices that you’re willing to 4bet his 3bets.
Easy stuff. Show me some math:
When I decided to write this article, the purpose I had in mind was to explore the small 4bet. As I explained, there are two reasons for the preflop 4bet (or any bet or raise, really): for value, and as a bluff. The first one is easy; when betting and raising for value, it’s tough to run into trouble.
4bet bluffing preflop is trickier. The issue is that poker is a game of math. There’s this stuff called pot odds, and more often than not, it dictates your decisions in this game if your goal is to play soundly.
When you 4bet light, you’re hoping the other guy folds. Unfortunately, though, he won’t always fold. I suppose there will be times when he’ll call (especially if he’s bad -- but really, you shouldn’t be doing light 4betting against bad players). Much more often, however, he’ll shove. And when he shoves, things get fuzzy, because A) at this point, you’re being laid major odds, and B) obviously, you can’t know what hand he has (unless you’re Phil Hellmuth and have world class “reading ability”).
When things get fuzzy, it becomes more likely that you’ll make a mistake. When you make a mistake, you give up expected value. The more expected value you give up, the lower will be your win rate. I hope the following calculations illustrate some of the reasoning behind small preflop 4bets:
What follow are some assumptions I made for the purpose of my PokerStoving. At the risk of stating the (very) obvious, these things will rarely be exactly the case. This is a theory article.
1) effective stacks are always 100 big blinds.
2) players won’t call your preflop 4bet; if they continue with the hand, they’ll 5bet all in.
3) Nit will 5bet all in with AA and KK and fold everything else (note: you might be thinking, “If this guy is a nit, why are you 4betting his 3bets light?” The response is, “Whatever, it’s theory. For the purpose of this article, ‘Nit’ doesn’t mean he doesn’t 3bet light, it’s just a name I’m giving him to differentiate his 5betting range. For the purpose of this article, don’t worry about 3bets, how they should affect these players’ 5betting ranges, etc. -- just go with the assumptions, even if some of them seem contrived.”).
4) Conservative TAG will 5bet all in with the above two hands plus AKs, AKo, and QQ (and fold all other hands).
5) Aggressive TAG will 5bet all in with the above hands plus AQs, JJ, and half the combinations of TT (and fold all other hands).
6) LAG will 5bet all in with the above hands plus AJs, half the combinations of ATs, the other two combinations of TT, 99, half the combinations of 88, and half the combinations of 87s (and fold all other hands).
I came up with these ranges in the span of a few minutes; if you think they seem “random,” you’re right. There’s little rhyme or reason to them, they’re just four ranges that start out tight and gradually increase in scope. Obviously, the number of ranges with which the following calculations can be performed is essentially infinite. Adding a broader range of ranges (ugh) to this analysis definitely has some merit, and hopefully someone will do this if it’s decided that the initial investigation is worthwhile.
First, let’s look at some scenarios in which you 4bet pot. Note that none of these 4bets are for value; each one is a bluff. The best hand you hold in the following scenarios is TT. Even TT is a dog against the widest of the villains’ 5betting ranges, so when you 4bet with this hand, you’ve decided to turn your hand into a bluff. TT does have solid equity against the range of LAG, but it’s important to realize what’s occurring. Turning TT into a bluff by 4betting isn’t necessarily a poor play; it is not, however, a value raise.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You have to call $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
100/3.22 = 31.06.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 22.496% 22.29% 00.20% 18321336 168354.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 77.504% 77.30% 00.20% 63532548 168354.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 31% equity to call, and you only have about 22.5%. You can fold the hand without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.144% 30.92% 00.22% 72010208 515570.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 68.856% 68.63% 00.22% 159831996 515570.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes. You need a little over 31% equity to call, and you have it almost exactly. You’re priced in to call with only about 31% equity; you’ll get stacked more than twice as often as you’ll suck out, but calling is correct because folding would be a slight mathematical error.
Since you’re priced in to call all in after making a pot 4bet with 65s against the range of Conservative TAG, you’ll be priced in with the same hand after the same action against both Aggressive TAG and LAG as well. These guys have wider 5bet shoving ranges, so folding against them becomes a significantly bigger mistake. The good news is that your 65s has more equity against their ranges. The bad news is that they’ll 5bet shove on your 65s more often, and your hand is still a pretty big dog against the group of hands with which they’ll be pushing.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Still $125 to win a pot of $278. You’re getting 278:125, or 2.22:1.
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.057% 18.86% 00.20% 23252328 242334.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 80.943% 80.75% 00.20% 99548892 242334.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. TT is generally a much better hand than 65s, but Nit’s range is so narrow that TT actually performs worse than 65s against the hands Nit could be holding. You need more than 31% equity to call and only have about 19%, so you can pitch it without making a mathematical error.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.413% 36.21% 00.20% 126502032 693396.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 63.587% 63.39% 00.20% 221421192 693396.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes, 36.4% is enough equity that you should be calling. Like in the first scenario, since you’re priced in against this guy, you’ll also have to call against the remaining two fictional players. It’s notable that even against LAG, your TT is a slight dog (about 45.5/55.5).
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 11.486% 11.15% 00.34% 20613120 628650.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 88.514% 88.17% 00.34% 163058412 628650.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 20.751% 20.26% 00.49% 99910656 2423022.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 79.249% 78.76% 00.49% 388386852 2423022.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a bit more than 31% equity to call, and you’re only getting about 21%.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. Aggressive TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 26.751% 26.33% 00.43% 194732364 3147627.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 73.249% 72.82% 00.43% 538687710 3147627.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No, you’re still not getting enough equity against the range you’re facing.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a pot 4bet to $75. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You need 31.06% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 32.027% 31.67% 00.35% 351420780 3937734.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 67.973% 67.62% 00.35% 750276744 3937734.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, AhTh, AsTs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes. This range is wide enough that you have to call, and when you do call, you’re a big dog.
Now, let’s look at some similar scenarios. Your hands will remain the same, as will the villains’ ranges. However, in the following hands, you make a small 4bet to 2.25 times the villain’s 3bet ($54) instead of 4betting pot. Such a 4bet risks less money while still denying villains the odds to set mine against you and to call with speculative hands. In addition, it makes calling a 5bet shove less attractive from a pot odds perspective, so you won’t be mathematically obligated to call shoves as often after making a light 4bet.
Important note: you might be thinking, “Fair enough, but a small 4bet doesn’t have the same fold equity as a 4bet to pot.” IN REALITY, THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE THE CASE! For the purpose of this article, IT IS NOT THE CASE. If I were to assume that the villains’ 5betting ranges change when you decrease the size of your 4bet, the examples would become extremely lengthy and complicated. For the purpose of this article, assume that a small 4bet has the same fold equity as a big 4bet.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You have to call $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
100/2.76 = 36.23
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 22.496% 22.29% 00.20% 18321336 168354.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 77.504% 77.30% 00.20% 63532548 168354.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 36% equity to call, and you only have about 22.5%. You can fold the hand without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.144% 30.92% 00.22% 72010208 515570.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 68.856% 68.63% 00.22% 159831996 515570.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You need a little over 36% equity to call, and you only have a bit more than 31%. Note that when you 4bet pot, you were mathematically forced to call off your stack after the 4bet bluff with this hand. When you make the small 4bet, though, you can fold to the shove without making a mistake.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 30.045% 29.82% 00.22% 95998006 721187.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 69.955% 69.73% 00.22% 224472772 721187.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You still don’t have enough equity to call. In fact, your equity has dropped slightly despite the fact that the range you’re facing has widened.
You’re UTG with 65s. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
Same as above, $146 to win a pot of $257. You’re getting 257:146, or 1.76:1.
You need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 29.368% 29.06% 00.31% 133367872 1400403.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 70.632% 70.33% 00.31% 322728794 1400403.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, AhTh, AsTs, 8h7h, 8s7s, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. Even against LAG’s range, you can fold 65s to the shove after 4betting.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.057% 18.86% 00.20% 23252328 242334.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 80.943% 80.75% 00.20% 99548892 242334.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No. You weren’t priced in to call against this guy even after making a pot 4bet, so clearly you’re not priced in now that your pot odds have become less favorable.
You’re UTG with TT. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.413% 36.21% 00.20% 126502032 693396.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 63.587% 63.39% 00.20% 221421192 693396.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Yes, barely. Note that TT also became a call against this guy when you were 4betting pot, but that then, the decision wasn’t a close one. Math dictates that with TT, the four villains’ 5bets should be dealt with the same way despite the difference in 4bet size (since you’re priced in against Conservative TAG, you’ll be priced in against Aggressive TAG and LAG too). However, folding would only be a very minor mistake because the small 4bet leads to much less favorable pot odds on a call.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Nit on the button. Nit makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Nit 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 11.486% 11.15% 00.34% 20613120 628650.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 88.514% 88.17% 00.34% 163058412 628650.00 { KK+ }
Are you priced in to call?
No way. You need more than three times the equity you have before calling becomes the right play.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Conservative TAG on the button. Conservative TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Conservative TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 20.751% 20.26% 00.49% 99910656 2423022.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 79.249% 78.76% 00.49% 388386852 2423022.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No, and it’s still not close.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to Aggressive TAG on the button. Aggressive TAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. Aggressive TAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 26.751% 26.33% 00.43% 194732364 3147627.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 73.249% 72.82% 00.43% 538687710 3147627.00 { JJ+, TcTs, TdTs, ThTs, AQs+, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
Nope. 26.8 < 36.2.
You’re UTG with KQo. You open to $7. Two folds to LAG on the button. LAG makes a pot 3bet to $24. You make a small 4bet to $54. LAG 5bets all in.
Pot Odds:
You’re getting 1.76:1 and need 36.23% equity or more to call.
Equity:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 32.865% 32.51% 00.36% 360688620 3972930.00 { KQo }
Hand 1: 67.135% 66.78% 00.36% 740938512 3972930.00 { 99+, 8c8s, 8d8s, 8h8s, AJs+, 8h7h, 8s7s, AKo }
Are you priced in to call?
No. Even against this guy you can fold and avoid getting all in preflop as a 67/33 dog.
Analysis
When you 4bet pot with 65s, you were able to fold to a shove from Nit, but you were priced in to call against the other three players. When you 4bet bluffed small with 65s, meanwhile, you were able to fold against all four players’ shoves without making a mathematical mistake.
When you 4bet pot with pocket tens, you were able to fold to Nit’s shove, but you had to call against the other three. The same was the case when you decreased the size of your 4bet with the tens: folding was correct against Nit, but you had to call against the other three (though against Conservative TAG -- the player with the next narrowest range -- the decision to call in this spot was extremely close).
When you 4bet pot with KQo, you were able to fold to shoves from the first three players, but you were priced in to call against LAG. However, when you made your 4bet bluff smaller with this hand, you were able to correctly fold against all four players.
When holding TT, decreasing the size of your 4bet changed nothing with regard to the correctness of calling a 5bet shove against the given ranges. However, when holding the other two hands, the smaller 4bet provided you with increased leverage; with 65s and KQo, decreasing the size of your 4bet made it possible to correctly fold to 5bet shoves in spots where you would’ve had to call if your 4bet were bigger.
The results were especially drastic with 65s, the small suited connector. With this hand, you were priced in to call three times out of four when making a 4bet to pot. When you made a small 4bet, though, you were priced in zero times out of four.
Being mathematically forced to call off most of your stack is bad when you know you are a significant dog in the pot. Being able to 4bet bluff with the knowledge that you can fold to a 5bet all in is a nice luxury. Decreasing the size of a 4bet makes this process possible, perhaps at the expense of some fold equity. How much fold equity (if any)? Tough to say.
Won’t villains adjust to my small 4bets?
Probably not, especially at 200 NL. But yes, if you’re pulling this crap often with junk, smart villains should notice eventually and begin to shove over your 4bets with a wider range. If they adjust, you adjust. 4betting small with premium hands is a good adjustment and is important for balance.
So, according to this article, does it never make sense to 4bet pot?
It never makes sense to 4bet pot according to the assumptions in this article. If I had some way of knowing that light 3betters react the same way to small 4bets as to pot 4bets, I’d eliminate the pot 4bet from my arsenal because if this were the case, 4betting pot would be inferior to both 4betting small and to 4bet shoving, in my opinion.
However, it’s impossible to prove that fold equity is the same regardless of 4betting size.
With the information I have, I’ll probably begin to replace pot 4bets with a combination of small 4bets and 4bet shoves. Note that it’s important to make both small 4bets and 4bet pushes with both hands that are marginal and hands that are powerful."
Article de la semaine débutant 101
Suivez cet article parlant de la gestion de votre compte de poker et des limites jouées.
http://www.princepoker.com/faire-argent-an-fond-roulement/18
http://www.princepoker.com/faire-argent-an-fond-roulement/18
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Interface made for a AdobeImageReady project. Basically it's a Tupperware 'realist' website.
Mp3 skin!
I did that layout for a possible useable mp3 skin. Basically you can find the playlist in the topright, scrolling down is also possible. Three options are available, Mute (will mute sound), SHuffle (will randomize the playlist), repeat (will repeat the actual song selected). Theres also a 'interface following the beat' in the top left.
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