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Something funny happened to me in mid-2005. I had been playing the $10/20 and $15/30 games online for about a year, happily humming away at approximately 1.25 BB/100, which is considered a relatively solid winrate for mid-stakes hold’em. In August, unfortunately, I got very sick and was confined to my bed for a majority of my waking hours. I decided to use this down-time to really work on my poker game, so I delved into my PokerTracker database, picked up a few new books that I had heard good things about, and tried to identify leaks in my game. Here’s the interesting part: my results skyrocketed. Since moving up to $15/$30, I had painstakingly nudged my winrate up, one tenth of a BB/100 at a time: from 0.5 to around 1.25…not even a full BB/100 over the course of a year. Beginning in August 2005, though, my winrate shot up to an almost unfathomable 3.4 BB/100, where it has remained for my last 200,000 hands played. Far from being a “brag-column”, though, I’d like to detail here one of the 4 or 5 tools I added to my game that I feel contributed to this stratospheric ascent.
(Note; for those unfamiliar with PokerTracker terminology, 1.2 BB/100 is shorthand for ‘1.2 big bets per hundred hands played’. One big bet refers to the turn and river sized bets at whatever stakes you may be playing. So for example, at $20/$40, a 1.2 BB/100 winrate would represent 1.2 x $40 = $48 per 100 hands played.)
Consider the following hand, which is indicative of the type of set-up we’ll be discussing here. One player of somewhat average skill limps into the pot from middle-position at a 10-person table, the small blind completes his bet, and you check from the big blind with T5 offsuit. The flop comes K,6,2 of different suits and the small blind checks to you. Most novices would probably look at their hopeless holding and check, allowing the player in middle position to scoop up the pot with an easy bet. In fact, I probably would have advised just this play if you asked me about it a year ago. Ask me today, however, and I’d tell you that even though I missed the flop entirely, I frequently like to bet at pots like these from early position, perhaps as much as 50% of the time! The relevant inquiry you should be making (and the one that will guide much of the thought process delineated in this article) is the following:
** What kind of hand could my opponent(s) possibly call with if I bet at this pot now? **
In our example, I’m not too worried about the small blind, but let’s discuss the middle-position limper first. A flop of K,6,2 is very unlikely to have hit his hand. What types of hands might reasonable opponents limp with (rather than raise) from middle position? As an aside, I think that limping into a pot when no one else has yet entered it is one of the cardinal mistakes of preflop play. Unless you’re doing it to conceal a monster hand like AA or KK, you should never be limping when first into a pot. Getting back to our example, what hands might the villain have here that would have been improved by the flop? KQ, KJ or KT perhaps. Maybe A6. Perhaps a middle pair like 77 or 88, which retain decent value even after this flop. Maybe even low suited connectors like 6,7 or 4,5. The message I’m trying to convey here, however, is that there are only 3 or 4 hands that a reasonable opponent might hold that would justify him calling your bet on the flop. If he’s at all rational, he’ll quietly fold hands like QJ, AT, and you might even get him to fold hands that hit the flop weakly like A2 or 56. Let’s return to the small-blind now, who is also still in the hand. There are three principle factors driving my earlier statement that I was not too concerned with him in our example:
- the typical holding of a small blind is much weaker than that of a non-blind,
- the small blind has already shown weakness with his check on the flop, and
- the strength that we’re exhibiting with our bet from out of position and into the middle-position villain. Any bet from early position with players left to act is a relatively strong display. If the small blind is at all perceptive, he will recognize your bet as such and likely fold unless he holds a King.
I remember, in fact, the precise moment that elucidated for me this new thought process. It was an example given in Bob Ciaffone’s very good, albeit dense book on middle-limit hold’em. (Apologies in advance, since I am about to bastardize, and undoubtedly butcher his example.) Ciaffone described roughly the same situation as that given above. You’re in the big blind, and there is one middle-position limper and the small blind to contend with. The flop comes K,6,2 of different suits, and the author then gives the reader 5 different hands, each of which had been helped by the flop to varying degrees, and asks how each one should be played, assuming that the small blind checks to you each time. I considered each hand in turn: A2, 57, 33, 34, and Q9. I remember sitting there for a good 15 minutes, carefully evaluating the strength of each of the five hands, and deciding how they should be played. I then turned the page to discover the author’s “answer key.” He recommended betting with all 5 hands. The point he was making was a simple one, but one that I had not yet internalized at that stage of my poker career: some hands are best played by evaluating the situation from your opponents’ perspective. Stop approaching poker decisions asking only to what extent the flop helped your hand – there’s a corresponding inquiry that needs to be made and it’s asking how likely the flop was to have hit your opponents’ hands. I can’t stress enough the importance of factoring each of the preceding queries into your decision analysis.
Another very attractive feature of this strategy is that it is remarkably easy to get away from when you run into an opponent with a real hand. If your bet on the flop gets raised, there’s absolutely no shame in quietly folding and waiting to outplay your opponent on a later hand. The decision process, however, gets a little more dicey if your bet merely gets called, as you’ll have to decide whether to fire another (more expensive) bullet on the turn. Here’s one more thing to look out for: if you’re considering making a stab at a pot from early position on a paired flop that is unlikely to have hit any of your opponents, learn to recognize the important difference between a flop of T,T,2 and 2,2,T. If you lead out with a bet on the former, an opponent behind you with a low pair will likely believe that you are betting with a 2 (who in their right mind, he might reason, would bet on the flop if he held a T, rather than concealing his hand with a check??) and reason that his pair of fives, for example is still good. You’re far more likely to get a middle pair to fold by betting on the second flop (2,2,T), since an opponent with a low pair would reason that regardless of whether you hold a 2 or a T, his hand is inferior.
The take-home message is a simple one: before you decry leading out with a bet into a field of multiple opponents with nothing but a bluff as poker suicide, realize how rarely such a strategy needs to be successful in order to prove profitable. Consider a situation where 3 players limp into a pot, you complete from the small-blind with 4,5 and the big blind also checks. There are now 5 small bets in the pot, as the flop comes K,3,3. You may have missed that flop entirely, but an investment of one more bet only has to win the pot a measly 20% of the time to be a profitable one! In my experience, these types of low-risk bluffs are successful far more often than that. I mentioned at the outset that this strategy was an integral component of the improvements I made to my game in the summer of 2005, and I encourage you to practice looking for situations that seem ripe for executing these types of low-risk moves. Remember: you’re not “bluffing”, but rather making a calculated wager that the flop is unlikely to have helped your opponent’s hand.
Samuel V.R. is a founding partner of Law School Poker, and a well-known and successful limit hold’em player. He can typically be found at the $30/$60 to $100/$200 games on Party, Stars, and PokerRoom.
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