KeepYourChips Articles

Shorthanded Limit Hold'em: Basic Preflop Steal and Defense

Entity — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:53:48 +0000

In general, your defense standards should be largely dependent upon several things: 1. The preflop range of hands of the blind stealer. 2. The relative skill difference between you and the preflop raiser. 3. Other smaller factors, like rake considerations. The biggest thing you should be considering when you are debating a defense situation is whether or not you can play the hand losing less than you would by folding. While folding is technically a 0EV play, applications like PokerTracker track the individual profitability that you fold in the BB as being – .5BB. When facing a raise, the question is not necessarily “will I make money playing this hand,” but more so “will I lose less money than .5BB by playing this hand.” Phrasing the question this way is tricky, but can be helpful when doing post-play analysis of hands. Generally I would shy away from analyzing particular hands until you have a very large database. Trying to figure out what a suitable range of defense hands is, you will need to break the situation down. First, I ask what I know about the preflop raiser; how do they tend to play postflop? Do they always play big pots, or do they give up easily? How hard will it be to make them fold if I flop a draw — and how likely are they to pay off with a wide range of hands if I flop a pair or better? From there, I start thinking about their likely preflop range, and how my hand will play out postflop vs. them. Finally, I start to formulate a basic postflop plan based on recent hands, on their image, my image, and combine everything else into a quick little decision to play or not play. An example of this thought process: I am sitting in the big blind. UTG raises. He is very tight with a UTG raising range of 88-AA, ATs+, AJo+, and KQs+. He plays aggressively postflop and is tough and tricky to play against. In this spot, I’d play incredibly tight. You are out of position vs. a tough opponent who has a handrange weighted toward very good hands. Hands like ATo, A9o, A7s, 86s — hands that I would defend with frequently — I would fold here. It seems simple, but I see a lot of otherwise very good players making mistakes like this; rather than folding hands that are marginal at best vs. this sort of opposition, they see the concrete strength of their own hand and decide to play anyway, whereas vs. a “normal” opponent (one who plays worse postflop or raises a wider range preflop) I would probably call with all of these hands. A small note on position: an important thing to remember is that most players in 6-handed games will raise much more often the closer they get to the button. Consequently, against opponents who are in late position (CO, Button), I will defend with many hands that I would simply find untenable in defense versus an earlier raiser — hands like T9o, 98o, A8o, KTo-JTo, etc. When I am looking at the strength of my own hand, I consider a few things: 1. How the hand plays postflop. Is it a hand that prefers to win small pots frequently, or one that prefers to win large pots infrequently? A good example of this contrast would be between A3o and 76s; A3o will often win at showdown, but when it does, it will rarely win a big pot vs. a typical opponent. 76s, on the other hand, is a hand that, when it wins, will generally win a bigger pot: usually you won’t win much with top pair with 76s, but you will win a lot when you make a straight or a flush. This is a very simplified example, but the concept is important. 2. How likely I am to face domination preflop. This is effectively the difference between defending with K3o and 87s. 87s will be dominated significantly less frequently than K3o. 3. How often and easily I can win at showdown unimproved. This comes into play often when defending with Ace and King-high hands. The idea has been to lend a hand in determining your own process for defending the blinds. There is no concrete “right or wrong” to determining what range of hands you should defend with, or how often you should defend your blinds in general. I’d say that shooting for defending your big blind between 50 and 60% is probably in the neighborhood of correct. I know of several excellent players who defend much more often, and a few who defend less often. As much as it is an individual choice, it does effect our image, and more importantly, intricacies of our postflop play. The important thing to remember when beginning the exploration of blind defense is that the process of learning how to defend your blinds is going to be more important than specifically learning what to defend with. A few other game-specific decisions Despite all the analysis that goes into it, blind defense is really more art than science. There are lots of things that you can not quantify at any given moment, yet are important to realize in the midst of the game. Here are a few examples of hands that I played that are far from standard, yet in the moment that the hand went down, were completely normal for me: The cutoff raises. I haven’t played many hands recently and have been folding my blinds a lot; he, on the other hand, has been folding to a lot of flop checkraises and turn bets after stealing preflop. The big blind is a fairly tight TAG . I have T9s in the small blind and 3-bet. Why? I have a tight image, and he is running bad. While at some point he is going to begin to show hands down more frequently than he is right now, at this point I think he is folding way too easily; even though I am out of position, I think that when he does not hit a hand, he will often fold to either a flop or a turn bet. In addition, when he has a big enough hand to take to showdown it will be easy for me to get away from my hand if it is not sufficiently strong. If I flop a strong hand and he merely flops a decent hand, I will win quite a few bets from him. I am facing a situation where I will often when the pot when neither of us hit, and when I will win a lot of bets when I hit and lose very few when he hits. By taking the initiative preflop versus a player who is trapped in weak-tight mode, I will win on scary boards that miss us both (this may even often include Kxx boards and Axx boards), and can still have the ability to win big pots when I flop a monster and he determines his hand is showdownable. Even if he is tightened up a bit more than normal preflop, against a player who is running bad, this sort of moment-specific adjustment is important to recognize. This example brings up a basic comment about defending your small blind. Which I advocate doing infrequently – I probably defend my small blind less than 20% of the time overall, compared to defending my big blind around 50% of the time. If I were the big blind in this hand, I would 3-bet some portion of the time (maybe 20-30% of the time) and I would call and checkraise a lot of flops the rest of the time. In the small blind, it is important for me to 3-bet any hand I am defending with here, as I do not want to offer the big blind attractive odds of 5:1 on a preflop call. The ability for me to win with this hand unimproved is significantly decreased when there are multiple players in the pot. This is something that many newer players forget when they are defending in the small blind; often I see the mistake of people coldcalling with A9o, KJo, etc., when they should either be folding these hands or 3-betting them. Be thinking about how your handrange in the small blind does versus the opener; if it is going to be ahead often, 3-bet, taking initiative in the hand and often getting the pot heads-up. If not, strongly consider folding. It is rare that a coldcall in the small blind versus an openraiser is correct. A final note on game-specific decisions: remember to always consider what other people think of you when you are stealing or defending. If they think you are playing super laggy, do not 3-bet Q7s in the small blind. If they think you are playing super tight, well, you might be able to get away with it (I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is at least within the realm of possibility). The same goes for altering your steal range based on how you are running and how you are perceived: ideally you want to be able to take down as many pots, raised or unraised, without any contention. Keep this in mind each time you are facing a questionable preflop decision.

Shorthanded Limit Hold'em: An Introduction to Preflop Play

Entity — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:50:47 +0000

The battle in the blinds In hold’em, blind stealing and defense is what separates the great players from small winners and mediocre losers. As you play increasingly shorthanded games, the amount of time you spend in the blinds increases dramatically. You will spend one and half more times paying blinds at a six-handed table than you will at a 10-handed table (33% of your hands vs. 20% of your hands). It is a very simple concept that drives the action of shorthanded poker. Compared to a full ring game, it will seem that nearly all of the hands you are in will be heads up vs. a blind, or with yourself in the blinds heads-up vs. a single opponent. Learning to adapt to these situations can be difficult – it is often more art than science – but is integral in succeeding in shorthanded play. Learning the hard way: common mistakes When I first began playing poker (specifically Texas Hold’em), the vast majority of the hands that I played were full ring. After playing full ring for sixty thousand hands, higher-limit friends told me that the best way to become a better player was to learn to play 6max. Following their advice, I moved over to $1/2 6-max at PartyPoker and began playing. At the time, there were not nearly as many resources today as there are now for an aspiring shorthanded poker player — the forums at twoplustwo did not included anything about shorthanded play, and the best you could hope to find was to post a hand and note that the game was a bit more shorthanded. I just jumped in and began playing…horribly. Though I do not have the databases anymore, I vaguely recall my stats being something like 38/15/1.8. I was too loose preflop, too passive postflop, and was putting myself in far more troublesome situations than I needed to — the vast majority of “marginal” spots were not profitable at all, especially for a player of my skill level. Simply put, I overadjusted. I knew that playing shorthanded required some differences but I did not know what they were, and I took basic ideas (you should play more hands) and over applied them. I was reminded of this today when a younger player asked me what the main differences I saw between $3/6 6m and $3/6 full ring play were. Honestly, though there are differences, they aren’t as drastic as people seem to think they are — more importantly, they aren’t nearly as drastic as people tend to envision when they first begin playing. A few specific examples I know it helps to be specific, so I will try to actually mention the types of mistakes I was making: opening K9o UTG+1, KTo UTG (this is marginally profitable if you are a good player but in a high rake environment with loose players it is likely a loser). QJo UTG . QTo UTG . A7o, A8o. Any Ace in the cutoff. Any King on the button. Far too many hands in the small blind vs. a frequently-defending button. The list goes on and on. I was raising a lot of hands and putting myself in a horrible position postflop, after getting called and not having any idea where I was postflop unless I flopped good. Example? You raise A9o UTG and are coldcalled by a loose player and a loose-aggressive Button. The BB folds, strangely enough, and you see a flop of J75 with two clubs. What’s the right play? Quantifying the right play here (bet-call, bet-fold, check-fold) is difficult enough when you are in position, but at least there you are given the advantage of having a bit more information. In this case, you’ve opened with a marginal hand in early position and now are presented with the options of betting blindly into two loose players, one who may raise with a wide range (club draws, 98, air, any pair, etc), or checking and taking it from there. Hopefully you can see the difficulty this presents. If you are an excellent postflop player, these situations (to an extent) can be handled with enough skill to make the hand + EV from this situation; however, in lower stakes games, overcoming the prohibitive rake structures is difficult enough playing a smaller range of hands. Walking the tightrope A large portion of your profit in shorthanded play will come from blind steal attempts in shorthanded games; either you will steal the blinds outright, or you will win a larger pot a portion of the time when the blinds defend. Even in passive games when blinds defend frequently but not aggressively, the amount of profit to be found from stealing the blinds is quite high. At the same time, you have to remember not to become too wildly aggressive with marginal hands. Although I hate “shooting for numbers,” a good overall ASB (attempted to steal blinds) range should be in the neighborhood of 35%. The basic handrange I gave above may actually be somewhat too tight, depending on the game and the opponents, for blind stealing; often I will find myself adding in suited 1-gappers like 97s, T8s, and many suited Kings (easily K7s+, but often all the way to K2s) as well. This is entirely dependent upon my opponents, though — versus a blind who calls a lot preflop and check-folds a lot of flops, I will widen my range to include hands like 86s, 75s, 76s, T7s, Q7s, Q8o+ — basically a ton of hands intending to take down a 5SB+ pot very often. The ideal that you are looking for in terms of blind stealing is to make life difficult for an opponent who will be out of position on all postflop streets; if you raise with a very narrow range of hands your hand will usually be stronger than his, however, this comes with your range being easier to read postflop. If you raise with a much wider range preflop, your hand becomes much more difficult to read and you become more difficult to play against, but if you take that too far then you’ve sacrificed EV by raising with hands that cannot sustain a profit long-term. Early in your poker career, I’d recommend sticking with a more solid range of hands, slowly increasing your range as you become a better postflop player. A very general range that is somewhat fair (quite possibly a bit on the tight side, but it is unlikely to get anyone in significant trouble for playing too tight in lower limit games, as the impact the rake has on hands like opening 22 OTB ) follows here: Open for a Raise from Any Positon ( UTG , MP, CO, Button) AA-77, AKs-A8s, AKo-AJo, KQs-KTs, KQo, QJs Open for a Raise starting from MP, CO, or Button The above, plus 66, ATo, KJo, QTs, JTs Open for a Raise starting from CO or Button The above plus 55-44, A7s-A5s, A9o-A8o, K9s, KT, Q9s, QJ, QT, J9s Open for a raise from the Button The above plus A7o-A2o, Q8s, T9s, J8s, JTo A more loose-aggressive range advocated by a number of players on the twoplustwo forums is linked here: Preflop Chart ( http://static.deucescracked.com/preflop_chart.xls ) It is much more complete than the basic range I gave, and I generally agree with some of the recommendations. It occasionally feels too loose, especially with regard to implied-odds hands in late position, but overall is very good. Before reading through it and deciding “ok, open KJo UTG every time,” it is important to take into consideration the process that goes into making preflop decisions: this applies both in defense and in stealing.

How to Think About Limit Holdem: Answers to Exercises

sweetjazz3 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:32:18 +0000

Answers to Exercises
Exercise 1
(a) The suits of the cards are irrelevant, so the calculation is the same and the answer is 0.274 bets. (b) Whether our opponent has AQ or AK does not affect the calculation since we still have the same number of outs to win, so the EV is again 0.274 bets. © If we miss our straight, we still lose 1 bet, but now if we make a straight, we lose 3 bets. The EV of a turn call is (-3 bets) x (0.182) + (-1 bets) x (0.818) = -1.364 bets.
Exercise 2
(a) The calculation is very similar to Example 3. However, AK, AQ and AJs make up a total of 27 (= 12 + 12 + 3) combinations while AA and 99 make up a total of 4 (= 3 + 1) combinations. Thus the EV of a turn call is [(27) x (0.274) + (4) x (-1.364)] / 31 = 0.063 bets. (b) The calculation is complicated a bit by the fact that we have to break up the cases of when we make a straight based on whether it is the T or the 5 that completes our hand. If we river a T, there are 33 hand combinations that we beat and 6 that we lose to. If we river a 5, there are 39 hand combinations that we beat and 3 that we lose to. The probability of rivering a T is the same as rivering a 5 and it is 0.091 (half of 0.182). We’ll set up our EV equation a little differently this time; you should spend a little thought as to why this method is equivalent to the previous one. Thus the EV is calculated as follows: (probability of not rivering a straight) * (EV of not rivering a straight) + (probability of rivering a T) * (EV of rivering a T) + (probability of rivering a 5) * (EV of rivering a 5) = 0.818 * (-1 bet) + 0.091 * ([33 * (6 bets) + 6 * (-1 bets)]/39) + 0.091 * ([39 * (6 bets) + 3 * (-1 bets)]/42) = 0.131 bets

How to Think About Limit Holdem: Part Three

sweetjazz3 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:31:01 +0000

Hand ranges and combinations
Having worked through these two examples, you may have noticed something particularly unrealistic in them. In general, we will not know our opponent’s hole cards. Rather, we will assign a hand range to our opponent. To do this, we begin by assuming that any two card combination of hole cards is as likely to be dealt to our opponent. We then begin to rule out hands based on his actions. In examples 1 and 2, if our opponent is very tight, we might be able to narrow our opponent’s range down to AA through TT, AK and AQs based on his early position raise. Of course, in practice, we may not be able to definitively pin down a hand range, and we’ll come back to this point later, but let us ignore this issue for the time being. We might assume that our opponent will bet his entire range on the flop, but that when he bets the turn after we call the flop, that he only has AA, AK, or AQs. If that is the case, how do we decide how to evaluate our options? The basic idea is to compute the EV of each option for each of our opponent’s possible holdings and then compute a weighted average of these individual EVs. The reason that we use a weighted average is that some hands are more likely to be dealt than others. A hand combination is the number of ways that a particular hand can be dealt. For example, there are 6 ways to be dealt pocket 4s. This can be computed either by enumerating all the possible suit combinations or by realizing that there are 4 possible choices for the first suit and 3 choices for the second suit, but this double counts the combinations since the order of the suits does not matter, so there are 4 × 3 / 2 = 6 total combinations. Similarly, there are 16 ways to be dealt K7: 4 possible suits for the king times 4 possible suits for the seven. There will be less combinations possible if some of the cards are accounted for. If you hold Ks Js and the flop comes Kh 7d 4d, then there is only possible combination of pocket kings for your opponent, since he must hold exactly Kd Kc to have pocket kings given what you know.
Example 3
We will repeat Example 2 and compute the EV of calling a turn bet, assuming now that our opponent’s hand range is AA, AK or AQs. Let us first determine how many combinations of each hand are possible. Since one ace is accounted for on the flop, there are only 3 combinations of pocket aces possible for our opponent (As Ah, As Ad, Ah Ad). Similarly, there are 12 combinations of AK possible and 3 combinations of AQs possible. Next, observe that our EV calculation in Example 2 applies to each of the AK combinations, not just Ad Ks. Additionally, the EV calculation will be the same for AQs. Thus for 15 combinations, a turn call will have an EV of 0.274 bets. However, we must do a separate calculation for the 3 combinations of AA. You did this in Exercise 1 and should have found that the EV of the turn call in that case was -1.364 bets. The EV of a turn call versus this hand range is therefore equal to [(number of combinations of AK and AQs) x (EV of a turn call versus AK or AQs) + (number of combinations of AA) x (EV of a turn call versus AA) ] / (total number of combinations) = [(15) x (0.274) + (3) x (-1.364)] / 18 = 0.001 bets. This is about as close to a neutral EV decision as one can come up with. Intuitively, this should make some sense. You are very likely to be up against a hand where you have a positive EV turn call (15 out of the 18 combinations), but the 3 combinations where you are drawing dead has a much higher negative EV. In this particular calculation, those two factors balance out almost exactly evenly.
Exercise 2
Repeat Example 3 under the assumptions that our opponent (a) has a preflop range of AA through 88, AK, AQ, AJs, KQs and his range for betting the flop and turn is AA, 99, AK, AQ, AJs, (b) bets his entire original preflop range (AA – TT, AK, AQs) on flop, turn and river and always calls a river raise.
To finish up, let us return briefly to the fact that hand ranges often are not known precisely. We can handle this uncertainty by assigning weighted hand ranges. For example, suppose that we think an opponent could only have AA or AK in a certain situation. We are certain that if he had AA, then he would take the line he has taken. But if he had AK, then we think that there is only a 30% chance that he would play his hand this way. This could an estimate based on our uncertainty (meaning that he either will or will not play AK this way 100% of the time, and the 30% represents a quantification of our certainty that he will play his hand this way) or it could be based on a detailed read that our opponent mixes up his play (so that 30% of the time he has AK he will play it this way, and he will take a different line the other 70% of the time he has AK). While we would still count 6 combinations of AA, we weight the 16 combinations of AK by the 0.30 weighting factor, so we only count 4.8 combinations. (Don’t worry that the combinations are not whole numbers; the math still works the same.) Given these assumptions, the likelihood that our opponent has AA is 6 / (6 + 4.8) = 0.56 and similarly there is a 44% chance he has AK. If there was no weighting, he would have been much more likely to have AK than AA, but since he doesn’t always AK this way, the likelihood that he has aces goes up.

How to Think About Limit Holdem: Part Two

sweetjazz3 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:29:18 +0000

Expected Value
The first tool used to analyze a betting decision is the concept of expected value (or EV). In order to calculate EV, you make a list of all the possible ways the hand can play out; for each possible scenario, you multiply the number of bets you will win or lose in the given situation by the probability of that situation occurring, and then you add up these numbers for all the possible scenarios. A concrete example will hopefully make this clear.
Example 1: Suppose that a short-stacked early position player raises with Ad Ks; everyone folds to you in the BB and you call with 8h 7h. For the purposes of this calculation, we will assume that the folded SB is equal to the rake paid in the hand, so that the pot has exactly 2 big bets in it at this point. The flop comes Ac 9d 6s. You check, your opponent bets, and you call, so there are now 3 big bets in the pot. The turn is the 9h, you check, and your opponent makes a full bet which puts him all-in. There are now 4 big bets in the pot, and the question is whether you are better off folding or calling at this point. This can be determined by comparing the EV of the two options. The EV of folding is easy to calculate: there is only one scenario where you gain 0 bets and it occurs 100% of the time, so the EV of folding is 0. The EV of calling is only slightly more complicated. There are now two possible scenarios: either you hit one of your 8 straight outs to win the pot or you miss your straight and lose the pot. Let’s calculate the probability of these two events first. There are 44 cards remaining in the deck (52 minus the 8 cards accounted for on the board and in the two players’ hands). Since each card in the deck is as likely as any other to be the river card, the probability of making a straight is 8/44 = 0.182. The probability that you don’t win can be computed in two ways: either as 36/44 = 0.818 (since 44 – 8 = 36 cards cause you to lose the pot) or simply as 1 – 0.18 = 0.82 since the sum of the probabilities of all possible events must add up to exactly 1. If we call and make our straight on the river, we win the 4 bets that are in the pot, while if we call and lose the pot, we lose the 1 bet that we used to make the call of our opponent’s turn bet. (When calculating the EV of the turn decision, we don’t consider how much money in the pot came from our previous bets, as we no longer have control over those bets at this point in the hand. Our decision is the same no matter how the 4 bets ended up in the pot on the turn.) So to determine the EV of calling, we compute (amount won when we make our straight) x (probability of making a straight) + (amount won when we don’t make our straight) x (probability of not making a straight) = (4 bets) x (0.182) + (-1 bets) x (0.818) = -0.09 bets. We interpret this calculation by saying that, on average, calling the turn bet loses 0.09 bets. In general, we write down all our formulas in terms of how much we “win,” subject to the understanding that winning a negative number of bets is equivalent to losing the corresponding number of bets. In this admittedly simplified and somewhat contrived example, the better option is to fold.
Example 2: Suppose that we keep the action the same as in the first example, but give our short-stacked player two additional big bets. Thus, when he bets the turn, he still has 2 big bets left in his stack. We will further assume that if we call the turn, he will bet any river card and call a raise no matter what card comes. Let us now consider whether folding or calling is better on the turn. (Hopefully, given our assumption that our opponent never folds his hand, you see that raising the turn is clearly worst, though it’s a good exercise to go ahead and compute the exact EV of raising the turn if you assume either that your opponent will reraise you all-in or if you assume that your opponent will call the turn raise and call any river bet.) As before, the EV of folding is still 0. When calculating the EV of calling the turn bet, we must make some assumptions on how we will play the river. Let us suppose that we will fold the river if we do not make a straight (that includes folding if we make a pair of 8s or 7s on the end), and that we will check/raise the river if we make our straight. Given our opponent’s holding and the assumptions about his play, this is the best strategy we could employ. In this case, we will now win 6 bets if we make our straight (the 4 in the pot plus the 2 we win on the river), while we still lose only 1 bet if we don’t make our straight. Mimicking the EV calculation from Example 1, the EV of calling is (6 bets) x (0.182) + (-1 bets) x (0.818) = 0.274 bets. Because of the future money won the river when we make our straight, our turn call is now profitable. This is a prototypical example of implied odds.
Exercise 1: Repeat Example 2 if our opponent holds (a) As Kd (b) Ad Qs © Ad As. Answers to exercises will be given in Section IV.

How to Think About Limit Holdem: Part One

sweetjazz3 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:27:22 +0000

Introduction
This is the first in a series of articles that will discuss limit holdem from the ground up. Although the examples will be chosen from limit holdem, much of the discussion applies to all forms of poker. Much of the material covered will be of a theoretical nature. The reason for this is that the alternate approach — giving a concrete set of rules to guide one’s play — can only get one so far in today’s game. There are so many different possible situations that occur when playing poker, and any set of rules will either be too simplistic to give good advice on a consistent basis or too complex for a human mind to remember. Instead, to succeed in limit holdem or any form of poker, there are some key concepts that a player must understand and a thought process that a player must apply in order to beat games, particularly online where the skills of the player pool are fairly sophisticated. In this first article, we will develop the strategic framework for thinking about poker hands. All of the concepts introduced here will be used in the subsequent articles; you should think of the ideas presented here as the basic components of your limit holdem toolbox, which we will use to develop a thorough understanding of how to be successful at limit holdem.
In this article, we will discuss how to compute expected values and how to account for hand ranges and hand combinations when making expected value calculations. When our opponent has a very narrow range of hands, we can actually do the calculations by hand. This article will be somewhat technical, but the ideas presented are needed for a complete understanding of later topics. Future articles will discuss equity, odds, betting theory, position, hand range analysis, hand planning, exploitability, and balance.
The first topic that we will discuss is the luck and skill factors in poker. It is commonly asked whether poker is a game of chance or a game of skill. This is a great example of the logical fallacy known as the false dilemma. The question has no meaningful answer as posed because poker is a game of luck and a game of skill. The luck aspect of poker is immediately evident too us each time we take a bad beat. (Interestingly, our minds tend not to be as sensitive to the luck element when we are the ones who outdraw our opponent.) The skill aspect of poker is a bit more subtle to understand; indeed, many weaker players never acquire much understanding of the skills required to win at poker. The skill in poker arises from the betting decisions made in the course of a hand. The rest of this article will discuss in detail how to determine which betting decision is best in any given situation. Of course, the examples will be kept rather simple and somewhat artificial to make the calculations relatively easy to carry out, but the theory applies to the more complex situations that occur in actual hands.