This concept is called thin value. Thin Value Betting means making a bet to be called by worse hands, accepting that better hands will also call the bet and understanding that the value obtained from worse hands will be more than the money lost to better hands. The thinner your bet i. Other times, you may settle for half-pot as a thin value bet. The idea is to retain the very worst end of his rangehands that are weak enough that they will actually be affected by our bet size.
Sometimes this means trying to get value out of Ace-high or bottom pair. In order to accomplish this, we usually have to reduce our bet size. Sometimes you wont have a choice as to your bet size in thin spots, unfortunately.
I can recall one hand I played. I had a very wild image and had been 3-betting a lot preflop. I picked up QQ in the blinds and 3-bet a pro who had raised on the button.
He called, and the flop came down A I bet for value, because I thought that with my image he could call me with worse hands and that he didnt have too many aces in his range for calling my 3-bet preflop as hed 4-bet with AK.
The turn card was a blank, and now I had a decision to make. If I bet for value, it would commit my stack as I had only a pot-sized bet left. If I checked, I could potentially miss value I realized my bet was thinhe could certainly have an A sometimes, or have flopped a set. But I shoved anyway, and with my crazy image, I was called by 99 and won a big pot.
However, despite the results, I accept that sometimes in that spot I will be called by AT, AJ, 44, or other hands that have me beat. I have reason to believe that the value I gain from worse hands is enough to compensate.
Other times, good opponents will be able to tell that you are value betting thinly and will respond aggressively once they perceive your weakness. I can recall one hand I played against a very good high stakes regular. He had raised in the cutoff, and I called in the big blind with KQo. The flop came down K98r. I checked, he c-bet, and I made a somewhat thin check-raise for value.
As I check-raise a lot of flops, I was pretty sure he could call me with a worse hand. The turn card came a T one of the worst cards in the deck for me , and I checked, planning on folding to a bet.
He checked behind. I felt his most likely hands were JT or QT that picked up a pair on the turn. The river was a 2, and I decided to go for thin value. He thought for a while, then raised all-in. I realized that my hand was perceived to be weak and that my opponent was very capable of applying pressure and being aggressive. Despite the possibility that he had slowplayed a big hand, I was relatively confident in my read, so I called and stacked his JT.
After the hand, somebody asked me if I had bet small to induce a raise. No, I said, I bet for thin value. Inducing a bluff raise was just something that happened as a consequence of that. Value betting is the way to beat poker. The more value we can squeeze out of hands that are likely ahead, the more money were going to make in the long run. Understanding how to change your value bet sizes depending on the thinness of your bet will help you get the maximum amount of value with your entire range.
Chapter Six: Player Identification and Basic Hand-Reading A lot of players make hand-reading out to be far more difficult than it really is. They trouble themselves over extensive weighted range analysis, Bayes Theorem, and complex expected value calculations.
At its most basic level, hand-reading is much simpler than that. I tell my students to focus on one simple question: Is he aggressive or passive? If hes passive, hand-reading is a piece of cake. If he raises, he has an extremely strong hand. Thats what being passive means. If hes aggressive, handreading does become more difficult. Well talk about that in the advanced section.
But first, how do we determine whether or not someone is aggressive or passive? To the average online player, this question seems simple to answer. The world of online poker has become dominated by statistical analysis programs, hand history recorders and replayers, and HUDs heads-up displays. For any given sample size of hands, you can find out everything from broad, easily used stats like preflop looseness, preflop raise percentage, and total aggression factor, to extremely specific statisticsfold to river check-raise percentage, etc.
Worthless is a little bit too strong of a word, but in my opinion most statistics are extremely unimportant. How do I get reads? How do I know how people play? Am I not at a huge disadvantage? Not at all. Instead, I look for the things that are really important. I call this player identification. Essentially, it means that there are things you can look for which will tell you quickly and easily whether or not someone at your table is aggressive or passive.
These things include: Stack size. If someone is sitting with less than a full buy-in at a table, and theyre not a proshortstacker, theyre usually passive. If someone calls the big blind preflop and doesnt open with a raise, theyre passive. This trend generally applies to their entire game, both preflop and postflop.
While an aggressive act, this is generally an indicator of a passive player who finally has something worth playingespecially when he minraises postflop. Additionally, a lot of passive players will minraise a wide range preflop and then play passively postflop. Number of tables. If somebody is sitting on 6 tables and sitting with a full stack on every single one, theyre probably aggressive.
If somebody is sitting on only one or two tables, and they have limped, minraised, or not kept a full stack, theyre usually passive. If somebody sitting on your left has 3-bet you often and consistently, theyre usually aggressive. If somebody has only 3-bet you once or twice, and especially if theyve made the 3bet unusually small or unusually large, theyre usually passive.
A lot of players make decisions with the rationale that their opponent is bad. While he may be bad, bad isnt a sufficiently accurate descriptor to be useful to us in many cases. Im constantly seeing players bet QQ on a board and stacking off when a passive player raises them all in. They say, Oh, hes so bad, I couldnt fold when they get stacked by a set of eights. They should have said Oh, hes so passive, I had to fold.
There are only three types of players: 1 Bad-Passive. This type of player calls all the time and only raises with an extremely strong hand. Theyre easy to beatyou just value-bet them all the time and fold when they raise.
This player is easily the most common type of bad player. This type of player still calls all the time, but they sometimes make raises or bets at times that are inconsistent with any kind of strong holding. A great example is the flop I raise preflop, and a bad-aggressive player calls in the BB. The flop comes down , and he leads into me for a pot sized bet. This seems unlikely to be a strong hand, as hed most likely go for a check-raise.
So, I raise with any holding and he folds most of the time. I stacked a player like this twice in a row recently. The first time, I had AK, raised, and he called. The flop was AQT and he led into me for pot. I called. The turn card was an A.
He led again for pot. The river was a 2. He led into me again for pot. I shoved all-in for value, and he called and showed Q7 this hand was more-or-less standard on my end.
The very next hand, I raised with A5s, and he calls. He led into me on an board. The turn card was a 2. He shoved a 4 on the river, and I called again, and stacked his K3. His lines just didnt make sense, so I had no problem calling light against this type of player.
This player plays aggressively, bluffing in spots where they could show up with big hands and value betting in spots where they could show up with bluffs.
They balance their ranges well and pose a lot of problems both preflop and postflop. Well talk about how to beat these players throughout this book. Its important to note that both bad-passive and bad-aggressive are likely to make big calls, and thus bluffing them is, in general, a bad strategy thus its not unreasonable to say Im value-betting him thinly because hes bad or Im never bluffing him because hes bad.
These are simply shortcuts because the rules are the same whether the opponent is bad-passive or bad-aggressive. You may be tempted to bluff a bad-aggressive player when he minraises you for the third straight time on a TT4 board, but youll wish you hadnt when he calls you down with The plan for each type of bad player is simpleagainst a bad-passive player, we value bet them and we dont make big calls.
Against a badaggressive player, we value bet them and we do make big calls. Easy game. If you simply pay attention to the little indicators that will help you identify whether someone is passive or aggressive, youll find that hand-reading is far easier than you ever thought it could be.
You dont need stats. When you raise UTG bb deep, a fish calls 80bb deep, and a reg 3-bets in the SB bb deep you two have a lot of history , do NOT check his 3-bet percentage stat. If you had a stat for 3-bet percentage when a regular with which he has history raises UTG bb deep and a fish calls, you could probably use that.
In the meantime, however, focus on the things that are easily available, obvious, and trustworthy. Your reads will be easier to attain and more reliable to use. This is basically all I use statistics for. Id also like to note that bad-aggressive players are far rarer than bad-passive players simply because they go broke so fast. If you see a bad-aggressive player at your table, get ready to gamble, because hell probably be broke soon.
Chapter Seven: Nuts vs. Air Ratios Lets say we sit down at a table and immediately notice a bad-aggressive player going crazy. Hes not hard to spothes shoving bb all-in every hand regardless of his holding.
Weve seen him do it five straight hands now. How lightly should we call? So, a hand like AT becomes an instant-speed snap-call. Now, lets say we make our fist-pump, couldnt-be-happier call with AT and he shows us AA and stacks us. We feel sad. However, we know it was still the right playbecause the ratio of nut hands to air hands in our opponents range is unbalanced.
Well call this the nuts-to-air ratio, or NAR. More common than the bad-aggressive player with the wildly air-heavy NAR is the passive player with an extremely nuts-heavy NAR. If you have AA against a passive player on a JT75 board, youre comfortable betting for value; but, when youre raised, you need to assess your opponents NAR. Passive players have virtually no bluffs in that spot, and so your choice becomes easy.
A lot of spots, though, are far less obvious. Understanding NARs can help us in some very tricky spots against good aggressive players. We check and he fires a c-bet. For example, many opponents will not c-bet with Ace high or a pair of threes in this spot believing that no worse will call them or fearing a check-raise. So, when he c-bets, we can evaluate his range as being even more air-heavy than before.
Even when we are behind, KT has six overcards and decent equity against his value range. If his NAR is air-heavy, hes likely to continue bluffing on cards that are good for us in this case, tens and kings. This gives us improved implied odds. With all that considered, lets say that we end up deciding not to fold. Now its a choice between check-raising and check-calling. This choice depends on whether or not hell fold things like pairs or Ace-high at some point in the hand this will be covered in greater detail in the Advanced Street Projection chapter.
For the purpose of this example, lets say that we decide that the combination of retaining his bluffs and seeing a cheaper turn card makes check-calling better than check-raising. The turn card is an Ace. We check, and he bets again. Now we can be certain hes not firing a pair of threes probably not even a hand like pocket nines. If he was unlikely to c-bet an Ace on the flop, hes not likely to have that either. This limits his value range tremendously and keeps his NAR extremely air-heavy.
So, we see the formation of a hero-call situation. If we ignore NARs we can be tempted into folding our hand due solely to its absolute value i. In practice, you may notice that a lot of these situations with good aggressive regulars play out as though they were actually bad-aggressive instead. This is an important distinction to makewhen goodaggressive players dont manage their NARs and start getting overly bluff-heavy they often act indistinguishably from bad-aggressive players.
This always gives me confidence at the tablea badaggressive player who wants to gamble with me usually means Im going to win a lot of money. If a good-aggressive player turns into a bad-aggressive player, well Upper echelon players will be careful to manage their NARs so that they are difficult to read.
This may mean c-betting Ace high in some of those spots or value-betting thinly with a pair of threes on To some, this would be described as balancing. I prefer to think of balance as a consequence of trying to make the correct choice in each specific instance.
So, if you c-bet bluff on a board with JT, lets say and the turn is an Ace, reevaluate your fold equity. Against some people, the Ace isnt a scarecard at alltheyll expect you to bluff it because of your air-heavy flop NAR and they wont fold anything. So, in those spots I usually just give up. When you play more loosely than your opponent, giving up a lot postflop is okayit helps keep your NAR from going too far in either direction.
Keeping an eye on how often you bluff versus how often you value-bet is vital, especially when youre preparing to take on tougher opponents in more challenging games. Every time we get involved in a pot, were looking to exploit some advantage or combination of advantages.
Understanding and exploiting those advantages is called isolation. Isolation: To raise or reraise preflop in order to play a pot with a particular player or players. Often, were on the button and a weak player limps in front of us. We want to play pots with weak players, so we become inclined to isolate with a raise. What cards should we choose? Isolation is predicated on three advantages: 1 Card Advantage.
If we raise too loosely to isolate, we risk sacrificing all of our card advantage. Thus, if we raise J5o and get called by J6o, were actually at a card disadvantage. This isnt the worst thing in the world, as the better our positional and skill advantages, the more we can sacrifice card advantage. However, if we play hands that give up too much card advantage, we may not be able to play them profitably even if we have a ton of skill advantage.
Basically, we cant isolate with any two cards, but we can start to think about widening our range as our skill advantage increases. When we are in position, our cards have inherently more valueits easier to get the money in when we have a good hand, easier to apply pressure when we want to bluff, easier to control the pot size with average to weak hands, and easier to hand-read. Thus, we should be very inclined to isolate with a wide range of hands on the button, as we have the highest possible amount of positional advantage.
Our ability to make mistakes less often than our opponents and to force our opponents into mistakes increases the value of our hand. Thus, if were playing against somebody who is either bad-passive or bad-aggressive, we can isolate a wider range of hands because theyre making so many mistakes postflop that our hands have increased value. The worse they are, the looser we can isolate. Heres an example.
Lets say we accidentally sit down in a six-handed game with the five best players in the world. Were in the small blind, and we pick up pocket aces. Aces have so much card advantage that, even though we are in the worst position and have a massive skill disadvantage, we can still play the hand profitably. Aces are that good. Its also important to note that stack size has a strong effect on each of the three advantages, particularly skill and position.
When there is more money behind relative to the pot-size, both skill and position become much more powerful. So, while we might be able to play AA profitably at bb against the greatest players in the world, we might not be able to at bb deep. Or, we might be able to play them profitably on the button at bb deep, but not profitably in the SB bb deep. In truth, we can order the advantages in terms of value and importance. The least important of all advantages is card advantage.
Position comes in 2nd. I told him hed made a big mistake as, despite there being 3 good players to his left, there were two huge fish in the blinds. Then, a couple hands later, he raised J7s in the CO. Once again, I told him he was making a mistake. I told him: Skill advantage makes the difference. Playing a pot in position against a bad player is easily worth the risk of playing OOP with K4s, while playing a pot in position with J7s against a bunch of really good players isnt worth very much at all.
Lets consider what it means to raise the button. A lot of players think theyre raising the button with a wide range to steal the blinds. Certainly, winning the blinds is a nice bonus. However, we raise the button with a wide range because we have absolute positional advantage and thus we can sacrifice some card advantage when we isolate the blinds. Rememberwe dont raise the button just to steal the blinds, we raise the button to play pots with the blinds. So what types of cards should we isolate with when we loosen up our range?
Well, we want to play hands that give us good equity postflop, which mostly means high cards and suited cards. So if you want to start loosening up, start adding the Q7 suited hands rather than the 75 offsuits. Understanding why and how we isolate is the way we can target different types of players and take advantage of their mistakes.
Its how we can attack bad players from all angles and still manage to show up with good hands against good players. At a poker table, we use isolation to control who we play against and the circumstances under which the battles occur. Or, if they are very loose 3-bettors or callers preflop it may be a good idea to open J7s and plan on 4-betting or barreling a lot of streets postflop. Playing pots with people with strong hands when we have weak hands isnt that great.
Its not terrible, especially if we have a good idea of their range and can value-bet or give-up appropriately. For example, I have J7s and a tight BB calls my button raise. The flop is AK4Im giving up. However, if the flop was T54 Im probably barreling. Obviously if the flop is AJ7 Im going for three streets of value.
The concept remains alright thoughwe do make more money playing hands against fish than regulars. However, many regulars will play tightly from the blinds, which inherently means that we should loosen up significantly and just fold to their 3-bets or give up when they flat.
Chapter Nine: Table Dynamics Some circumstances on a poker table are beyond our control. That doesnt mean we cant use them to our advantage. These factors, which well call Table Dynamics, shape the character of every table and have tremendous influence on the ways in which we play our hands.
With a bad player in the blinds on your left, you can raise to a large amount with a very wide range. Then, when the bad player leaves and a professional shortstacker sits down, its different.
Suddenly you need to change your strategy. What factors do we need to consider to understand table dynamics? Player types. If you have a loose, aggressive player on your left, you need to play tighter because youre going to get a lot of action.
If you have a big fish on your right, you should play looser because youre going to want to play a lot of pots with him. If you have a shortstacker on your left, youre usually going to need to tighten up because hes going to move all-in over your raises frequently. These are just a few examples of how game dynamics might change your overall strategy. If there are a number of shorter stacked players at your table, hands like 33 and 67s go down in value, as they lose implied odds they go up in value if there are deepstacked players at the table.
On the flip side, hands like KJ and AT increase in value with shorter stacks because they lose reverse implied odds, but decrease in value with deeper stacks. Having a good regular on your left and a fish on your right is very different than having a good regular on your right and a fish on your left. Then, if we consider tables with five or more other players, well see how variable table dynamics can be. Each table will have a distinct combination of player types, stack sizes, and positions, such that table dynamic conditions are always unique.
So how can I use table dynamics postflop? To explain this, Id like to pull an example from a common small stakes Limit Hold em scenario.
Lets say that UTG raises, and sees five callers in a full ring game. We call in the blinds with 55, and the flop comes down J In this scenario, we always check to the raiser, hoping for him to bet and get several calls, allowing us to trap the entire field in for an extra bet. On the other hand, lets say that UTG and five other players limp, and the button raises.
We call with 55 in the blinds, as do all the limpers. The flop is J52 again, except this time, leading into the field is correct.
This way, we trap the money in the pot before the preflop raiser puts in a flop raise. This is the essence of table dynamics postflop.
The same principle applies to No-Limit. We want to do whatever we can to keep the fish in the pot. I was once involved in a large discussion about whether or not to 3-bet QJs from the blinds after a fish limps and a regular raises.
My strong belief is that 3-betting in that spot is the incorrect play, and that calling is far preferable. If there are no fish involved, 3-betting may or may not be good. But as soon as the fish limps, we need to do everything we can to play pots with him. If we 3-bet, we force the limping fish out and isolate ourselves with a regular.
This brings us back to the concept of mistakesthe regular isnt going to make many, but the fish is going to make a lot. So why are we trying to isolate ourselves with the guy who plays pretty well? Understanding table dynamics keeps us from making these mistakes. Lets consider another example of table dynamics.
A regular open-raises on the button, and we decide to call in the blinds with QJ. The flop is J The obvious play here is to check to the raiser, as were extremely likely to pick up a c-bet. Then, we can call or raise, depending on image and other considerations.
Now, lets add a table dynamic wrinkle. A fish limps in MP, the same regular raises on the button, and we call in the blinds with QJ. The fish calls as well. The flop is J43 Why not? First of all, we have a hand that we can bet for value against the fishhes likely to call us with worse hands draws, worse Js, smaller pairs. Secondly, in a multiway pot especially with a fish who is likely to call a bet on the flop , the regulars cbetting range becomes narrower and stronger.
Too often we miss value from the fish, give free cards to both opponents, or pay off by check-calling down against the regular. Youre probably wondering what to do if you lead and the regular raises. Its usually a simple answerfold. When you lead into a player you know is likely to call you the fish , your hand range looks strong to anyone paying attention. Thus, if the regular raises, he is unlikely to have a weak hand or a bluff. The only potentially difficult spot comes when the regular holds a stronger top-pair or an overpair and decides to call our flop bet.
However, we can deal with that on later streets, simply asking ourselves if betting the turn for value is too thin given that possibility.
The flip side of this scenario comes when a regular raises in MP and a fish calls on the button. Once again we have QJ on a J43 board. This time, it is probably better to check and let the action unfold in front of us. If the regular checks, it gives the fish a chance to bluff at the pot. If the regular bets and the fish raises, we can comfortably fold.
If the regular bets and the fish calls, we can usually call one street and see what happens on the turn sometimes well even be able to check-raise this spot, occasionally getting the regular to fold a better hand and getting the fish to call with a worse one! However, even here an argument could be made for leading the flop if we think the regular is unlikely to c-bet at a high percentage.
In that case, were simply betting the flop for value. However, its not as clear of a bet as if the fish were directly on our left. The overall point of table dynamics is to understand that the best way to play a hand depends on more than just our cards, their cards, and the board. How different types of players play, where theyre sitting, the sizes of their stacks, and number of them involved in a pot all affect our decisions.
To make the best decisions, understanding table dynamics is critical. This would mean continuing to play loosely ourselves but not giving up against his aggression.
This means 4-betting, barreling, and hero-calling. Or, if a shortstacker is on our left, we may decide to play loosely if hes tight to steal blinds. Then, we can just fold to his aggression. However, a loose-aggressive short stacker may simply cause us to play more tightly and there isnt a lot that we can do about it. Chapter Ten: Creative Preflop Raise Sizes Lets combine the previous two chapters to start a discussion of what our preflop raises should look like. Many players dont even think about their preflop raise sizes.
Its a robotic, automatic actionwe hit the pot button and raise. It doesnt matter whos limping on our right or whos in the blinds on our left. We just mash pot and play from there. If were going to perfect our game, we need to think about every decision, even the small ones. Its more important than you think. We can raise to one of three sizes: 1 Pot. A Pot-Sized Raise is a pretty good default to have in general. Its large enough that it gets money in the pot, creating dead money for profitable c-bets and putting stacks in play more easily.
However, a PSR can sometimes be too large of a bet. If our opponents are 3-betting us a lot, their strategy will be more successful if we are giving up too much dead money.
So, by reducing our preflop raise size we effectively hamper a light 3-bettors strategy. For this reason, many players reduce their raise sizes with a professional shortstack in the blinds. However, most players dont reduce their raise size if a loose, aggressive, 3-betting regular is in the blinds. Its the same principlewe should reduce our raise size if there are good players playing back at us.
As I mentioned above, shortstacks and good players are two good reasons to reduce your raise size. So, if I have two professional shortstacks in the blinds, Ill minraise the button.
If I have one pro shortstack and one good regular in the blinds, I might raise to either 2x or 2. If there was a pro shortstacker and a bad player, Id probably raise to 3x. Sometimes, a player will be so egregiously bad that we can punish their preflop mistakes by raising to a large size. Against some of these opponents, Ive made my standard open-raise as large as 8x.
The idea is that, if somebody will call 8x preflop and play fit-or-fold postflop, theyre giving up a ton of money. The other half of the idea is that, if we have a good hand, we can get value more quicklyalways a good thing. As you can see, our preflop raise size doesnt need to be static.
A lot of my students worry about whether or not their changing raise size will give away information about their hand. It wont, because youre not making your decision based on hidden information i. Instead, the decision is made based on information available to the tablewhich types of players are sitting in which seats with what stack sizes. That information is public.
I might minraise the button with two regs in the blinds, raise to 2. So, we can see that two of the three advantages of isolation theory are coming back: 1 Skill advantage. We raise larger when were better than our opponents, simply because theyll be creating more dead money by playing against us and making more mistakes. We generally prefer to raise smaller when were in position because having more money behind magnifies the effect of acting last.
For example, if we have only 5bb left in a 10bb pot, it doesnt really matter whether we act first or last, as our only available plays are to shove or fold. However, if we have bb left in a 10bb pot, acting last allows us to raise, float, and make it incredibly difficult for our opponents to play correctly against us.
However, we cant use card advantage as a reason to change our raise sizes preflop, because that would give away information about our hand somewhat obviously. Instead, well substitute stack size in place of card advantage: 3 Stack Size. The shorter the stack size, the smaller we want to raise. The larger the stack, the larger we want to raise. We should be more flexible than that. Like our positional advantage, our skill advantage also increases with depth. So, the better we are, the smaller we want to make it to maximize the advantage.
However, many weak players will call a large preflop and check-fold every flop that they miss. Betsafe Poker has high traffic and bad players.
It's one of the best options you've got when it comes to playing poker for real money online. Accepting players from: Germany. Home Strategy Theorems Baluga Strategy. Baluga theorem example. The Flop: A 9 3 This is pretty much an ideal flop, so you bet 8BBs, which is around the size of the pot. Baluga theorem example hand history. It is easy to see why the Baluga theorem is effective by asking yourself the following question: Would our opponent be raising this turn with anything less than top pair?
Is the Baluga theorem still effective today? Who is BalugaWhale? Baluga Whale theorem overview. Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy. Ready To Play? Play at Betsafe Poker Accepting players from: Germany.
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Mark May 23, Conrad May 23, Hey Mark, As you seem to be math prone, in order to prove a theorem false, you need to provide a counterexample. When is the Zeebo Theorem not true? Or the fundamantal therorem no true?
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