Playing Against a Live Straddle

Play Texas Hold’em The First Two Cards: Early Position Part Five Playing Short-Handed What You Must Realize The Hands to Call With Another Problem Calling or Reraising Before the Flop What If It Is Three-Handed ? When the Blinds are Very Loose Leading on the Flop Calling on Fourth Street Slowplaying on the Flop Fifth Street A Note on Tells Playing Short-Handed Afterthought Part Six Playing in Other Non-Standard Games Wild Games Playing in Extremely Tight Games Playing Against a Live Straddle Strategy of poker of News of poker And is much another about poker



Occasionally when someone decides to "gamble," he will put up what is known as a "live straddle." Specifically, the player just to the left of the big blind will post an additional blind that is double the size of the big blind. For example, in a $10-$20 game, the live straddle would be $20. This play is not recommended. However, some significant strategy changes are required when one of your opponents posts a straddle.To begin with, notice that it is now virtually impossible to steal the blinds. Consider the $10-$20 game with a straddler. Suppose you bring it in for $30. It is a rare player who would post a $20 blind and then not call for just $10 more. In fact, most players who post a straddle will call for an additional $20, no matter what they hold. (Remember, they came to gamble.)This means that you should raise only with legitimate raising hands. Semi-steal plays before the flop, which are normally so important to winning hold’em, will not work in this situation. Moreover, you might not want to make the pot so large that it becomes correct to draw to gut shots, bottom pairs, and so forth. Consequently, it is generally correct to raise less frequently with big pairs and big unsuited cards than it would be if there were no live straddle.Also be aware that your implied odds will not be as good, since it will cost you more to play compared to what you can expect to win. As a result, you should call with fewer hands. Specifically, throw away hands likeK© J¨   and   7§ 7ªunless you are in a late position.Notice that we have just recommended that you play tighter against a live straddle, even though there is more money in the pot. An example will show that this is correct. Suppose you are playing in a crazy $10-$20 hold’em game, where there are not only the standard $5 and $10 blinds, but also straddlers of $20, $30, and $40. Clearly, if you played only the "nuts" (or extremely strong hands) in this game when you were not in one of the larger blinds, you would be a winner. This is because of the large overlay that you would be getting when you did enter the pot. However, if you played super tight in a standard game, you would not be in enough pots to show a profit.  Playing in Spread Limit Games Some of the smaller limit games are structured differently from those that we have been discussing. These are known as spread limit games. Specifically, bets are not fixed at a particular size, and you can bet any amount between certain limits. Two common spread limit games are $l-$4, where any bet or raise can be $1, $2, $3, or $4, and $2-$ 10, where any bet or raise can be as small as $2, or as large as $10, or any dollar amount in between.Most of what has been covered already also applies to spread limit games. There are, however, a couple of differences that we would like to mention. First, you often can see the flop cheaply, meaning that your implied odds are much larger than in a game with a standard structure. Consequently, many (weak) drawing hands that you normally would not play become playable in a spread limit game, even from an early position.On the other hand, if you hold a big pair, you want to get as much money as possible into the pot before the flop. By doing so, you will eliminate the large implied odds that the drawing hands generally can get. (One way of accomplishing this is to bet the minimum in an early position with a premium hand such as AA or KK. Then, if someone else raises after other players have called, you should reraise the maximum.)The second major difference in a spread limit game is that if you limp in for the minimum before the flop and are raised the maximum, you should throw your hand away if you are not holding a hand that plays well in a short-handed pot. In this situation, the large implied odds that you were expecting to get are now no longer available. Those players who do not release hands in this spot are the consistent losers in spread limit games.For example, suppose you limp in with7ª 6ªand a player behind you raises the maximum. Unless other players already have called the raise, you should muck your hand. Failure to do so will prove costly in the long run.  Playing in Other Non-Standard GamesAfterthought As you can see, information presented in this section is built upon ideas and concepts covered earlier in the book. For instance, when playing in a spread limit game you can play some weak drawing hands up front due to the large implied odds that you expect, as long as there is not much raising.In addition, there are countless variations of non-standard games that hold’em has to offer. We have touched on only a small number of them. However, as just pointed out, the general ideas presented in this section, as well as the previous sections, should enable you to successfully attack almost any form of Texas hold’em that you may encounter.  


 

Part Seven Other SkillsOther Skills Introduction There are two additional areas that play a major role in winning at hold’em (as well as at all forms of poker). They are reading hands and psychology.Reading hands is both an art and a science. The same is true for correct applications of psychology at the poker table. In both instances, you must know your opponents. More specifically, the better you understand how your opponents think and thus how they play, the better you will be able to choose the correct strategies to use against them.Even when you are not in a pot, it is still important to pay attention to what is going on. By doing so, you will begin to understand how different opponents play their hands in different situations and what tactics they are most likely to try. Also, you can get a feel for how they think. You will see what they handle easily and what confuses them, and you will get an idea of what strategies work best against them.Keep in mind that the concepts discussed in this section cannot be mastered quickly. Like many other skills at the hold’em table, reading hands and applying psychology take a while to learn and require a great deal of experience. But once mastered, they will become significant factors in your winning play. And for those of you who make it to the very big games (against the world champions), you must become an expert in these two areas to have any chance of success.  Reading Hands There are three techniques for reading hands in Texas hold’em. Most commonly, you analyze the meaning of an opponent's check, bet, or raise, and you look at the exposed cards and try to judge from them what his entire hand might be. You then combine the plays he has made throughout the hand with the exposed cards and come to a determination about his most likely hand.In other words, you use logic to read hands. You interpret your opponents' plays on each round and note the cards that appear on the board, paying close attention to the order in which they appear. You then put these two pieces of evidence together — the plays and the cards on the board — to draw a conclusion about an opponent's most likely hand.Sometimes you can put an opponent on a specific hand quite early. However, in general it's a mistake to do this and then stick to your initial conclusion no matter how things develop. A player who raises before the flop and then raises again when only small cards appear on the flop may have a big pair in the hole, but he also may have just overcards or a draw and is trying for a free card. Drawing a narrow, irreversible conclusion early can lead to costly mistakes later, either because you fold the best hand or because you stay when you shouldn't.What you should do is to put an opponent on a variety of hands at the start of play, and as play progresses, eliminate some of those hands based on his later play and on the cards that appear on the board. Through this process of elimination, you should have a good idea of what that opponent has (or is drawing to) when the last card is dealt.Suppose, for instance, that two suited cards appear on the flop and an opponent raises after there has been a bet and a couple of callers, but then checks on the turn when a blank hits. It is now very likely that he is on a flush draw and was buying a free card. If the flush card hits on the end, you usually should fold unless youcan beat a flush. If a flush card does not hit, you may want to check and call in hopes that you can induce a bluff. However, if you were also on a flush draw, you may want to bet, since a reasonable chance exists that you can pick up the pot.At the end of a hand, it becomes especially crucial to have a good idea of what your opponent has. The more accurately you can read hands on the end, the better you can determine your chance of having your opponent beat. This, of course, helps you in deciding how to play your own hand.In practice, most players at least try to determine whether an opponent has a bad hand, a mediocre hand, a good hand, or a great hand. Let's say your opponent bets on the end. Usually when a person bets, it represents either a bluff, a good hand, or a great hand, but not a mediocre hand. If your opponent had a mediocre hand, he probably would check. If you have only a mediocre hand, you must determine what the chances are that your opponent is bluffing and whether those chances warrant a call in relation to the pot odds.We have seen that in hold’em, one way to read hands is to start by considering a variety of possible hands an opponent might have and then to eliminate some of these possibilities as the hand develops. A complementary way to read hands is to work backward. For instance, if the last card is a deuce and an opponent who has just been calling suddenly bets, you think back on his play in earlier rounds. Since it does not seem possible that he would have called this far with only two deuces in the hole, he is either bluffing or has something other than a set of deuces.Here is another example. Suppose the flop comes:Kª  Q¨  2§The first player bets, and the second player raises. A third person, who is also in an early position and is a solid but not overly aggressive player, raises again. Also suppose that several other opponents remain to act behind the reraiser and that this reraiser had just called before the flop. What is his hand?First, notice that he is not likely to be on a draw trying for a free card since he would not want to shut out the players behind him or the initial bettor. Second, it is easy to rule out a set. The reraiser most likely would have raised before the flop with KK or QQ, but would not play 22 from so early a position. Similarly, it is unlikely that he has AKs, AK, or KQs, as he probably would have raised before the flop with these hands. In addition, he would not make it three bets with a hand like KJs, KJ, K10s, or K10. (It is also doubtful that he would play KJ or K10 since they are not suited.) This leaves just one possibility: KQ. If his hand is not suited, he most likely would call with it from an early position, but would still be willing to make it three bets on the flop if he flopped top two pair.Here's a third example. Before the flop, suppose six people limp in, the pot is then raised by a strong player, and the person on the button cold calls. Everyone else calls. The flop is:A§  Q©  6¨Everyone checks to the button, who bets. Three people call, including the strong player (who raised before the flop). On fourth street comes the:9ªEveryone checks and the button bets again. There are two callers, including the strong player.Let's try to figure out the strong player's hand. First, for him to raise so many people before the flop, he must have a hand of value in a multiway pot. Second, for him to call on both the flop and the turn, the pot must be offering him correct odds.It turns out that there is only one hand that makes sense to be played this way. It is JTs. Because of the high implied odds before the flop, it would be correct to raise with this hand. On the flop, the pot would be large enough to make it correct to call with just a gut shot, and the 94 on the turn would produce an open-end straight draw, which would make it correct to call again.Let us now look at another technique. When you can't actually put a person on a hand, but have reduced his possible holdings to a limited number, you try to use mathematics to determine the chance of his having certain hands rather than others. Then you decide what kind of hand you must have to continue playing.Sometimes you can use a mathematical procedure based on Bayes' Theorem to determine the chance that an opponent has one hand or another. After deciding on the kinds of hands your opponent would be betting in a particular situation, you determine the probability of your opponent holding each of those hands. Then you compare the probabilities.Here's an example. Suppose an early-position opponent calls and then reraises. You read him as the type of player who will initially call and then reraise only with AA, KK, AKs, or AK, andyou know this is the only way he will play these hands from an early position. The probability that a player will be dealt AA on the first two cards is 0.45 percent. The probability of his getting KK is also 0.45 percent. So he will get AA or KK 0.9 percent of the time on average. The probability that he will be dealt AKs or AK is 1.2 percent. By comparing these two probabilities — 1.2 percent and .9 — percent, you deduce that the chance are 4-to-3 that your opponent does not hold a pair.Knowing it is slightly more likely that your opponent holds AKs or AK rather than a big pair does not in itself tell you how you should proceed in the play of the hand. Nevertheless, the more you know about the chance of an opponent having one hand rather than another when he bets or raises, the easier it is for you to decide whether to fold, call, or raise.Here's another example. Suppose you haveJª J§   the flop comes   A© 10§ 3§and your opponent bets. If you think your opponent is equally likely to bet a ten (probably KT or QT) as an ace, you should at least call. If the turn card is another ace and your opponent bets again, your play is to raise if you know this opponent would still bet if he had only a ten. This is because it is now much more mathematically likely that you have the best hand, and your raise may save you from losing to a fifth-street king or queen. (If reraised, you usually should throw away your hand.)Finally, as this last example shows, you need to complement mathematical conclusions with what you know about a player. For example, some players almost always will call in an early position with AA, KK, or AKs, but usually will raise with AK offsuit. In this case, if the player calls and then reraises, he is three times more likely to have a pair than AKs.Another factor in reading hands and deciding how to play your own hand is the number of players in the pot. Any time that someone bets and someone else calls, you are in a much different position than when it is only left up to you to call. In general, a caller ahead of you makes it necessary for you to tighten up significantly, because you no longer have the extra equity that the bettor may be bluffing. Therefore, when your hand is barely worth a call in a heads-up situation, such as when you hold two overcards and are trying to catch a bluff, it is not worth a call when someone else has called ahead of you.Similar thinking must be employed when you have a minimum or near-minimum raising hand and the player to your right, who has similar standards to yours, raises ahead of you. This means that his hand is probably better than yours, and the correct play is usually to fold.  Psychology What we mean by the "psychology of poker" is getting into your opponents' heads, analyzing how they think, figuring out what they think you think, and even determining what they think you think they think. In this sense, the psychology of poker is an extension of reading opponents' hands, and it is also an extension of using deception in the way you play your own hand.Here is an example. Suppose you have nothing and bluff at a flop that contains a pair. You are raised by a strong opponent who knows you would bluff at this flop. Since you know that he knows you would bluff at this flop, his raise does not mean that he has a good hand. Consequently, because your opponent might also be bluffing, the correct play may be for you to reraise and then to bet again on the turn if necessary.This brings up another point. The above play works because you are against a strong player whose thinking makes sense. A weak player is a different story. Just as you can't put a weak player on a hand, you can't put him on a thought either. When a pair flops, a weak player might raise (after you bet) with a small pair in his hand, hoping to get a free card that would allow him to draw out on his opponent, who "obviously" has trips.Very sophisticated hold’em can go even beyond this third level. For example, suppose two suited cards flop and there is a bet from an early position. A strong player, who thinks his opponent is probably on a flush draw (since this player likes to check-raise a lot when he has a legitimate hand), may now raise with bottom pair and then bet on fourth street. His opponent may realize this and try to check-raise with a flush draw on the turn. The initial raiser now may comprehend this possibility and call his opponent down. When the hand is over, assuming that the flush card does not come, his calls will look fantastic to some opponents, if he actually is against a flush draw. Conversely, if it turns out that the first bettor really has a hand, the calls will look like a "sucker play."At the expert level of hold’em, the "skill" of trying to outwit your opponent sometimes can extend to so many levels that your judgment may begin to fail. However, in ordinary play against good players, you should think at least up to the third level. First, think about what your opponent has. Second, think about what your opponent thinks you have. And third, think about what your opponent thinks you think he has. Only when you are playing against weak players, who might not bother to think about what you have and who almost certainly don't think about what you think they have, does it not necessarily pay to go through such thought processes. Against all others, this is crucial to successful play, since deception is a big part of the game.Several other important ideas play major roles in the psychology of poker. To begin with, when an opponent bets on the end in a situation where he is sure that you are going to call, he is not bluffing. For example, suppose that you bet when all the cards are out and a player raises you. It is rare to find an opponent who is capable of raising on the end as a bluff. Similarly, if you raise when all the cards are out and your opponent reraises, you usually should fold, unless your hand can beat some of the legitimate hands with which he might be raising. (But beware of the player who knows you are capable of these folds.)However, folding in similar situations is not necessarily correct on fourth street. Tough players will raise on the turn if they hold a mediocre hand that has some potential to become a very strong hand. An example is middle pair on the flop that has now picked up a flush draw. Those of you who automatically fold when raised in these situations are giving up too much. This is especially true at the larger limits, where the games are usually tougher.A corollary to the principle we are discussing is that if your opponent bets when there appears to be a good chance that you will fold, he may very well be bluffing. What this means in practice is that if your opponent bets in a situation where he thinks he might be able to get away with a bluff, you have to give more consideration to calling him, even with a mediocre hand.An example is when no one bets on the flop and a small card hits on the turn. If one of your opponents now bets, and he is the type of player who would try to pick up the pot with nothing, it may be correct to call (or raise) with a relatively weak hand.In deciding whether to bet, it is equally important to consider what your opponent thinks you have. If your opponent suspects a strong hand, you should bluff more. However, you should not bet a fair hand for value in this situation.An example would be when you reraise before the flop withA¨  Q¨three rags come on the flop, and the last card is a king. If you have been betting all the way, it would be difficult for anyone to call on the end with only a small pair.Conversely, if you know your opponent suspects that you are weak, you should not try to bluff, as you will get caught. But you should bet your fair hands for value.Varying your play and making an "incorrect" play intentionally are also part of the psychology of hold’em, because you are trying to affect the thinking of your opponents for future hands. For example, you occasionally can make it three bets before the flop with a hand like:7©  6©Assuming that your opponents see your hand in a showdown, they should be less inclined to steal against you in a similar situation when rags flop. Also, you are taking advantage of the impression you created to get paid off later when you bet with a legitimate reraising hand.Another example of this type of play is to throw in an extra raise early in a hand with cards that don't really warrant it, in order to give the illusion of action. For instance, you can occasionally raise the pot with a hand like:5¨  3¨This play costs only a fraction of a bet in mathematical expectation, but gains you a tremendous amount in future action on subsequent hands. However, this play should probably not be made in loose games where you are against people who play too many hands and go too far with their hands, because you get excess action anyway.There are also other ways to affect your opponents' play on future hands in limit hold’em. For example, you may want to make what you think is a bad call if you believe this play will keep other players from running over you. If you find that you have been forced to throw away your hand on the end two or three times in a row, you must be prepared to call the next time with a hand that you normally wouldn't call with. This is because you can assume that your opponents have noticed your folding and are apt to try to bluff you.A less obvious situation where you should think of the future is to sometimes check a good hand in early position on the flop and then check it again on fourth street, even if there was no bet on the flop. Not only may you catch someone stealing on fourth street, but this check also might allow you to steal the pot on fifth street in a future hand when there has been no betting up to that point (especially when an irrelevant card hits the board).Here's an example. Suppose you are in a blind position in a multiway pot and call a raise before the flop with:A¨ 6¨The flop comes: A§ 6© 2ªSince giving a free card does not appear to be dangerous, this is the type of hand that you may want to check twice if no one bets. On the surface this is a debatable play. But as just stated, it can work for you both in this hand and in future hands, since it sets up future steals on fifth street after checking twice.In general, you should evaluate any play you make on its merits alone, that is, on its expectation in a given situation. However, you occasionally might want to do something that is theoretically incorrect to create an impression for the future. Once you have opponents thinking one way, you can take advantage of that thinking later.Finally, keep in mind that these types of plays will work against players who are good enough to try to take advantage of their new-found knowledge, but who are not good enough to realize that you know this, and that they should therefore ignore it. In hold’em, as in all poker games, there seems to be a large group of players who like to "realize things." You must know how these people think and whether they are thinking only on the level that you are giving them credit for. If they think on a still higher level,you have to step up to that level. (Against really top players who often switch levels you must resort to game theory. See The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.)  Other Skills Afterthought As you have just seen, reading hands and psychology are extremely important aspects of Texas hold’em. Put another way, this game is too complex to play by rote. If you always play a certain hand in a certain position a certain way, your game can use a lot of improvement. You must take into account your opponents, how the current hand has been played, how former hands were played, your opponents' perceptions of you, and so on. If you don't consider these factors, you may be able to win, but you never will achieve expert status.Many of the concepts in this section are most powerful against decent players — that is, players who play in predictable patterns and who are capable of realizing things when at the poker table, especially if they play "weak tight." Against bad players, straightforward play is usually the best approach, and against extremely good players, these ideas probably will only keep you about even with them.Finally, some players put too much emphasis on the two topics just covered. They are certainly very important, but they are just some of the weapons that the expert has in his hold’em arsenal. Skill in reading hands, and psychology, combined with all the other ideas and concepts that we have addressed, will produce a top player. But as we have stated before, this requires a great deal of thinking about the game and lots of experience playing Texas hold’em.