Mastering Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em: Strategies to consistently beat small stakes poker tournaments and cash games by Jonathan Little

Author:Jonathan Little [Little, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781909457782
Publisher: D&B Poker
Published: 2017-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Diagram 149

Notice that this isn’t exactly accurate because by the river, some of your marginal made hands will improve to premium made hands, and some of your junk will improve to premium made hands and marginal made hands that can call a river bet, giving you a few more calling hands.

It is important to understand that when facing a bet from a strong player who has optimally developed polarized betting ranges on the river, you should win as often as the pot odds you are being laid. For example, your opponent bets the size of the pot. If his range is 67% value hands and 33% bluffs, you will win 33% of the time. This should lead you to call with 33% of your range. By checking behind with many of the marginal made hands on the flop, you give yourself easy river decisions because quite often, at least 33% of your range will be hands that can reasonably call a turn and river.

Notice that if your opponent steals the pots with his bluffs more than 50% of the time when he bluffs, he will show an immediate profit, but you will only win when you call 33% of the time. By using a polarized strategy, your opponent can profitably bluff on the river and there is nothing you can do about it because if you call more than 33% of the time, your opponent gets paid off too often with his value hands.

When you make a “light” call down with a hand like 8-6 on J-8-7-3-K, it is important to understand that you will lose a large portion of the time, but that is fine because you will be getting excellent pot odds. If you need to win 25% of the time based on the pot odds, and you stand to win 30% of the time with your junky middle pair, you should happily call. Many amateur players lose a ton of money because they only call on the river when they are confident they have the best hand. If you find that you only call on the river against players who are capable of bluffing when you almost certainly have the best hand, you are making a mistake.

Against the three common player types, you should use the same adjustments previously suggested when deep stacked. Against players who will attack on the turn and river, if you check behind on the flop, you should be much more inclined to check behind on the flop with your made hands because, if your opponent bets the turn and river, it will be enough to put you all-in (doubling you up). While this strategy will result in you getting outdrawn some small portion of the time, with hands that are not too susceptible to free turn cards, you should strongly consider checking behind.

For example, suppose you raise with a 20 big blind stack and one of these players who will attack passivity calls from the big blind. If the flop comes 7-6-3, you should usually check behind with A-A, but bet with any 7.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.