Calling Chip Stacks, Not Hole Cards
Being aggressive with middle pairs to me is rather costly for early stage play.Set mining can be a profitable play for you when you can keep your entry costs low. In the early stages, loads of players are correctly playing for implied odds. If you raise it that much, it’s still not a big hit to thier situation, and you will likely NOT get others to fold. You end up most times trying to decide whether to continuation bet into an overly large pot with over cards on the board and it all gets a bit too much like hard decisions for me.Sure you can open raise, but if there are multiple limpers I would just avoid attacking them when everyone is comfortable stacks and mzones.
You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. So if the pot is now one.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You raise to 3BB, making the pot 5.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. As at result he is getting good odds to make a call here at nearly 3:1.
You are pretty much never more than a 3:1 under dog pre flop, which is what Gus is on about. But there is a problem. Maybe even more than one problem.
Firstly your problem is bet-ability of a marginal hand. This could mean rags facing off against ace king. The flop comes down 5 J Q. Sure you’re now ahead, but really how much can you afford to bet at this point? will you even be able to call a continuation bet if it comes? But what if you just bet into the pot? Then what are you going to do when he smooth calls? Now do you bet once more here? It’s an expensive guessing game now with just bottom pair?
What about if you have 33 pre flop? With a board full of over cards,it’s still tough to bet even though statistically your opponent will have missed as well?
Sure you had right odds preflop here, but you are assuming you can get to showdown as well. But in deep stack situations you can’t. You are going to have to play 3 more streets of poker before you get to showdown.
However there is another problem as a result. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. What this also means is that when you do actually hit the flop, the pots will be smaller. It also means when you don’t make a big hand, you will lose more than your fair share because the player in position will bet you off marginal hands with a worse hand himself.
If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. Implied odds is what you need to be looking at here.. i.e. what is the size of my chip stack and my opponents chip stack. If we are talking about five percent or less of my stack, I am calling with a LOT of cards. If they have a big pair and I have little connectors, I am okay with that. I want them to have AA when I am playing 53s for a raise. But if the raise is getting up to around 10% of my stack, then I fold all the weired stuff, except PPs. But in all of that the only thing I am thinking about is the size of the bet I have to call compared to the effective stack.
I might have 56s and be up against AK. But unless I make and OESD, Flush draw or 2 pair or better, I will be surrendering pretty much every pot on the flop especially if I am OOP. You can play a pair here by checking and calling, and by doing somay give you more information about your opponent’s hand.
Even in Every Hand Revealed, Gus Hansen regrets a lot of his calls from players who raise early position. Partly because, such calls often become more difficult place post flop. Now he has physical tells to work with, and, as mentioned, he is Gus Hansen. There are no person to person tells and we can’t play like Gus. Take into account, your opponent is weaker than the players Gus plays against. Whether you are up against people who are capable of folding strong hands or whether they just can’t surrender TPGK is an important distinction.
Guess I’m trying to say is that if you can afford it, implied odds are much more important than pre-flop pot odds. You might choose to play a given hand anyway, but do it for the reason of implied odds and not pot odds, if that makes sense. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.
Tags: online poker, playing out of positiion, poker tournament strategy