Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (6 page)

If the pot is 100 chips and your opponent bets 100 chips, you are getting 2-to-1, which isn’t good enough to call based purely on pot odds because you will only get to see one card. You will improve to a flush roughly 20 percent of the time, so you need 4-to-1 to call. Despite this, you should still call because you can expect to win money on future betting rounds if you hit your hand. So, even though you are getting 2-to-1 in immediate pot odds, assuming you know your opponent will get all-in by the river, you are actually getting 11-to-1, because if you hit your hand you can expect to win the other 900 chips in his stack.

Obviously, your opponent will not go all-in every time, as he could have a weak hand or get scared if the flush card comes, so you must learn to discount for that. I would estimate you are actually getting something like 7-to-1 on average, which is still a great price. So, you call. If the turn is a J
and your opponent bets 200 into the 300 pot, leaving himself 700 behind, you should still call. Even though you are getting 5-to-2, which means you need to hit your hand 28 percent of the time, which you won’t, it is likely your opponent will put the other 700 in on the river, as he has already committed a huge percentage of his stack. So, your implied odds are 7-to-3 (the 700 chips left in his stack compared to the 300 in the pot) plus the 5-to-2 immediate odds, which comes to 4-to-1 because you have to call 200 to win the 1,200 chips that will most likely go into the pot. This is again a clear call. If you miss the river and he goes all-in, you have an easy fold. If you hit, you have an easy call if he goes all-in or an easy push if he checks.

I discounted for the fact that even if you hit your flush, you may lose to a larger flush. Also, your opponent may not push the river if a spade comes. On the other hand, if your opponent goes all-in for 500 chips into a 100-chip pot and you have the same 8
-4
on the 9
-6
-2
board as before, this would be a fold, as you would risk 500 chips to win 600 chips, giving you 6-to-5 odds, which is much worse than the 2-to-1 you need to call. So, the deeper your stacks are compared to the current bet, the greater your implied odds.

You have reverse implied odds with some hands. This means you can hit a hand that you think is best and still lose a lot of chips. Hands with huge reverse implied odds are those that can make top pair with a decent, but not great kicker, such as A-J and K-10. Suppose someone raises from early position and you call with A-10. You should be careful if the flop comes A-x-x, as you are only going to put a lot of money in the pot when your opponent has an ace with a better kicker.

So, while you are only putting in a few chips early in the hand, if you and your opponent both flop top pair, you stand to lose a lot of money. Notice that if your opponent has a hand like K-K and it comes A-x-x, you will usually only win one bet, as most players will bet once and then get away from that hand. Because of this, you will either lose a big pot or win a small one. As the stacks get deeper, hands that are normally strong, like A-A, become harder to play because if you have 300BBs, you will have a hard time getting that many chips in ahead of your opponent’s hand range. Make a point to play small pots with hands like top pair or an overpair when deep-stacked because if a lot of money goes into the pot, you are usually beat. Note that as stacks get shorter, reverse implied odds matter less because you don’t stand to lose as much. So, if you have A-A with 40BBs, it is usually fine to get all-in on most flops as long as they are not super-connected.

If you constantly make calls where you stand to be ahead, you will make money in poker. Now that you can figure out what odds you are getting, you will be able to determine if you are in a profitable situation or if you are throwing your money away. There are many things to consider when thinking about a poker hand. If you focus hard on determining the optimal play, these thoughts will stay in your mind and you will always know what odds you are getting.

Effective Stack Size

One of the biggest mistakes tournament players make is to not pay attention to effective stack sizes. For example, say you have 100BBs in the small blind and it’s folded to you. Your raising range should be vastly different if your opponent has 10BBs versus 100BBs. When you are in a hand with only one other player, the smallest stack size is the only one that matters, as that is the most either player can win or lose in that hand. So, if you are in the cutoff with 50BBs, the button has 10BBs, the small blind has 20BBs and the big blind has 30BBs, you’re in a tough situation, as you should play quite differently against each player. In this situation, I will generally raise only hands with which I am willing to call all-in from the smallest stack all of the time and the other stacks some of the time.

One of the most profitable situations in poker comes up when you have a significantly shorter stack than everyone else at your table. Say you have 20BBs on the button and everyone else has 100BBs. They will tend to either ignore or forget about you and play as if everyone has 100BBs. Actually, if the player with 20BBs isn’t that good, they should ignore him, as he will not play optimally anyway. But, if they know the person with 20BBs is very capable of going all-in with a wide range, they should tighten up a little so they can be happy calling the short stack’s shove a decent amount of the time. When you are the short stack, you will constantly see your opponents raising hands like 8-7o, A-4o and J-8s. Because of this, you can push a very wide range over these raises when your hand tends to be better than their very wide range. Later in a tournament, when the average stack is 20BBs, everyone will play much more snugly and you will not have nearly as many great re-stealing opportunities. When you get short early in a tournament, do not give up. You are usually in one of the most profitable situations in poker.

For simplicity, for the remainder of this book, when I mention a stack size, unless I mention otherwise, it will be the effective stack size.

Reasons to Bet

When you make a bet, you need to be sure there is a reason for it. Otherwise, checking may be the best play. Most players try to justify poor bets by saying they think they have the best hand. As you will see, this is not always a good enough reason to bet. There are really only a few reasons to bet. They are for value, for protection, as a bluff and for information. We will cover all these bets in great detail throughout this book, but for now, I will briefly cover each type.

The first reason to bet is for value, i.e., you bet because you expect your opponent to call with a worse hand. An example would be if you raise 3
-3
with 150BBs and one opponent calls in position. If it comes A
-K
-3
, you should bet because your opponent’s calling range is made up of a lot of aces and kings. So, you bet and your opponent calls. You should bet again on basically every turn because if your opponent called on the flop, he probably has an ace or king and may call you down. You should again bet the river for value.