No-Limit Holdem: Table Dynamics (Part I)

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Some circumstances on a poker table are beyond our control. That doesn't mean we can't use them to our advantage. These factors, which we'll call "'table dynamic issues", 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 a very wide ranee until the bad player leaves and a professional shortstacker sits down. Suddenly you need to tighten up. What factors do we need to consider to understand table dynamics?

Differences Between Sit 'n Go's and Multi-Table Tournaments

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First, we observe that moneying in a sit 'n go entails about 30 to 75 minutes of time, and has a payout for the top 30 percent or 33.3 percent of the entrants. Moneying in a multi-table tournament, meanwhile, requires about 4 to 8 hours of time, with only 10 to 20 percent of entrants placing in the money. Since sit 'n go's therefore require less time investment and allow you to money with greater frequency, they are lower variance (i.e., have smaller profit-and-loss fluctuations) than multi-table tournaments.

Second, there is more room for personal strategic preference in a multi-table tournament. In the sit 'n go, the enormous jump from 0 to 20 percent of the prize pool at the bubble makes optimal strategy fairly clear: You should play cautious early to ensure survival into the high blinds, then gradually increase to an aggressive game to maximize your chances of finishing first.

Poker Lessons

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You will do most of your thinking about hands that you lost. There will be hands where you play badly and win, and you learn a lesson from them because you realize how lucky you needed to get to win the pot. But the lessons you learn from those hands will not stay with you as long as the lessons you learn from hands you lose.

You should play according to what you think is going on. Players often say "I knew he was weak. I could have raised.'' If you know your opponent is weak and can't stand a raise, then raise. You may think that the opponents can counter this by calling you down whenever you play aggressively. The beauty of being aggressive is that it allows you to play your good hands strongly. You will get a lot of action from opponents with substandard hands when they misread you for a bluff.

Good players do most of their thinking after losing sessions. Bad players want to block losing sessions out of their mind. Think about hands you lost and see if you could have played them differently with a better result. Always think about what actions you would have taken if you had known what your opponents' hands actually were. Then try to recall if there were any hints available that would tell you about their hands.

The Typical Low-limit Hold'em Game

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When you sit down in a low-limit hold'em game, you are likely to find a broad range of poker experience and knowledge. Some players will be retirees who use the game as their social club and book fifty hours or more there each week. Others will have a discreet crib sheet in front of them showing the ranking of poker hands. Most of your opponents will lie somewhere in between - they'll be working folks who come down to the club for relaxation and a good poker game.

Low-limit games are often only half-jokingly called "no fold'em hold'em". You will often see seven or eight people at a nine-person table call to see the flop. Furthermore, many players will stay around after the flop with very weak or almost hopeless draws. In some cases, they know that they're taking the worst of the odds, but they get a special charge from catching those miracle cards and beating very strong hands.

Pot Limit Omaha Tips

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1. If you know what your player is going to do, or not do, you can use this information to your favor. If you are 100% sure that when you check, they will bet for you, it's a big advantage.

2. It is best to only raise from good position. Being last to act in PLO is a big advantage. If first to act and you flop top two pair, you are often in big trouble. However, if it's been checked all the way around to you and you have top two pair, you can be confident that it is the best hand.

3. Don't overplay aces preflop. AAxx is only a 2 to 1 favorite against 4 random cards. Also, by raising preflop with them, you are basically telling your opponent you have them.

Odds: How Strong is Your Hands?

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You are dealt A-J spades on the big blind. Someone raises, and you call. The flop comes Qh-10d-9s. What do you do? In an ideal world, the turn card would be a King, giving you the nut-straight. However, an 8 also gives you a straight. How do you figure out the strength of your hand?

The answer is by determining the odds of hitting your ideal cards, the cards that make you win. There are four Kings and four Eights in the deck, so you have eight outs. Outs are cards that give you the winning hand, probably. Remember that you do not know for sure what cards your opponents hold.

Is eight outs good? There are 52 cards in the deck, and you have seen five of them: your two hole cards A-J, and the flop Q-10-9. 52 cards take away 5 leaves 47 cards unseen. 8 cards out of those 47 give you a probable winner; therefore your odds of winning are 8/47 or roughly 1 in 6. At this point, you have to take into consideration the number of opponents who are still in the hand and the size of the pot.

Stealing in No-Limit Holdem

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Stealing well is critical to no-limit success. Yet most small stakes regulars focus mainly on making hands and give stealing relatively little thought. This undue emphasis on making hands condemns most small stakes regulars to only marginal success. They win lots of money in pots that go to showdown, but they lose nearly as much in pots that don't go to showdown, and their overall winrates hover near zero. If you suffer from this problem, we're going to fix it.

Stealing and making the best hand can overlap considerably. For example, say you have 9 8 and completely miss a flop of A J 4. You should immediately think. "Can I steal?" However, if your lone opponent has 7 6 you actually have the best hand.

Poker: Points of Honesty

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Every poker player has spots in his game where he tends to become honest. This honesty is often a result of the reactions of the other players at the table but it can also be a result of his natural style.
A point of honesty is a situation where a player will only continue to put money into the pot with a strong hand.

Preflop most players tend to become honest when they are 4-bet. In other words they are not 5-bet bluffing or defending light often enough that we need to be taking it into account. The situation we create when we 4-bet is an example of a point of honesty for the villain.
The better our perceived strength is in a given situation the more likely it is that the same situation is a point of honesty for our opponent.

Check-Raise in Pot Limit Omaha

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In Pot Limit Omaha, when you check-raise, the majority of the time, you either have the nuts or air. Although the range you are representing are representing is polarized, your opponents will fold a decent amount because for the times you have the nuts, they might not have many outs.

A simple example is on a flop of 765, when you check-raise, you are representing 89xx. If you have a solid image, it is pretty tough for him to call with a made hand that is worse than two pairs with no redraw. Once your flop check-raise gets called, it is probably a good idea to give up since your opponent's range is fairly strong if he can call a check-raise on a 765 board.