Professional Seminar Bonn Handout

Introduction

In this Article

• Advanced preflop strategy
  
• Formula to calculate the equity
• Defending the Blinds
  

PokerStrategy.de professional Seminar in Bonn

Topic 1: The role of dead money when isolating a preflop raiser

Basis: Advanced preflop strategy

When we speak of equity, we are always talking about the equity of our hand against the range of our opponent. This means that our equity is always dependent on our opponents.

You have all seen the following situation: You are on the button, everyone folds to the cutoff who raises. You’d normally 3-bet with hands that have at least 50% equity against the range of the opponent.

This method disregards something very important though: The blinds. Because of the blinds, there is already money in the pot. It is pretty likely that the blinds are going to fold to your three bet. There would be 0.75 SB “dead money” in the pot. This is money that is divided equally to you and the preflop raiser.

You could therefore lower your 3-betting ranges a little because you actually only need a little less than 50% equity against the preflop raiser. The question is, how much less?

The approach

At first we have to estimate how much money we are going to invest in the whole hand on average. Since we are not all-in preflop it isn’t enough to only include the 3 SB which you needed to 3-bet. The hand is going to continue on the flop, turn and generally on the river as well

The value is going to vary for different opponents. A rock is often going to fold to your bet on the flop. You can, in turn, fold to his check-raise on the flop. The pots are usually small when you are playing against a rock. It is the opposite when you are playing against a maniac.

I think an estimate of 6 SB as an investment into the hand is pretty good. Together with the 1.5 SB dead money and the 6 SB of your opponent we get a pot of 14.5 SB. How much of this pot belongs to us in percent so that our investment of 6 SB actually pays off if both blinds fold preflop?

Let D be the average investment in the hand.
Let X be the needed equity for 3-betting.
Let M be the value of the dead money.

Formula for calculating the equity

The following applies: X = D / (2D + M)

Applying this formula to our example has the following result: X ~= 44,5%

We only need 45% equity against an average opponent if both blinds fold. What do we do if the blinds don’t fold? This is dependent on how well the blinds play. For example, if the BB never folds, you won’t get any dead money, but you'll get a lot of value if he calls your three bet with hands like T8o. A big blind who is too loose is therefore not important to you. An exception occurs if your hand is very strong heads up but loses a lot of value in a 3-way situation. This happens to hands like AX but not to pocket pairs, as many of you might think.

Players who don’t play too loosely but just right are dangerous. These players are only going to defend their blind if they have a good hand. They won’t leave you all of the 1.5 SB dead money mathematically. This value decreases to 0.75 SB if you are playing against very strong blinds.

You need at least X~= 47% so that your 3-bet is still correct in this case.

How does the situation change if the cutoff raiser is very tight post flop? We won’t have to invest 6 SB every time but rather something like 5 SB. If we calculate X when we are playing against a tight player with weak blinds we get a value of X ~= 4355%.

Lets go one step further: The opponent is very tight post-flop and the blinds call everything. They lose 2 SB rather than 1.5 SB if they are in the blinds. We then get a value for X of 41.5%

How does the situation change if we are playing against a total maniac and strong blinds?
We set D to 8 and M to 0.75 and get a value for X of 48%

Conclusion: Depending on the strength of the blinds we only need between 42% and 48% to isolate a preflop raiser. You should at least have 48% equity against a maniac. A good standard value against a typical opponent is an equity of 46%.

Topic 2: Small blind defence

We calculated how much we can reduce the 50% in order to isolate a preflop raiser in topic one. We assumed that we are either raising or folding.

That situation is pretty similar to the situation where you are playing against one raiser from the SB. We can basically use the same formula.

Let D be the average investment in the hand (blinds are counted as well
Let X be the needed equity for a 3-bet
Let M be the value of the dead money
Let S be the size of the small blind (usually S = 0.5)

Therefore the following applies: X = (D-0.5) / (2D + M)

On average, we invest 5.5 SB in the hand after subtracting the SB. There is 1 SB dead money if we assume that the big blind folds. A value of 42.5% results for X. On average, this is 3% lower than in the situation when we were on the button.

Again, this value changes if we assume that the BB plays better. We need more equity playing against a maniac than we need if we are playing against a rock.

Conclusion: In general, we 3-bet an open raise with hands that have an equity of at least 43% against the range of our opponent. The value can go all the way down to 40% or up to 46% depending on the type and strength of the big blind. We need more equity against a maniac than against a rock.

Topic 3: Big blind defence

Let's assume the button raises, the SB folds and you are in the big blind. We obviously 3-bet any hand that has more than 50% equity. If we have less than 50%, we have to ask ourselves whether we can call or fold. We can use an abbreviation of the formula we used earlier:

Let D be the average investment in the hand in SB (Blinds are counted as well)
Let X be the needed equity for a 3-bet
Let M be the value of the dead money, namely the value of the small blind.

The following results:

X = (D - 1) / (2D +M)

D is obviously smaller than in the situation above because we 3-bet in that situation. We are only contemplating calling in this case. On average, we check/fold 60% of the time on the flop and check-raise flop and bet turn 40% of the time. I therefore estimate our average investment in the hand against a typical opponent to be 4 SB.

A value of 35% results for X

Since the flop is small and we check to our opponent, it is not very important to us whether the opponent is a rock or a maniac because we have the information advantage on the flop – we can choose very carefully and it depends on the opponent whether we will check-raise or check/fold.

Conclusion: We need at least 35% equity to defend our blind.

Topic 4: SB vs BB preflop

When we are in a blind battle, we either raise or fold against an aggressive player. The hands you raise with are stated in the ORC. There is no point in limping as this player would raise most of the time anyway. There is no point in limp reraising either because it takes the option of capping preflop away from us.

This is how we play against a passive player: We only raise hands that have more than 50% equity against a random hand. We limp all other hands. If our opponent raises us after we limped, we fold every hand that has less than 35% equity against the raise range of our opponent. This implies that we limp/fold with very weak hands. If our opponent checks, we bet any flop no matter how weak our hand is. We occasionally make exceptions with strong hands.

Topic 5: Value check heads up on the turn in position

You are in position and have the initiative on the turn. Your opponent checks.

The question is whether to bet yourself or check behind on the turn to call the river. This is a very complex question.

1. You avoid a tough check-raise. A tough check-raise happens when you can’t tell whether a call down or a fold is correct. Normally aggressive-tricky players tend to make these tough check-raises. Logically a check-raise is only tough if you neither have a very strong hand (easy call) nor a very weak hand (easy fold). Mathematically speaking a tough check-raise reduces your expected value to nearly 0.

2. You induce a bluff from a bad hand, which had folded to a turn bet, on the river.

3. You induce a weak river call from a hand which had folded to a turn bet.

1. A better hand could fold. This is very valuable.

2. A worse hand could call on the turn as well as the river. This is especially interesting with hands that are strong enough to value bet on the river.

3. You won’t give any free cards to hands which would fold to a turn bet. Important: The larger the pot, the more dangerous it becomes to give away free cards.

4. You make a hand fold which actually has enough outs to call. This occurs often when the board is one suited. Opponents will often fold small cards of that suit.

We can derive a couple of rules of thumb by using the factors above.

1) A check behind on the turn is only possible if the chance of being behind is very high, but you could still call a river bet unimproved without a problem.

2) A check behind on the turn is not possible if the chance of the opponent folding a better hand exists.

3) A check behind on the turn is out of the question if you could value bet again on the river implying that the opponent called on the turn. This means that you shouldn’t check behind on the turn if you are convinced that your opponent would call down with worse hands to a showdown as well.

4) You should abstain from checking behind on the turn if the pot is large because the larger the pot the higher the costs of giving your opponents, who would have folded, a free card.

5) Avoiding tough check-raises is one of the greatest advantage of checking behind on the turn. If there is a great chance that our opponent is going to check-raise which would put us in a difficult situation, we should check behind.

We can derive the following from the rules above:
You should check behind against tricky aggressive players more often. You should basically never check behind against a loose passive opponent.

All the arguments mentioned are benchmarks only. This said, every factor can be worth more or less depending on the opponent and situation. Furthermore, the type of opponent and the board are taken into account for answering the following questions.

1) Is there a chance that the opponent would fold a better hand on the turn? +3 Points

2) Do you have an easy call down or an easy fold if your opponent check-raises on the turn or respectively donk bets the turn? +2 Points

3) Can you value bet if your opponent calls your turn bet and checks the river? +2 Points

4) Does your opponent check-raise a lot? If this is the case, do you have a tough decision if your opponent raises you on the turn or donks the river because he likes to bluff you as well? -2 Points

5) If you check behind on the turn, is there a great chance that your opponent bluffs into you with with a worse hand? -1 Point
Results:
0 or more points: BET
Less than 0 points: CHECK

Topic 6: Heads up on the flop in Position: Call flop, raise turn or raise flop?

In order to answer this question in the best possible manner, I am going to simplify the following. We’ll only look at two different cases:

1) We have an unbeatable hand. We want to get as much value as possible.

2) We definitely have a losing hand. We want to create as much fold value as with the least amount of money possible. We basically want to optimize the relationship between fold value and costs. We aren’t allowed to fold before the river.

Case 1) is a simplification for a made hand. Case 2) simulates a drawing hand which we want to semi-bluff with. It goes without saying that we don’t assume to be playing against a total maniac or an extreme calling station, because we should abstain from making semi bluffs against these players in the first place.

As mentioned, we assume that our hand is unbeatable and we try to extract as much value as possible.

You should generally call the flop and raise the turn with made hands. You will get 3 SB extra most of the time. If he calls down you’ll even get 7 SB.
We would only get at least 1 SB, or respectively 5 SB if he calls down, if we raise the flop and bet the turn.

You should raise the flop straight away if your opponent is very aggressive or if the board looks like there is going to be a lot of action. A very aggressive player is going to 3-bet on the flop. We call this 3-bet and raise the turn. We therefore get 2 SB extra if the opponent calls down by calling the flop and raising the turn. Even if the aggressive opponent only calls our flop raise, he is going to check-raise on the turn quite often enabling us to 3-bet. We get 3 SB more by doing this than we would get by calling the flop and raising the turn.

Basis: The article about attacking weak spots from the professional section.

We always assume to be behind and try to make our opponent fold in the most cost efficient way possible.

We have two choices. We either raise flop and bet the turn or call the flop and raise the turn.

In case 1, we saw that a loose-aggressive player hardly every folds to a raise on the flop. He is often going to 3-bet followed by a bet on the turn. He will also 3-bet the turn quite frequently when he doesn’t 3-bet on the flop.

However if we call the flop and raise the turn, he is often going to fold and rarely 3-bet the turn. Calling the flop and raising the turn is therefore the better semi-bluff option against a LAG.

It is very important to consider how draw heavy the board is when you are playing against a tight player.
Two things happen if the board is draw heavy: 1. The opponent is going to have outs against you. 2. He is going to put you on a draw quite often. These two factors reduce the effectiveness of a raise on the flop. You should call the flop and raise the turn again.
Raising the flop against a tight player is likely to be successful if the board doesn’t allow for many draws, for example K 5 2 rainbow. You have a great chance of taking down the pot by investing only 2 SB. You should raise the flop in this case.
You could take this one step further if you are playing against a very tight player. Sometimes it is enough to call the flop because the opponent is going to check/fold the turn quite often. Eventually you’ll be able to bluff effectively for 1 SB if the opponent hardly ever raises the turn in these situations.