Hole Card Confessions - Owen "QTip" Gaines - Study Notes

Introduction

This book follows on from Owen's first book, Poker Math That Matters, which I have just studied in depth and the notes for that are in my blog here.

Owen talks of the Two Keys To Poker being,

1. Accurate Assumptions

2. Making the best decision

Poker Math That Matters covered point 2, making the best decision, in detail and in that book villain's ranges were given so that we could practice making this decision.

This book covers point 1, accurate assumptions.

Owen splits assumptions into two parts, one is our opponent's range of hands and the other condiders how he will play that range.

We will use inductive reasoning to determine an opponent's likely hands (aka hand reading). We will also used inductive reasoning to predict what decisions the opponent will make with those hands.

So, if we have the skills from Poker Math That Matters handled then we are ready to learn how to deduce the villains likely holdings. This will give us the ability to play good poker!

Information

The Information War

Poker is a battle for information.

Every table is filled with spots to mine for information, and information is the key to develop accurate assumptions.

Some of the key places to look for informatioan are….

Showdown hands.

Exposed hands.

Betting patterns.

Frequencies.

Physical tells.

Listening.

Timing tells.

Meta game.

Notes.

Online tools.

Let’s briefly introduce each of these…

Showdown hands are one of the most reliable. We usually get to see the opponent’s cards and we can analyse every street in the hand and gleen information on opponent’s strategy, oop/ip, preflop etc.

Sometimes villains show hands even though there was no showdown. This is not so reliable as we may not have seen all three streets. Also we need to know the reason he showed us his hand – is he proud of a laydown or a call, or is he trying to deceive us?

Betting patterns can help. Some players bet big with strong hands and small with weak. Some do the opposite. If we get this information we can tailor our play around this very well.

Frequencies. Opening too much or folding too much can be fairly obvious sometimes.

The speed with which a player makes his decisions can be a tell.

Note taking is very important. If we don’t play a villain for a while then we can get straight back into his mindset.

Metagame is important to notice. If opponent just received a couple of bad beats for example he may get looser and more aggressive (or the opposite!). Also you coould sit at a table and get a run of good hands and you are betting and raising a lot, now you should maybe not bluff as villains are getting less trusting in your play.

Online tools include Pokertracker, HEM, PTR, Sharkscope where you can find out info on your opponent. Also you can use online tools to review hands.

Always remember that the information we gather is not 100% accurate and we should be prepared to be shocked! Owen calls this The Bacon Factor (a villain he had shocked him but it was because he was cooking bacon and it was burning so he pressed call too quickly!) Always be prepared to adjust your perceptions. You might sit at a table and think a villain is particularly loose and aggressive but it turn out that he was actually exploiting a differetn bad player at the table and that he is in fact solid.

Different Environments

You will find tables littered with villains giving information fro free and you will find other tables with tough players who you cannot get any decent information from. If you are at the latter you need to seriously ask yourself why you are staying at that table. There are limitless opportunities to find tables so get up and find a better table.

Also it is worth statiing that if you cannot gather accurate assumptions at the micro stakes where villains are generally bad then you have no chance at higher stakes. So do the training fr making accurate assumptions at the micro stakes!

Your Hole Card Confessions

Are we trying too hard to hide our own strategy? For example, some players will try to play balanced rather than optimally exploitive versus totally non observant or observant but unskilled opponents. We need to consider if it is worth concealing any or some of our strategy or not, and it is only against observant, skilled opponents. And remember, if your villain is really capable then consider moving tables!

Levels Of Thinking

Level 1: What do I have?

Level 2: What does my opponent have?

Level 3: What does my opponent think I have?

Level 4: What does my opponent think I think he has?

Your goal is to play one level above your opponent and not more. A good example is if you hold a full house on the river on a three to a flush board and you have good reason to believe your opponent has a flush from the way he played. If he is a level one thinker then he thinks he has a hand of strong absolute strength and is likely to call a big river bet. It is important not to make the mistake of thinking he is thinking above this level (and realising he has a hand of marginal relative strength that he might fold to an over bet) and making a smaller river bet like 67% pot or whatever as we are leaving value at the table.

Level 2 is the arena of exploitive play and this is where we want to spend most of our time. Admittedly at higher stakes this become less and less possible as villains are generally better and the player pool is smaller but at micro and small stakes games we want to play level one thinkers and therefore play at level two ourselves.

Level 3 and 4 we are getting more and more towards balanced play and levelling wars.

Summary

Getting good at the information gathering process reuires time and experience. What follows in this book will help us from what Owen has learned in millions of hands playing. Other ways to improve this process is through forum work and watching videos and thinkg about what people are saying etc.

Always be on the lookout for information and try not to lose focus. Even when you have a bad beat, remember there was a showdown…!

Player Types

Reasons For Playing

People have varying reasons to play poker and it has a large im[act on their strategy. Whether they play for fun, professionally, for competition or for social environment can affect their strategy. People have different motivations. If winning is our motivation it is our job to find out what is going on with each player and then exploit his weaknesses.

Player Types

Nits, TAGs, LAGs, calling stations and maniacs. These are general terms that I have already covered in massive depth. Suffice to say here that we would like to vary our own player type so that we can exploit the player type of our opponent. This will be discussed in depth later…

How To Categorize Players

Classifying players into player types is a powerful weapon in the battle for information.

Categorization is useful when we do not have specific information about a player’s actions.

Example…..

You open the button for pot. Villain calls in BB. He has played two hands in one hour. He called flop and folded turn to large bets in both of these so we have not seen a show down. Effective stacks 100bb. We have JJ. He check/calls our 50% cbet on T62tt. Turn is 4o and again he check/calls our 50% bet. River is 9o and villain leads into us for pot.

What do we do? Well he seems amazingly tight preflop, he crumbled postflop too. Given this information he is likely a NIT. Now we might beat a hand like ATs (he prob doesn’t even play ATo!) but he probably does not bet the river with that anyway, especially for pot. We need to be good 33% of the time to call and against a NIT that is very unlikely. Folding an overpair is not much fun but here it is almost certainly the best play.

Another example….

We just sat down. Player to our right has raised three of four hands preflop, two of which he won uncontested. The other went to the flop T93r and he shoved 35bb into a 9bb pot and the other player folded. On the fifth hand at the table we are in the big blind. Villain is on the button and he jams for 43bb. Small blind folds and we hold A9o. What do we do?

Well, we have yet to see villain’s cards in a hand. We do have some information that allows us to classify him into a player type. He has played four of five hands. Although he could have been dealt good cards it is more likely he is just loose preflop. Also, he has raised every hand he got involved in and had no problem making a large overbet on a rather dry board. Evidence to now suggests he is a maniac. While we would not normally stick in half our stack with A9o, here we almost certainly have over 50% equity versus this player. We take our likely edge and stick the money in.

So categorizing helped us in these two examples. We did not have really solid reads but through putting the villain into a player type we could improve our assumptions and therefore our decisions.

One of the best ways to categorize players is by looking at their preflop tendencies. Using a HUD we can get a grasp on a player’s category even from just his VPIP and PFR stats.

Learn How Categories Think

Again experience will help a lot with learning how different types of players think. Here are some ways to accelerate the process…

Ask them! Even in the chat box, if we ask in the correct manner “how did you know how to do that?” then people often will give you a correct answer.

Use the forums. A lot of posters on forums play a TAG type style so we can post hands and get that information from them.

Watch friends play. If you know someone plays a particular style watch them play and try to work out how they think and make note of it. Ask them questions and take note of how they think.

Also classify yourself. Then when you get a villain akin to your play or your old style of play you can think what you would do (or would have done) in their situation.

Range Review

We spent significant time in Poker Math That Matters explaining and demonstrating ranges and how to work with them. Reread that if you are hazy! Here follows a quick review…

Remember each paired hand has 6 combos (3+2+1) and each unpaired hand has 16 combos (4x4). Also as cards in the deck become known to us this impacts the number of combos availabel to villain so if you have an Ace in your hand and we know villain can have AQ well there are only 12 available combos to him (4x3).

Owen introduces some ways to picture what a certain percentage of hands is. Of course we can use Pokerstove to start to memorize some of these. Also if we realise that a pocket pair is about 0.5% and an unpared holding is about 1% (it is actually 1.3%) we can figure some ranges out on the fly. Imagine a player plays every pocket pair (13 x 0.5%) that is 6.5% and if you add AK, AQ that would be another 2%. This gives 8.5% for that range.

It is vitally important we practise thinking about these ranges so we get a feel for how significant or insignificant certain parts of a range are. For example if we have a range of AQ+, 44-66 we can see that AQ and AK are 2% and 44-66 are 1.5% so the range is weighted towards the unpaired holdings. We can check this with combos too. Range has AQ(16), AK(16), 44-66(18), so 32/50 = 0.64 = 64% unpaired.

Shaping A Range

Shaping someone’s range is both a science and an art. It is an art in the sense that we have to skillfully use our informational tools to try to accurately assume what hands are in the range. And it is a science in the sense that we can analyse the shape of the range by understanding the certain probability distribution of each hand in the given range.

Owen compares shaping a range to sculpting (rather than building/constructing). He is saying that we stat with a large piece of material and then we chisel away at it with each new piece of information until we are left with a range of hands that we play against..

Example…. In a hand our opponent can have any of the 1225 combos left for him to hold (after we take out our own two cards). Villain is UTG TAG who is playing tight and seems positionally aware, value bets well and keeps pots small with marginal hands, its full ring. He raises preflop to 3.5x. Immediatley we start sculpting (with a saw!) and we assume he has 66+, AJ+, KQ. That is 9*0.5 + 4*1.0 = 8.5% of hands we already sculpted it down to! We call and we go to the flop heads up which comes down As Js 3d. He checks. Now we take out our chisel and take some more away. We know he value bets well so will build pot with strong hands and will also charge draws when present. So it seems unlikely he will have AA, AJ+ or JJ. The fact he is out of position makes it less likely for him ti slowplay too. So we already discounted top pair or better and we are left with 66-TT, QQ-KK, KQ and the remote possibility of a slowplayed monster. We check behind. Turn is Qh and he checks again. This card helps QQ and KQ. QQ would be likely to bet and build the pot but the KQ may still check as its not as strong as top pair. We bet 0.75 pot andhe calls. We get the chisels out again. With three overcards on board 66-TT are unlikely to call, especially oop. If QQ did check the turn it is probably to check/raise so that is not likely. So we are now down to KQ and KK. We have sculpted down to a very small range.

Sometimes an action will not allow you to chisel any hands away and we are left with a bigger range than this, but we can still shape his range…..

The Shape Of A Range

As stated, once we have the ake up of a range we can then begin to shape it using combinatorial mathematics to understand the probability distribution of each holding.

There are a handful of very common range shapes for us to understand and when you begin to develop a feel for someone’s range you can use this information to play a solid exploitive game.

Getting a feel for the shape of a range is much simpler than doing maths at the table counting combinations.

The range shapes we will discuss are bell, polarized, weak, strong and flat.

The beginnings of our graphs look like this…

On the left are weak holdings, the middle is marginal and the right is strong.

We begin looking at the bell shape range. You can see it is filled with marginal holdings and little to no weak or strong hands, the hand above where we sculpted villains range to KQ, KK was a good example of this in that he had little to no strong or weak hands.

Let us now look at the weak range. It is fairly self explanatory when you see the graph and we saw an example when the maniac shoved 42bb in preflop above, mainly because even maniacs will raise smaller with their monster starting hands, so when a maniac shoves often their hands are quite weak.

Now for the strong range. Again it looks self explanatory and we had an example of this earlier when the nit lead the river for pot earlier when he does not bluff this way or bet out marginal hands so large, therefore, his range was full of strong hands at that point.

The next one is a polarized range. This is the opposite of a bell shaped range and the villains range is full of either very strong or very weak hands. Let’s just look at an example….

100bb effective. Good LAG opens button to 4bb, he could almost be opening any two cards (ATC) here, maybe we can chisel a few hands away from the 1225 combinations he can have. We are in BB and look down at ATs, SB folds and we call. Flop comes down Th 5h 2c. WE check and he bets 0.75pot so 6bb into the 8bb pot. Again we cannot do much chiselling here as this villain will likely continuation bet his entire range here. We call. The turn is Kc. We check and villain bets 15bb into the 20bb pot. Again we cannot use our chisel too much. The turn is an overcard that the villain might be using to pushj us off marginal holdings. He also may continue to semi bluff with a heart or club flush draw or a straight draw like QJ or A3. He could also feel he is extracting value with a middle pair or better with like 66+ because there are a good number of draws on board. His range is still really wide. We call. The river is 6h. We check and he overbet shoves 75bb more into the 50bb pot. Time to get the hacksaw out!! It is a rare player that will make this play with a hand like a set of Kings or a straight as the flush (that was a draw on the flop) came in on the river. This is normally a very strong hand like the nut flush or a very weak hand trying to get us to fold. The marginal part of his range just got hacked right out of his range. Here he is polarized.

The last one is the flat range. If we go back to the last hand, before villain made his large overbet on the river he had a flat range. There were marginal, weak and strong hands in his range.

We will learn how to exploit our opponents using the shape of their range mixed with their strategy in the following chapters……!

Eagle Eyes

Specific Notes

It is extremely imprtant to keep focus on the game, regardless if you are involved in the hand or not. Information is always being given and information = money.

We have learned how to categorize players based on different actions but as we get more information we will be able to really hone in on our opponent’s thought processes in many different situations. Online we can take notes on our opponents and then if we play themm again we already have our information. Even when we are not involved in a hand we should be taking notes.

Develop some acronyms to help make our notes shorter and therfore quicker. Owen used “ciocb IP with bp on dry flop” meaning the villain checked instead of continuation betting with bottom pair on a dry flop. So his note is short but contains a lot of information.

We need to learn exactly what to take notes on. What is useful and how do we use it? What will help us chisel down an opponent’s range? Let’s see some of Owen’s examples…..

Preflop specific holdings in specific positions – Imagine a tight player raises from UTG. You look at HUD and his PFR is 8%. We can make some assumptions about his range just from starting hand percentages. If he raises every pocket pair that is about 6% so the other 2% is probably made up of AK and AQ giving us 8%. However there are other was to make up 8% reasonably. Some players will fold small pocket pairs preflop in early position so they might only have 77+. That is 4% so the other 4% might be AJ+, KQ, giving 77+, AJ+, KQ for his 8%. So if you see a tight player open 22 from UTG, and he opens only 8%, then you can make more assumptions about his range now, such as he does not have AJ there or KQ. So, while we already know this player has a strong range, understanding the make up that range will help us shape his range on different flops. We will look at this later….

Another example for this… Imagine we have ATs in middle position. Tight player opens from UTG, we decide to fold. The button reraises (3bets) and he has seemed fairly tight so far. Suddenly they are all in preflop and UTG turns over AA and button turns over JJ. UTG is standard and not note worthy. However the button has showed his thinking process about medium pocket pairs against a likely tight range. Many players would just flat JJ preflop but this player was aggressive with it and was willing to satck off at 100bb effective against a tight range. This is note worthy. In contrast a player who calls with JJ there is likely to have a very strong range OR a polarized range if he reraises there (against a tight player).

Different raise sizes – Many players vary their sizings. Some raise larger if they prefer to get a fold and smaller if they want to illicit a call. Also some people will open 4x UTG, for example, with AK or TT which they know is strong but they would prefer a fold as they hate to play it postflop. Then they amplify the read by raising smaller with AA (to lure opponents in). This is note worthy as is the opposite.

Another interesting one is if a decent player raises to isolate a bad player. Sometimes they raise small with medium strength hands that they want to isolate with in position to keep it cheap but they raise a lot bigger with premiums beasue they know the fish will call. Note what hands they show down with for different isolation sizes.

Positionally aware – It is always good to know if your opponent is aware of the power of position. Some bad players just have a static range of hands they play from all positions. When you see a player with very similar VPIPs from all positions you can assume he is not positionally aware.

Continuation betting – We know that cbetting is often a profitable strategy (because it is hard to flop a decent hand it puts pressure on). So players cbet with a very large portion of their range. We might observe patterns though and these patterns can help us shape our opponent’s range very early in a hand. Some players cbet polarized (weak and strong) maybe trying to keep the pot small and capture a bluff from you on the turn. If you see someone doing this you can give them a bell shaped range when they check and conversely you can give them a polarized range when they bet.

Also some players cbet differently in or out of position, maybe they cbet more in position and check fold out of position with air.

Some players feel differently about different flop textures, some people are more likely to make a cbet on Q72r than T98tt with AK because they expect people to call more on the draw heavy flop. While this is solid thinking it is still dependent on your opponent’s range. If his range is 22-99, AQ+ then the board is not draw heavy at all.

Notice people’s sizings with their cbets too. Some people bet pot with a hand but 0.5pot with air. It can be amplified on different board textures too, for instance some people will bet very big on wet boards because they don’t want the draws to continue cheaply.

Fit or fold – How do villain’s react on the flop to aggression? Do they fold if they don’t make anything? Do they call with a pair but then fold to further aggression? How weak of a draw will they call versus different sized bets? Will they call 0.5pot with a gut shot or just two overcards? Understanding if a plaer plays fit or fold or not will help us shape their range.

Slowplaying monster flops – Does villain slowplay or try to get the money in as quickly as possible? Does he slowplay on dry boards only but get the money in on wet flops?

One and done – Note how your villain plays after cbetting. Do they normally give up if they do not have a strong hand? Do they stop aggression on the turn? Or will they continue aggression on a scare card? Do they bet marginal hands on the turn? Do they bet the turn more in position or out of position?

River betting – Understanding a villain’s river betting strategy is extremely important. With wht types of hands does he make value bets? Some players will almost never make a bet with a hand like middle pair – they prefer to check it down and maybe call if they get bet into. Some players will never turn a hand like Ace high or a pair into a bluff on the river. Some players will only make large river bets tith very strong hands. Some people will bet small on the river with weak hands trying to get a cheap show down when they are out of position.

Believer or doubter – Some people think people are always bluffing them – they are doubters. Other people think if someone is betting that they have a good hand – they are believers. It is good to note when you see a player make a call (especially on the river) that shows they belived their opponent to be bluffing. Always note if a villain catches you bluffing too.

Creativity – Some players get very creative with their strategies and others opt for a more straight forward static style. For example a mass multi tabler might stick with one strategy tending to keep pots small with small hands and try to make pots large with big hands.

DST

In case we get to aggressive in our assumptions Owen starts a note with “dst”. It stands for doesn’t seem to. So if he sees something once he will start the note with this, then if he sees it again he might remove it so he knows it is more standard play for villain. It is just to stop us going over the top with our assumtions.

Examples Of Notes In Action

You head to your local casino, get $300 in chips and sit down at a $1/$2 NLHE game. You post the big blind and get dealt Ah Jd. Play folds around to a player in middle position who raises to $8. The button calls. They both have more money than you do. You decide to call. The pot is $24, and the flop is As Qs 3h. You check and the middle position player bets $25. The button folds and you decide to call. The turn is the 6d. You check and your opponent bets $60. You decide to call once more. The river is the 2d. You check and your opponent checks. He turns over Ks 2s and you win the pot.

What did we learn about this player?

His raise preflop in middle position with a holding as weak as K2s shows us he’s probably a pretty loose and aggressive player preflop. When he raises preflop in the future, we’ll be unlikely to narrow his range much at all. His continuation bet on the flop shows us he can make large continuation bets with draws, even into multiple opponents. His large bet on the turn tells us he’s more likely to bet the turn with his draws instead of taking free cards. He was in position on the turn, so he did have the opportunity to just check and see if he hit the flush on the river. However, he decided to bet, and bet the pot. We won’t be able to narrow his range to only made hands on the turn when he bets in position. His check on the river is interesting as well. He paired his two and decided to simply show it down. However, given your action so far, it’s very unlikely his pair of twos is going to win the pot. The fact he has two spades as well reduces your combinations of spade holdings, and you’ve called two very large bets out of position already. So, we can gather he’s probably not very good at reading hands. Also, we learned he probably doesn’t turn what he considers showdown worthy hands into bluffs on the river, at least in position. So, when he bets on the river, he’s likely to have a fairly polarized range. We certainly learned a lot about that player in just one hand, didn’t we? We could also - probably - safely categorize this player as a LAG, while keeping the maniac category close at hand. If Owen were playing online against him, he would make the following notes in the note box.

"open 4x in mp with K2s, fired pot c-bet into 2 with only ff, barreled pot on turn IP with FF, checked down rivered pair of 2s IP otr.”

He translates thus…“Opened four times the big blind in middle position with K2s, fired a pot-size continuation bet into two players with a four flush, bet a second time on the turn in position with a four flush, checked down a rivered pair of 2s in position on the river.”

Let us change the ending of the hand slightly. The river is Jh giving us two pair. We decide to go for a check raise on the river. Villain obliges us by betting $120 into $194 and we shove our remaining $207 in. The pot is about $520 and he only needs to call $80 but he tosses his cards in the muck.

Now we did not get to see his cards this time but what do we learn?

We would have gotten zero reads on his preflop, flop or turn betting, nor his tendency to check down made hands on the river. However given the speed of his river fold and the great price he was getting we would expect a call so we can be almost certain he had a bluff. So we assume he is aggressive and likes to bluff and bluff large. We do have to be cautious with this one hand though and maybe we would not classify him as a LAG just yet.

Another one…..

Online NL400 and we bought in for $200. We fold a couple of hands and get Ac Kc in the CO. It folds to us and we raise to $14 (3.5bb), all fold except BB who calls and he has us covered. Flop is Ah Kh 2d. Villain checks and we bet $25 into $30 and villain makes a quick call. The turn is the Ts. Villain checks and we bet $60 into the $85 pot. After a few seconds he calls. The river is the 9s. Villain checks, we bet $150 into $205. Villain uses his time bank until its almost gone and folds and shows Qs Qh.

What did we learn?

His preflop call is quite passive. Many players will have a wide range raising from the cutoff when it’s been folded around to them. Most players value QQ as a very strong hand in that situation. His quick call on the flop shows us that he’s a doubter and rather sticky postflop, even out of position (many players have trouble folding a hand that was strong on one street but the cards crush it on the next street). His turn call also points to his unwillingness to fold very marginal hands to heavy aggression on later streets. We also may ponder the idea he’s overvaluing his gut shot on the turn. If that’s the case, he’s likely unaware of pot odds. After the river came down and you’re still firing big bets as an unknown player to him, he still has to seriously consider the decision to fold his queens. He also needlessly exposed his hole cards. Not only is that a poor decision in the battle for information, but it also verifies he likely wants to show everyone what he considered to be a very tough, but good, fold. So, while we can’t learn about his preflop looseness or tightness, we can glean that he’s probably rather passive preflop. We also can classify him as a doubter and very sticky postflop. Possibly we can classify him as a calling station.

Another…..

We have been at a NL400 table for one hour. Everyone has ~$500, a guy opposite us has played four hands and has only shown premium holdings so far. He is UTG now and opens to $14 (3.5bb) we are on the button and we call with 8s 9s. Blinds fold and flop is Ks 9h 2d. He bets $10 into the $34 pot and we call. Turn is Th. He checks and we check. The river is Ad. He checks and we check it down. He shows 3h 3d and we win with our pair of 9’s.

What did we learn?

Well, we know he’s been quite tight so far, but we did learn he’s raising any pocket pair in early position. We also learned he will continuation bet very marginal made hands when out of position. Also, notice his sizing is really quite small when he’s just taking at stab at winning the pot right there. He seems to be a one and done c-bettor, since he surrendered after his small c-bet didn’t work. The river was a really good card for him to bluff, but he didn’t. He simply decided to check down with his 33, when it’s likely never good in that situation. Probably safe to say, this player is a nit.

Enter Steal Equity

Two Ways To Skin A Pot

We know that a starting hand has a certain amount of showdon equity versus a give range. We need to understand that hands can have something called steal equity (often referred to as fold equity) as well. Owen realised about this early in his career when Tommy Angelo was talking about betting a certain hand rather than checking as betting gave him two ways to win the pot –either at showdown or by the opponent folding (obviously if we check the opponent is extremely unlikely to fold!). Steal equity is all about what we gain when our opponent folds. Looking at the showdown equity of a hand we realise that AA has massive showdown equity and 72o has next to none.

Let us consider this as a slider effect. For a hand to be played prof itably considering just showdown equity it has to be above 3 on this scale. AA is at the far right of the scale way over the 3. Maybe AJs is just over the 3 mark and Q8o is just under the 3. Looking at starting hands in a vacuum (against a random range) all the way to showdown is a fairly simple exercise. We could look at this in Pokerstove and plot the hands quite easily.

In truth, however, we are going to have to play poker on flop, turn and river so unless we are going to be all in preflop this is not much use to us. We have to consider how a hand is going to play out postflop. This is where we come to the world of steal equity.

Steal equity is us profiting when our opponent folds and gives us the pot without showdown. Imagine it folds to us on the button and we have 67s. We can hit two pair, a straight and a flush so that hand has quite a bit of showdown equity. We can also steal the blinds when our opponents fold preflop. Or maybe we get a caller preflop and then win the pot by betting the flop and our villain folds at that point. The important thing to notice is that we have both showdown equity AND steal equity.

In this figure we have extended to the left for steal equity. Let’s say we still need a value of 3 in order to play a hand profitably. Remember AA was way over 3 so that is no problem to play anyway but let’s look at a hand like Q8o that was not strong enough when we only considered showdown equity, let’s add a bit of steal equity….

By adding some steal equity the hand has gone over the value of 3 and we can now play it profitably.

What about 72o? Well it was at the bottom end of showdown equity so we need to max out the steal equity side to make it profitable…

So, how do we increase our steal equity? Among the factors are the following…

1. Opponent(s).

2. Position.

3. Our image.

4. Stack sizes.

5. Meta game.

Let’s go through them…..

Opponents – Tight opponents give you high steal equity preflop e.g we are button and sb and bb only play 7% of hands regardless of our raise size then this is the time to minraise any two cards and just take the blinds – our steal equity is so high our hand does not even matter in this particular case.

Similar situation postlfop. Some people play fit or fold meaning they fold to flop aggression if they don’t hit something like top pair or better. This gives us high steal equity postflop and because of it we can play hands that have lower showdown equity, just remember you have to rely on being aggressive postflop to take advantage of it. A note of caution… If you make a steal play because a player is particularly tight in a given situation (either preflop or fit or fold on the flop) be very cautious abouttry ing to take the steal equity any further, their hand is now defined as strong in showdown value and we are most likely best to give up. For example if we steal the blinds from button because villain only plays 7% of hands preflop then continuation betting if he does call is very likely burning money.

The converse is true for looser players. Our steal equity is reduced so we are forced to play hands with better showdown equity, we want to play a range that is stronger than our opponent’s and we need to be a bit patient.

A player who plays loose postflop but then plays fit or fold on the flop is an absolute gold mine! He enters preflop with a wide range that misses many flops but then folds the flop with so many hands just giving us the money he invested preflop. We can even raise bigger preflop to build a larger pot to steal on the flop!

Very aggressive players also lessen our steal equity as they are always betting or raising. Again we will need to use stronger showdown equity hands than the average hand he has in his range.

Position – When we get to act last we can apply more pressure on our opponents. Also we have more information about our opponents in the hand so we can act accordingly. So we can always play more hands in position as our steal equity is increased. Conversely, when we act first we will not have any knowledge of our opponent’s actions so our steal equity is decreased and we need to rely heavily on showdown equity.

Stack Sizes – No one likes to lose a huge pot. So, if players have little money in their stack compared to the pot they are more likely to toss the rest in so our steal equity decreases. Conversely, when players have more money in their stack compared to the pot they become less likely ot want to put more money in with weaker hands so our steal equity increases. So we vcan say that we are more likely to rely on showdown equity against smaller stacks and with a small SPR but we gain steal equity when stacks are deeper and SPRs are bigger.

Our Image – If we are playing against observant, thinking opponents (level 2) then we need to consider how they view us. Our image will affect our steal equity. If they think we are betting too much with weak hands our steal equity decreases. If they think we are only betting with strong hands then our steal equity increases and we can loosen our starting hand requirements.

Meta game – Is a villain tilting due to a bad beat or maybe they just lost a big pot? Sometimes they get looser and more aggressive and our steal equity decreases. Against thinking players maybe they just saw us lose a big pot and they think we have loosened up, again our steal equity decreases.

A good example when players tighten up is if they are playing live have just won big and are looking to finish play. They don’t want to lose any of their winnings so we have higher steal equity.

In tougher games stealing becomes an important skill. As we climb stakes players become less likely to pay off our big showdown hands and they are better at hand reading so in order to be successful we have to steal our fair share of pots. In other games where our steal equity is low then we will rely on stronger hands and our showdown equity.

A strong showdown hand in what is perceived by our opponent to be a high steal equity situation is one of the best spots in poker. Getting AA on the button against competent blind players in the blinds is just about as good as poker gets!!

General Relativity

The preflop street is massively important. We set our strategy for the rest of the hand with our preflop decision. You hear “play tight when the table is loose and play loose when the table is tight” but the idea of loose and tight is relative.

Sometimes AK preflp is the nuts and other times it is trash and you would be better to have74s. Sometimes a half pot bet is small but other times its large. These contradictions are defined by the analysis of the situation we are in. The ide of playing loose or tight is no different. Sometimes VPIP 30 is way too tight and sometimes it is way too loose.

When you have low steal equity you want to keep your range tighter than your opponents. This is because the majority of hands are going to go to later streets or to showdown. What is a tighter range? Well it is relative to the opponent’s range, if he is playing 30% of hands we need to be playing less than 30%. If he is playing 90% then we can play a lot more than 30%. So “play tight when others are playing loose” is normally pretty good advice, but don’t think it is static, it is relative.

When you have high steal equity you want your range to be looser. Again it is relative. This time however, it is not related to the opponents range it is related to just how much steal equity we think we will have. When steal equity is really high we may be able to play any two cards for example. If our steal equity is only moderately strong then we will have to tighten it up just a little.

At The Table

Owen uses an analogy of playing pool to playing pool. The pool player is always thinking ahead to clear the table, lining the cue ball up to the next shot and even further ahead. The poor player does not do this they just play a shot and see what happens next. In poker we must think of preflop just like this. We must spend some time thinking about the showdown equity and steal equity in order to analyse preflop situations. We need to answer…

1. Is this hand likely to get to the flop?

2. If so, what will the situation llok like for me postflop?

As we get more skilled at this we will find we put ourselves into better situations and the game becomes much easier.

Two examples from Owen’s student “Bob”…

In the first hand, a rather loose player limped UTG, and two other players limped behind him. Everyone pretty much had about 100x, and so did Bob. Play folded to Bob in the big blind, and he had 99. Bob raised to 4x the big blind, and I had him press ‘pause’ on the video, so we could examine the situation. Obviously, the showdown value of our hand is strong. Given how the action has gone so far preflop, we almost certainly have the best hand right now. If I could press all-in preflop here and have everyone call with their hand, I'd be happy to do that. However, I can't. Pressing all-in with this much money behind against reasonably sane opponents is going to win the small pot right now. The few times we do get called will likely be by a strong hand lurking in the shadows and we lose a really big pot. If we raise, what's our steal equity like preflop? When a seemingly sane player limps in early position, they normal have a stronger range than when they limp in late positions. This means I'd expect him to call rather often. So, if I raise and the UTG player calls, the late position players will be more likely to call. The UTG player often causes an avalanche and we'll end up in a bloated pot on the flop, out of position against three opponents. How do you think your fold equity will look postflop? At least one overcard will hit on the flop about 80% of the time. You'll be holding a marginal hand out of position against three players. C-betting in that spot is normally a very bad idea. Because you're out of position, you can't even control the action. If you check, one of the three players is likely to bet the flop, and you're normally left with the one option, a fold. Even though we have a strong hand, our steal equity is so low it forces us to play more passively in this spot preflop.

The second hand went like this. The UTG player limped and play folded to Bob on the button. Both players had 100x the big blind in their stacks. The UTG player was a special one. He was playing almost every hand preflop. A couple hands previous, he had check/called three large bets from Bob. Bob had top pair and he ended up with 22 on a board with five different overcards. Apparently, the UTG player doesn't like to fold postflop either. So, that's all we've seen so far. Now, let’s get back to the hand in question. We're holding K3s, and both the blinds were extremely tight players. Bob folded, and I had him press ‘pause’ on the video, so we could examine the situation. Since our opponent is both loose preflop and sticky postflop, our steal equity is obviously quite low. Most of the time, K3s would be considered a rather weak holding. However, the value of our starting hand isn't static. It's dynamic based on our opponent's range. Considering our opponent's range is probably about any 2cards, K3s actually has some fairly strong showdown value even as K high. If we flop a King, we're liable to make a fair amount of money in the hand. The hand is also suited, which can add a little more value if we did decide to show a little aggression postflop. We do have the button which allows us to dictate the action early on in the hand, even though it doesn't give us much fold equity in this situation. We can either c-bet or take a free card on the turn or river, since he's most likely to check to us. Also, if he's paying any attention, when we bet before, we had a good hand. So, perhaps our image will give a little more fold equity than we had before that hand. Our stacks are 100x, so that might give us just a bit of fold equity too. Considering the whole picture here, it's a great opportunity to build the pot and get the players in the blinds out of the hand, isolating the bad player for some profitable postflop poker.

Open Limping

The standard mantra is to not do this. This is because we lose initiative and therefore the ability to use aggression to win the pot. But we still need to answer our prefop questions….

If we were playing a low stakes live game where everyone is looking to see flops and we have 33 UTG raising there is not brilliant, we will likely get multiple callers and got to a flop with overcards against us and not liking life. However hitting a set can get us a good pay off with all these callers so here open limping might be best.

Another situation is against a couple of loose players who are short (say 40bb) and who have limped before us and we have T7s on the button. Again raising is not so good as our steal equity decreases due to the low SPR and we have very little showdown equity and we need to improve. Again, calling (not effectively opn limping here) is the most attractive option.

The Bread and Butter

We can now identify profitable instances for finding steal equity. These spots are called the bread and butter spots and they are a recipe to print money. We want to get into these spots as often as possible and the ability to get there hinges on our ability to to understand the dynamics of the table. Where are the tight players? Where are the loose players? The dynamics change greatly as the button moves around the table so the situation can change dramatically. Our ability to to answer those two questions accuratley is the key.

Exploiting A Range

Relativity Strikes Again

We talked beofre about parts of a range being strong, marginal or weak. It is very important to realise that these are relative terms and they are not determined by us. While we may consider second pair to be marginal in a given spot, our opponent may consider it very strong.

So, as we talk about the shape of a player’s range we need to be thinking about that range through the lens of our opponent’s perception of hand stranght. That lens can be adjusted, not only by his perception of his static hand strength but also by his interpretation of our actions. We must consider those things before we decide how to exploit. We may deduce the correct hand range, but if we don’t understand how he views those holdings, we are likely to make some big mistakes.

So the question is “How does my opponent shape his range?” This is the heart of accurate assumptions. Climbing into your opponent’s mind, thinking like he does, you try to comprehend his range, how he views it and what actions he is likely to take as a result of his thinking.

Cumulative Information

Every piece of information we receive gets us closer and closer to our opponents’ most likely hands. As we get more useful information, his likely range gets smaller and smaller. This fact accentuates the importance of the later streets, the turn and river. The river is probably the most important street as here we have all the information we are going to get. Also someone has 100% equity. Also the pot is big so the bets are likely very big too. So these three factors make the river a very important street. This is why experts like to play deep as the experts have the biggest edge when all the information is to hand.

Not only is the process of hand reading cumulative in a single hand, it is cumulative as we break down an individual opponent. The more we play with them and examine their game the better our assumptions will become. Then, when we become an expert at understanding a villain’s range we can use mathematics to analyse the best play against that range and develop a huge edge against them.

Let’s see this in action…..

We have a nit. Opens UTG 8% and we saw him open 33, so his range looks like 22+, AQ+. We saw him fire a very small cbet on a dry flop and give up a couple of times. Also, we saw him cbet large with top pair on a dry board. It seems we hav a bet sizing pattern we can use against him. Think about how we can exploit him……

Ok, he opens UTG, play folds to us on the button and we have K2s. This is trash against his range. However, our hand does not matter too much here. We will find out exactly what he is up to on most flops by looking at his bet sizing! Not only that but we will pick up some more money on the flop as he seems to cbet most of the time. So we call. Flop is Qs 7c 2d. He cbets $8 into $16 pot. We could call and see if he gives up on the turn. But, wht not just raise, take the money and be done with the hand now? Also he is a nit so he probably won’t adjust to any raise size so we can probably min raise here and get him to fold 33-66, 88-JJ and AK. Given that he would likely bet the flop bigger with AQ and QQ+ he is likely to fold 100% of the time. We only need him to fold ~40% of the time so we do not need to raise any bigger (given our assumptions) and we do not need to let the hand g o any further. Even if he did call with a hand like JJ, we have 5 outs. His predictable strategy has allowed us to take advantage of his very weak range. And that is how we attack the shape of his range.

Let us look at how to attack different range shapes versus different types of opponents…..

Range Responses

We can save time and energy at the table by recognizing lines certain opponents take that reveal the shape of their range. Then we can know ahead of time what to do to exploit that range against that opponent. Let’s look at some……

The Bell-Shape Range – Our opponent srange is almost completely made up of what he considers marginal hands.

Now remember we will have higher steal equity against players who like their money and need a good hand when the pot gets large. These are normally the nits and TAGS. Thes types allow us to quickly identify a bell shaped range. Usually they start to play passively when they have a bell shaped range, the only real exception being when the SPR is low nad they may play aggressively with a marginal hand. Other than that exception though, these players like to keep the pot small when they are marginal and they bet small and check back a street or two, just trying to get small value from their hand. They want to get a cheap showdown, following the mantra “big pots for big hands and small pots for small hands”. When the board is wet this information is even more reliable as they want to charge draws with their big hands. So if they get passive on a wet board it is even easier to identify their range as bell shaped.

Example…. NL200 everyone has $200. Nit opens from EP and we call on the button with 7d 8d. Flop is Qs 7s 6d. Villain checks so we bet $10 into $14. He calls. Turn is 5c and he checks again and we decide to check back. River is 2h and he checks again. Let’s think about his range…..

Without breaking it down street for street we can see tha he is not really excited about his hand. Nits and TAGS like to get the money in with big hands, especially when the board has draws like this on. They wait for monsters and try to get paid then and only then. Here he has gone check, check, check, including one check/call from out of position so he has got something. His opening range has not got many flush draws in it so we can guess his range to be mostly hands like 88-JJ.

Now stop and look at our hand. Inexperianced players think they have showdown value here and will check back the river, “we have a pair let’s see if it is good”. Owen says “Let me save you the suspense!”!!! It is not good. Ok, every now and then we will be surprised and find he check/called the flop with AJ or something. But that will be the exception. The point is our hand will be trash against virtually his entire range.

So what should we do? Well the answer is to bluff…. We should turn our pair into a bluff.

And how much should we bet? Well the pot is $34 and we both have ~$180 left. If we bet $20 he will need to fold about 40%. Will he fold? Maybe, maybe not! Oewn says this is what is going on, villain is saying….

“Dear opponent. I really want to get to showdown with this hand. I like it, but not that much. I would like to go ahead and play a small pot and turn the cards over and see who has the best hand”

This should be our reply….

“Dear opponent. I appreciate the fact that you are out of position and have a marginal hand, that is always a tough spot. I can also appreciate you want to keep the pot small and see a showdown. However, that is not going to happen. This is going to get very expensive for you if you want to see a showdown”

How about betting $100 into the $34 pot?!?!? That is more like it!! That is a the way to attack a bell shaped range that is trying to keep the pot small. Use your stack like a weapon and totally crush their hopes of getting to showdown cheaply. The nit will almost certainly fold 100% of his range to that bet. Owen says that the $30 is most likely a losing bet. Hands like TT-JJ could well call it. Only two streets were bet and if we are looking aggressive they can call.

Now., some players get a bit worried here and say “what are we repping?”. Owen’s answer is that when a nit gives you his story we don’t really need one ourselves. He loves his stck too much and will not make the call with his bell shaped range. He will fold and wait til he has the nuts. Only thing he does not know is that we know he never has the nuts this time.

Another example is this… NL200 and all have $200. TAG button raises pot. SB calling station calls and we call in the BB with Td 9d. Flop is Ts 7s 2h. Flop checks around. Turn is Ad. SB checks and we bet $14 into $21. The button calls and SB folds. The river is 3s. We check and button bets $20 into $49. What is going on…?

Well in this case the button player is more aggressive and would likely bet the flop with a flush draw or woth a top pair type hand to get value from the fish. So his flop check tells us he has a weak hand. After we lead the turn and he calls it is very likely he has an Ace. Our bet into both of them, especially as the calling station was in the hand tells the TAG that we are probably not outright bluffing. We likely have a pair or a strong draw. The Ace does not bring a legitimate draw either for the TAG so his range looks like a split pair of Aces.

Now it gets intereating on the river. TAGS make better value bets than nits so he can definitley make a river bet with AT or better. His small bet is a good sign he does not want to invest big money into the pot and he wants us to call with a weak range. He is the same as the opponent in the last hand. It is time to check/raise. He very rarely has a flush here but we can definitely have one. Against this player we have a greater need to represent a hand and in this case we certainly can. We can see he has a bell shaped range and wants to keep the pot small.

So how big do we bet? Well we don’t need to go over the top like we did in that last hand. A pot sized raise would be to approximately $100. Villain would probably realise he needs to be good around 33% of the time to call profitably here and that should be enough to make him fold.

LAGs and calling stations make it difficult to identify a bell shaped range. For example the station check/calls a couple of streets and it tells us nothing about his range, he could have anything from monsters to weak draws. So we operate against a flat range wersus the station most of the time. The maniac also makes it difficul to recognize a bell shaped range as the chips are always flying! The LAG is similar to the maniac but we will be able to rely on more specific reads to play them rather than categorizing them

The Weak Range – We know the weak range is when our opponents range is almost entirely composed of weak hands. It is quite straght forward to identify and exploit this range. The opponents are simply waving a white flag and the first one to put money into the pot will usually pick it up. Our steal equity is usually very high against this range so our cards will matter very little. If the river has not been dealt just toss out a small bet and take the money. Owen compared this to walking down the road and seeing a quarter on the floor – just bend down and pick it up!

If the river has been dealt we need to just consider our hand. If we are marginal but likely to have the best hand we check as nothing better folds, nothing worse calls. If we are strong we bet in the hope that worse will call. If we have nothing and everyone looks really weak then we can bet as we are never good at showdown.

Good spots to identify a weak range…..

Play folds to the straight forward SB and he completes. As he is not tricky he likely does not have a big hand. He has a weak hand but wants to see a flop. Our response… “No Sir! Cannot see a cheap flop my friend!” Raise it up wiith any two cards. Even if he calls he hits the flop so rarley that we will probably pick it up with a small cbet too. Just bend down and pick up the money!

Another example…. We are on the button with 4d 5d. Calling station limps in middle position, folds to us. Blinds are loose too so we call. Only BB comes along so its three way to the flop As 9h 4c. Both players check and it comes to us. Our hand is certainly pretty weak here if anyone calls our bet. However nobody has shown any interest in the hand. There are virtually no draws on the flop so they likely have very weak ranges. The white flags are waving again! The message is “someone please bet and win this pot so we can move onto the next hand”. If we bet and called we are probaly not ahead here but there is no point checking it back and letting the cards roll out as we are likely to not be ahead by showdown (they get to realise their equity for free with Q5 etc). Also if we do get called e probably have 5 outs to improve and it will probably check through after we bet anyway. Bend over and pick it up!

Even if we had KT or 7d8d we should do the same. If we had a hand like A9s (tho we should prob raise that preflop) and flopped two pair we should prob check back to try and pick up a bet later.

Maniacs are an exception in identifying a weak range. One thing they do tend to do is only bet small when they have a big hand! They suddenly get this “don’t want to scare him away” attitude. So if you see this mentality then you identify him as having a weak range when he is betting big in spots where he would normally bet small with a big hand. This is a massively valuable piece of information as we pick up big bets against the weak range instead of small ones! It does, however, take some courage. Maniacs propser because most people’s courage gives out on them. Example….

NL400 and we all have $400. Maniac is running the table and chips are flying everywhere! There are no small pots as he won’t allow it. We have picked up this pattern wher he suddenly bets smaller when he has a big hand. He opens from EP for $30. It folds to us on the button and we have Ks Th. While his preflop raise is large we know our implied odds are massive if we hit a pair. Blinds fold and we see As Td 3d. He bets $40 into $66 and we call. The turn is Qd. He shoves his remaining $330 into the $146 pot! Serious pressure!!! However, we know he never has a flush here and he is likely just trying to make us fold. We need 41% equity and we almost certainly have that against his weak range. We stick the money in with our EV+ situation and let whatever happens happen. If the river is a fourth diamond and he flips over Jd 2h just say “nice hand” in chat, rebuy and get back to business! If we are not prepared to make these plays then we should move to another table where we are more comfortable.

Notice also here that we played passively against this maniac. Let him keep the initiative in the hand to get paid. They like to bluff so let them do it. Against more passive players there is no value to be had by playing passively so we just bet and take the pot.

The Strong Range – The strong range is when our opponents range is comprised of what he perceives to be strong hands. Again this is a fairly straight forward range to identify and exploit. It is normally characterized by strong betting patterns. The opponent is telling us he has a strong hand and that he wants to play a big pot. Steal equity is extremely low against this range so our showdown equity is really all that matters. Trying to play fancy is almost always a mistake versus this range. We are going to showdown almost always so we need to make sure we have the showdown equity to get there profitably.

Owen…” My mind goes back to a live $2/$5 game I played in a new card room. I had $500, and so did the loose, more passive player to my right. He wasn't playing every flop, but he was seeing about half of them. He did seem to know his way around the poker scene, understand a little about position, and I'd seen him raise preflop with a couple premium hands. I also saw him call a bet instead of raising on a river where he had a really large hand, but not quite the nuts. In this hand, he was UTG and made a $15 raise. That was certainly smaller than the normal opening size the table had developed earlier in the game. Next to act, I looked down at KK. While I knew the UTG player likely had a strong hand, I certainly wanted to build this pot for some good value. I made it $60. This is bigger than a pot size raise, but I felt he'd call to see a flop with most of his range, which was strong. Everyone else got out of our way, and the action got to him. He paused a little bit and then said, "$120." Well, that's just about as small a raise as you're permitted to make. Didn't take me long to fold the hand. My ego got the best of my better judgment and I tossed them face up in the muck pile. The table gasped all at once. "Wow!" everyone murmured. They all started at me, so I said "He has aces." Then the stares turned to him, but he was still busy staring at me. A few players then started begging him to turn over his cards. He refused for a couple seconds but then turned over his aces one at a time. "Did you see my cards?!" he finally exclaimed. "Of course not," I said. "I wouldn't have given you $60 if I had seen your cards."

Villain’s initial raise was a little small, setting off alarm bells “don’t lose your customer” type thinking. Owen still thought there is value to raise against QQ and AKs. Villain is aware of position so should know Owen has a strong hand too but does not know that Owen is aggressive as he hasn’t shown aggression as of yet. When he 4 bets small it says he is definitley trying to lure Owen in. It is clearly the nuts and we cannot profitably get it in with 20% so easy fold. Trying to see a flop and getting him to fold later is terrible as the SPR will be low, and he has a strong range. Owen only showed as he was about to leave and never really plays there either.

Owen…. I want to touch on an important concept here. There's a fine line of distinction in how the money gets all-in when you're going for value. Notice these two example hands. In both you are playing $1/$2, and everyone has $200. The villain is a borderline nit. He normally has a strong hand when the pots get big. Both examples start the same way preflop. You open for $7 with Ad Qs from middle position. It folds to the TAG button, who calls. The villain here is the big blind and he calls as well. The pot is $22, and the flop is Ah 7h 2s. Here are the different postflop examples.

Example 1: Play checks to you, and you bet $22 into the $22 pot. The button folds, and the big blind calls. The turn is the Ts. You bet $60 into the $66 pot. The villain calls. The river is the 7c. The big blind checks, and you move all-in for $111 in the $186 pot. He calls.

Example 2: It checks to you, and you bet $22 into the $22 pot. The button folds, and the big blind calls. The turn is the Ts. You bet $60 into the $66 pot. The villain calls. The river is the 7c. The big blind shoves. The pot is $297, and you have to call $111, which you do.

Even though in both situations you got all the money in the middle with the exact same cards, same opponent and same board, the situations are vastly different. Example one is most likely making money while example 2 is mostly likely losing money. What's the difference? The difference is in example 2, you were able to shape a strong range for the villain. In example1 that never happened. Let's examine the examples. In example 1, you made a fine c-bet with a strong hand. The board does have a possible flush draw, and there are plenty of weaker hands that can call. There's lots of value in a c-bet. Once the big blind calls, it's quite unlikely he has a big hand. Again, they tend to get the pot going early in those situations, so he'd be likely to raise a big hand after you bet the flop. It's possible for him to have some weaker suited aces, some flush draws, some suited 7s and a few other possible hands. The turn card brings another flush draw. While AT just took the lead, there is still plenty of value in a bet to get calls from hands like the suited aces that just picked up a flush draw, the suited 7s that justpicked up a flush draw as well as some aces like AJ that just don't want to fold yet. (Obviously, it's important to know if he would have reraised with AK preflop, but I'd assume most players like him would have done so, unless he's given me information to think otherwise.) Your bet is a good size because it makes the SPR such that folding on a lot of river cards will be difficult for him with a hand like AJo. When the river comes a 7, obviously his suited 7s just hit trips. He may check with those hands, but here's the crux of the information about nitty players. It's all about how they tend to play the river out of position. Usually, when they hit a big hand, they lead right out for a big bet. They're too afraid you're going to check and then they won't get your money. They don't make thin value bets and would rather you bluff sometimes and then after you bet, they’ll decide if they want to make the call or not. And that's the big difference in example one. Yes, you're getting almost 3 to 1 on your money and only need to be good about 27% of the time. However, you're just not going to be good that often. While many times it's a mistake to put half your stack in a pot and then fold, this is an example where it's the right thing to do. You may say, "Well, the only hand I really lose to here is one of his suited 7s." If that's the one that makes sense, that's what he most likely has. Whatever his range is here, AQ doesn't have the equity to call against his strong range. Sure, some of the time he'll surprise you by showing AJ, and you'll have to tweak your assumptions about his river play. But, that's not standard for these players types, so you have to go with what you have at that moment in that hand.

Another thing to note: some nits do wait until a draw doesn't hit before they put all their money in. It's a little bit different breed of nit that some people call a rock. They'll wait until they have the nuts on the river before they really put lots of money in the pot. They'd rather wait to see the flush not come in, instead of charging people to draw to it. So, you have to be on the lookout for those player types as well.

Again, the maniac gives us an exception. Remember they will only bet large with their bluffs and smaller with strong hands. It seems very counter intuitive to call K high when he bets $100 into a $50 pot but fold middle pair good kicker when he bets $30 into $50, but it is usually correct.

Do not get fancy when someone is telling you they have a strong range. Keep it simple and evaluate your hands showdown equity versus his range to give yourself a fair cahnce to play profitably.

The Polarized Range – So this is when villains range is comprised of strong and weak hands (as he perceives them). Large bets on the river often give away a polarized range, they are either trying to make you fold or trying to get paid with a monster. Other times we see it on the flop when a vilain does not bet marginal hands on the flop (they already have showdown in mind) – so when they do bet they are polarized.

There is no magic wand versus a polarized range. Our play goes down to the two keys of poker. What are our assumptions about his strategy and what is the best play? Our job is to define the precise portion ofr his polarized range. Does he have more weak hands than good hands? If so how many more? Or is it the other way round? Or is he in fact balanced? It will take a good understand of the combinations in his range to work it out.

We need to then consider the maths of the situation. Say he has gone all in on the river and we can only call or fold. We need to look at the rist to reward ratio. Let us say we think his polarized range is even, its 50:50 weak holdings to strong holdings. If we have a bluff catcher we should call all of the time. Why? Well we are going to win half of the time and he cannot give us odds worse than 1:1 so we profit.

Let’s take a little time to analyze this. Now, you’re on the river, and the pot is $100. Your opponent goes all-in for $100, and you believe he has a polarized range. You’re getting 2:1 on a call, so you will need to win the pot more than 33% of the time. How does this translate to the proportions of his range? The breakeven point would be if he had two times more strong hands than bluffs. If the range is tilted more towards strong hands than the two-thirds mark, then you'll have to fold. If it's tilted more towards the weak hands, then you should call. It's all about making accurate assumptions about the proportions of his polarized range and then analyzing the math.

The folowing table offers a quick way to determine the minimum combinations of bluffs a player must have compared to the combinations of bluffs given the reward to risk ratio. If your opponent has more bluffs in his range than indicated by this chart given his bet size, then you'll have a profitable call.

An example…. NL100. LAG opens in MP to $3, we call on the button with Ah Jc and it goes heads up to Ad 2s 7d. LAG bets $5 into $7 and we call. Turn is Qs. LAG bets $15 into $17 and we call again. River is 3h. He bets $45 into $47. We feel he is polarized but what do we do?

Let’s try to think about his range. LAG opening MP can be wide including many suited hands, broadway hands and pocket pairs. On this flop he cbets his entire range. The turn is a good card also to put pressure on us if we have a pocket pair or 7x. So he could bluff that turn with nothing. He can also be semi bluffing with two lots of flush draws now too (diamonds and spades). And of course he can still be value betting AA, 22, 77, A2s, A7s and other Aces. The river missed all the flush draws but it did help A3s, 33 and 45s. Let’s say on the river tha hands he is betting for value are AA, 22, 77, QQ, AQ, AK, A7s, A2s, A3s, 45s. How many combinations is that? It is 32. Villain made close to pot size bet on the river so we need to be good around 33% to have an EV+ call. From the table we can see he needs to have at least half the number of bluffs s he has value hands. So he needs ot have 16 bluff combos in order for us to call. Look at hese missed flush draws in diamonds and spades… 86s(2), 97s(2), 98s(2), T8s(2), T9s(2), J9s (2), JTs(2), QTs(1), QJs(1), KTs(2), KJs(2). That is 20 combinations without adding any other suited combos or other types of bluffs. If his bet were 2/3 of pot we would only need to find 13 combos. What is his bet were ½ pot? This is a bit of a trick question because as his bt gets smaller it looks like his range is less likely to be polarized and more likely to be for thin value. His range changes to bell shaped or flat. As his range gets weaker too our AJ gets stronger. Specific notes will help us with these decisions. Given the assumptions about this opponents range he cannot actually make any bet that will make us fold. The pot is $47 and he only has $77 left, he would have to bet over two times pot to make us fold with only 32 combinations of value and over 20 combinations of bluffs. Notice also how an unpaired hand like KTo hs a massive influence on a bluff range as it has 16 combinations alone!

If our villain’s bet is not an all in bet we might need to consider raising too. The only times to consider raising into a polarized range are when our value hand is ahead of the strong portion of his value range OR when our hand is weaker than most of his bluffs. We will need to examine our risk to reward ratio to see if we can raise. This brings up an important concept, shaping our bluff catchers.

When we talked about note taking we talked about trying to note if our opponent can turn a pair or A high into a bluff. Playing against a polrazid range really highlights the importance of this piece of information.

Say we are on the river versus an aggressive player. He just bet large and we think he is polarized. We need to figure out how strong our hand needs to be to beat his bluffs. So, if he can turn a piar into a bluff then we need stronger bluff catchers. For example say he will never bluff a pair or Ace high. Then K high beats all of his bluffs. However if he does bluff htose hands, then we need better than that to bluff catch. So this is the importance of noting something like “checked back A high after I called flop and turn”.

Let’s look at a villain who cbets dry flops polarized. He is on button opening wide and flop is K93r and he cbets. If he opens 40% of hands preflop he only hits that flop around 20% of the time. The proportions of his range are quite clearly defined. So how do we move respond? Well, for the most part, if we have nothing we can check/raise him here, win the pot and move on. If we have a strong hand and we think he will show further agression then we can call and allow him to put more money in with his weaker range. This is the essence of slowplaying.

The Flat Range - This is an interesting range to play agianst as it comprises all hand strengths so we cannot narrow the range. We see it against calling stations who call down with just about anything. Sometimes we see it with maniacs too who just throw chips around with everything.

Against the maniacs and stations we simply have to play our hand just as it holds up versus his entire range (which in the extreme cases can be every possible hand!). So bottom pair can be good in those circumstances. Let’s look at a more common example…

NL200. Station with $100 limps UTG and we are on the button. Itf olds to us with Ah 8h and we raise to $10. Only the station calls. Flop is Kh 8d 6d. UTG checks and we bet $17 into $23. He calls. Turn is Qc. UTG checks. What do we do? Well we know nothing of his range. He can have anything from KK to 54o. His range is flat so we have to examine how we are doing versus strong, marginal and weak hands all in one. The answer is we are doing really well versus his range. Even a super station has not got Qs 2s so the Q means nothing, the only hand it helped maybe is Qd 2d which called with a FD. So we must not be worried about it because even if he is calling with a range that includes that then the Q is a relatively small portion of that range. So our pair of 8s is still doing really well and we should bet for value. We can decide what to do on the river when we get there.

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