Monday, December 1, 2008 - P0ker H0
Id like to talk a little bit about how to accurately assess hand ranges preflop. This is something that is intuitive but at the same time logical. You see some people constantly guessing what their opponents have, and some people are right more than you think they should, while others just have no clue and play the 2 cards in their hand.
There are 3 things you need to determine before assessing a hand range.
1. What is the Size of their Stack
2. What is their Image
3. What is their Position.
Now I will admit, some players dont think this deep and they arent playing optimal poker because they just dont know any better, but here are some examples.
Q. What is their stacksize and why does this matter?
A. Players stacksizes dictate how much room they have to manuever. There are so many different examples but here is one.
Lets say a player has 8k in chips and the blinds are 500 1000, with a 100 ante. A before him opens to 3100. The player with 8k in chips just flat calls.
Assessing a hand range is all about asking the right questions. Lets ask some.
Someone with 8k who is flatting almost half their stack is not doing that to set mine. So already we can eliminate hands 22-JJ in my opinion. The only thing you can really trap with with 8k in this spot is aa or kk or maybe qq. But even if you had AA or KK, you would just shove it pre, because hes getting at least 2:1 to call and will with almost any 2. My point is here, is we can deduce that if someone flats half their stack preflop, they arent folding to many flops, and if they probably like their hand enough to call pre, they are most likely going to the river. Hence they flat called with a good hand.
Once you ask yourself the right questions, ask yourself if he/she has been loose or aggro, and what their position on the table is. Using these 3 tools has really helped me assess ranges more accurately.
Hopefully I can pass it on
Gl Everyone
P0ker H0
Tags: P0ker H0, Poker Strategy
Comments (0)
Thursday, November 27, 2008 - smokin_aces
Last week we began our ‘Ask a Pro’ series, where you can submit your questions to a UB pro. For a complete run down on how this works, check last weeks post.
Annie Duke was gracious enough to answer last weeks question. The winner of last week’s submissions was ‘Paul’ with this well thought out inquiry.
“I’ve got a question for Annie: what recommendations do you have for borderline hands in tournament situations? I’m thinking of hands like suited connectors, ace rag/x-suited, small pocket pairs. How do things like stack size, position, other players in the pot, and stage of tournament guide your decision making with these hands. I know that’s a lot to answer, but those are the hands I have the toughest time playing.”
Here is Annie’s response.
“Wow. This is a question I could write a whole book on so I am going to cherry pick my answer to try to keep it shorter and more to the point. I am not so much going to discuss the suited connector issue as the stage of the tournament part of the question. Generally, early in a tournament you want to play tight. The reason for this is two-fold: 1) There are no antes so the pot odds are poor in comparison to later in the tournament. The worse the pot odds, the more pressure on your hand to win which means you have to play tighter 2) Players cannot be bluffed so you need to show over the best hand more often.
To go deeper into point (1) let’s take a 100-200 blind situation with no antes. You raise 3X to 600. 200 is the call and 400 is the raise so on the raise portion of the bet the pot is laying you 5 to 4 (400 raise to the 100 small blind, 200 big blind and your 200 call). This means that you can lose 5 times for every 4 times you win in order to break even. That means you must win the pot about 45% of the time to break even on the initial raise.
Now when the antes kick in there is now 250 more in chips in the pot (25 ante from 10 players). That means the pot is now laying you 750 to 400 on your 400 raise. What this means is that the pot is laying you nearly 2 to 1. In order to break even on this bet you only have to win around 35% of the time. 45% vs 35% is a huge difference in the pressure on your hand so after the antes kick in you get to play looser because your hand doesn’t have to be as good to be profitable (you can lose more often and be profitable).
Now for point (2). In the beginning stages of a tournament your opponents tend to be playing quite loose. One of the main reason we play weak hands (like small suited connectors) is so that our opponents won’t know that we always have a good hand when we play and stop giving us action. So, we are willing to play some bad hands, hands that might be small long run losers, in order to generate action on our big hands.
But when opponents are already playing super loose, that means they are already going to be paying off our big hands. In that case, there is no reason to play a bad hand because you don’t need to do anything to generate action.you are already getting it.
So, you can see in early stages of the tournament there is no reason to get involved with crappy hands like small suited connectors. Save those for later when you can bully the table!”
Thanks Paul for such a great question! We look forward to your involvement with this blog.
Be sure to check back tomorrow to find out which pro will answer the question next week. If you want to submit a question, enter it in the comments section of tomorrows ‘Ask a Pro’!!
GL
Aces
Tags: Annie Duke, Ask A Pro
Comments (2)
