Friday, September 8th: Blind Defense and Your Poker Toolbox

After a few ‘lifestyle’ / ‘look at me, I’m in Australia’ – type posts, I figured I should get back to some poker talk, even though if you ask me, it’s far more interesting to write about the former, although I may not be winning over any readers. I’ve said many times that I used to be a full-ring limit specialist, but learning to play shorthanded has proven not only to be lucrative but has really improved my blind-defense/stealing strategies for all games, because the vast majority of hands in a shorthanded game come down to a stealing situation.

I want to compare two different lines you can take when defending your big blind, and discuss the different effect each has on your opponent’s play. First, a story about the mechanical way I used to approach this topic: let’s say I was sitting in the big blind w/ A9s, and it was folded around to the button (a somewhat aggressive player) who raised, and the SB folded. Here was my old way of thinking:
I’d be sitting there with my A9s and 3-bet the button pretty much 100% of the time, thinking to myself “Whatever, buddy, I’m not for a second buying that you’ve got a better hand than my A9s (or 66, or KJ, or the like, any of which I used to 3-bet), so I’m going to make you put more money in with the inferior hand.” That’s the old law-school-dropout play (but still the line I take the majority of the time.) But let me now discuss the two lines I want to compare:

Line 1: Exactly what I described above as my old, mechanical M.O.: you 3-bet a hand you’re pretty sure is best, and then lead out on any flop.

Line 2: Instead, you simply call the steal-attempt, and check-raise nearly any flop (b/c the button will follow his steal with a continuation bet when checked to nearly 100% of the time.)

Consider this: in each of the above scenarios, you’re expending 4 small bets, right? But think about the very different messages you’re sending with each line:

With Line 1, you’re saying “Listen, buddy, I’ve got an above average hand too…most likely two high cards, or a medium-to-high pair, and I’m pretty sure it’s better than whatever you’re trying to steal with, so I’m going to re-raise you with what I’m pretty sure is the best hand, right now.” Essentially you’re telling your opponent that you think your 2-card holding is better than his 2-card holding, preflop. In this scenario, your continuation bet after the flop is meaningless…it’s not saying anything about whether you hit the flop; it’s basically just reinforcing that you think your 2 card-holding is better than his.

Compare this to the message you’re sending with Line 2, which is something along the lines of “Well, I’ve given you absolutely no information about my 2-card holding, but I hit the flop.”

Remember: each of these lines has cost you exactly the same number of small bets (4), but you’ve “said” drastically different things with each. How can this help you? Well, think about a holding like KQ in the BB. The button makes a steal-raise, and you 3-bet, because you think your hand is better than his (which it probably is). On a flop of 2,8,9 rainbow, you keep the gas on and lead out with a bet. You’re probably going to get called all the way down by any pair, and maybe (depending on just how frisky the button feels) any Ace as well, to which you’ll lose if you don’t catch a K or Q (and if you do, a button with an Ace might fold rather than pay you off.) Any 2, 8, or 9 is also likely going to the river with you. Compare the above state of events to what happens if you take “Line 2” with the KQ example. With a smooth-call preflop and a flop check-raise, you’re telling your opponent (for the very same price) “My hand may not have been better than yours preflop, but I hit that flop.” Consider how many more hands you’ll get the button to fold. Most decent-playing buttons will fold pairs between threes and 7s. Any Ace-rag like A4, A5, or A6 will (or should) fold, if he thinks he’s drawing to as few as 3 outs (the other 3 aces), but possibly zero. You probably won’t get folds from a button with 2 overcards, but keep in mind you’re holding a K and a Q, you’ve probably got many of the overcards he might be sticking around with dominated.

So how do you use this knowledge? Well, it depends on your blind-stealing opponent, of course. An important stat you’ll want to look at (and get displayed onscreen if you use PAHUD or the like), is WSD%...I think that’s the acronym for it, at least > it’s the one that tells you what % of the time a player will go to showdown when he sees the flop. I think mine is in the 35 – 36% range, which is a tad on the tight side. The percentages I see most often for other winning players are between 35% and 40%. Conversely, I run across players all the time who are modest and consistent losers despite relatively decent-seeming preflop stats (maybe in the VPIP 26 / PFR 18 range for a shorthanded game), but they’ve got a WSD% number of 45% or higher, and I think to myself “man, I wonder if he’s figured out that he’s never going to turn things around until he stops being such a showdown monkey?”) Anyway, I digress: have a look to see whether your blind-stealing opponent goes to showdown a lot – this will give you a good idea of whether you’re likely to get called down by Ace-high. If you’re facing a tighter opponent with a WSD% of 34% or less, you might find a little more value in Line 2, knowing that you’ve got a little more folding equity by checkraising the flop and representing that you hit some piece of it. You’ll also want to look at your opponent’s aggression statistics. That might give you an idea of how “easy” his actions will be able to read, and help you decide whether you’d rather “take control” of the hand with a raise preflop or post-flop.

I will caution now that even though I extolled the benefits of Line 2 in the example above, I’m not arguing that it’s always superior (in fact, I probably use Line 1 more often)…I just wanted to get you to think about the different signals you can send for the very same price. Just more tools to have in your poker toolkit. That’s all I was trying to do with this post: help people think about the advantages of various lines in blind-stealing situations, because at its core, poker is a dialogue between two players: they give each other information (and sometimes misinformation) about their holding via their betting pattern – so you’d be well served to think more about just what you’re saying and what your opponent is saying to you with your bets, and never, I repeat N-E-V-E-R, lose sight of what your dialogue has said up to that point in a hand, and what your opponent might interpret it as having said, and how you might manipulate that dialogue to your advantage. When I start to run bad, it’s almost always because I’ve turned on auto-pilot and stopped doing the 2nd- and 3rd-level thinking that has gotten me to where I am.

Speaking of building up your poker toolkit, here’s a quick hand analysis that might give you a glimpse into the kind of thinking I’m talking about, which I think people should try to develop as they move up in stakes. It’s a simple one, on its face, but I’ll take you through my thought process nonetheless. Here’s the hand, in full.

Party Poker $30/$60 6-handed

I’m in the CO with TJ.

Preflop: Big semi-aggressive fish limps UTG, folded to me, and I call, folded to the BB (solid TAG) who raises, both UTG fish and I call.

Flop: 2 6 7, BB bets, UTG calls, I raise, BB and UTG both call.

Turn: 6, both check to me, I bet, both fold.

Hero wins 6.5 big-bet pot.

Nothing special, perhaps, but I think there’s more to this hand than meets the eye. First off – preflop: A raise out of the BB from a solid TAG shows a ton of strength. He’s saying that he can beat whatever 2 limpers might have.

But let’s talk about the action on the flop, because that’s where the hand was really won. The BB leads out with a bet (which was completely expected after his preflop raise, and a relatively innocuous flop), and UTG merely calls. That’s the first clue, and you should learn to ask what every single action means. This one was easy – UTG, although a fish, was aggressive enough that I was pretty sure he’d raise if the flop was safe and paired either of his hole cards, but he merely called, which told me right away that he had nothing: either overcards or a gutshot straight draw (or a set he was slowplaying, but I thought that unlikely.)

So here’s the information I have so far:
BB (solid TAG): either a big pair, or two high cards.
UTG: overcards to the board, or a gutshot (but did not catch any piece of the flop)

Note what I have: absolutely jack-squat, but it hardly even matters for the purposes of this hand! I’ve got two weak overcards, and while I wouldn’t make the following play often (opting to quietly fold instead), I really liked the undesirable sandwich the BB was in, and I thought I could exploit it, so I raised, knowing that it would essentially force the BB to reveal whether he had overcards or a big pair. He’d almost certainly have to 3-bet a big pair to force out UTG and whatever crap draw he was on, but probably wouldn’t do that with overcards, having to worry about two players left to act behind him.

BB just called, as did UTG (which was very much expected because he was so loose, and in fact was absolutely crucial to the hand, as I explain later), and at that point I knew that the pot was mine if a safe card fell on the turn.

The cost of obtaining this extraordinarily valuable information? A mere 1 big-bet into a 4.5 big-bet pot.

Update on what I know about my 2 opponents:
BB (solid TAG): overcards
UTG: either weak overcards (he didn’t raise preflop) or some sort of crap gutshot or worse; but the board hadn’t paired his hand, that much I knew.

The turn brings an outstanding card for me: a completely harmless 6. Both check to me, and I’m sitting there knowing that the BB is unenviably sandwiched between two players, both of whom may have him beat, so I’m nearly positive a bet now will force him to fold, which he does. UTG also decides to fold his hand (which was probably two weak overcards), but even had he called, I had already decided to bet any river, the only way I was going to take down the pot, and a good investment in this medium-sized pot.

A novice player might look at my play and characterize it as nothing more than a ballsy bluff with a shitty hand that happened to work out this time. But that substantially glosses over the thought process that higher-stakes players put into these decisions. The key to the hand was the squeeze play on the BB – if the UTG had folded on the flop, I would have immediately folded as well. But UTG’s flop call gave me all the information I needed to exploit the situation, making it way too difficult for BB to call all the way with just Ace-high (which he might have done if I was his only opponent) The second 6 that came on the turn must have seemed pretty safe to the BB as well, but when the action was checked to me on the turn, I knew that if I put in a bet, with UTG still to act behind him, the BB simply couldn’t afford to put another bet in when he could be drawing completely dead with two overcards.

Far be it for me to claim that the above was the correct way to play this hand. As I wrote earlier, I don’t always make this play, and more often than not I’ll simply fold on the flop, and still other times I’ll pull this play but end up losing when the BB hits one of his overcards or the UTG makes whatever crap draw he was on. Finding the "correct" play (as if there ever is one) is the theme of a lot of the 2+2 strategy threads, which is why I typically avoid them…far more interesting, I think, is dissecting the thought process of hands like this that (whether they pan out, like this one did, or not) allow me to add little tips and tricks to my own poker toolbox.


Finally: Why I’m not going to Aruba

I’ve adhered largely to the “no bad beat stories” unofficial bylaw of this blog, but I need to get this one off my chest, just once, and then I’ll be on my merry way. I hardly ever enter any big-buyin tourney satellites, but I felt like going to UB’s Aruba tourney in a few wks, so I entered a $300 satellite, and battled down to 4 people (only winner won package), before raising on the button w/ KK, having the terrible BB re-raise me, and instead of coming over the top, just smooth-calling so as to get all his chips on the flop. Sure enough he pushed into me, with this board.



Sigh. The poker gods didn’t even have the dignity to just throw a six up there and end it, but made me sweat it out by dropping a 5, then an 8 for a stomach-churning backdoor straight. The equivalent of a poker-site slowroll. Can’t get all that upset about it, I guess. I had previously been all-in preflop w/ A5s vs. KK, and won that…so I guess you can’t get pissed about an atrocious beat when you were only still alive thanks to a bad beat you laid on someone else (even though I had open pushed w/ A5s when my stack was really low, which was the right play, whereas I seriously outplayed the guy on the KK vs. 66 hand.) On top of that, even had I won the hand, I would only have had a 2:1:1 chip advantage over the remaining 2 opponents…hardly a mortal lock to win the thing. Just sucks walking away w/ nothing.

Alright, that’s my semi-annual bad beat allowance (and yet another reasons why NL tournament are gay.)