Foundational strategy: Why?
I’ll be covering a lot of ‘foundational’ strategy on this site with the aim of helping out the micro and small stakes players. If you’re one of my low-mid stakes buddies, you’ll have to bear with me if you’re already familiar with the content.
As with all poker decisions, it’s very important to define why you’re doing something before you do it.
The simplest example I can give is with postflop betting. You should have an exact reason for betting, and if your reasoning is ‘because I have a pair’, you have much to learn.
There are three reasons for betting.
- For value (you not only have a hand that beats your opponent’s range, but you expect him to call with worse)
- As a bluff (you may or may not have your opponent’s range beat, but you’re betting to fold out betterhands)
- For protection, or to collect dead money (more on this later)
Some might argue that betting for information might be a reason for betting, but it is more of a result of betting for one of the above reasons. When you bet solely for information, it opens you up to be exploited really easily. A good example of that is donk betting, which we’ll get to later.
Something to note is that you might bet
The third reason might be a little confusing, and needs some clarification. Lets give some examples of each reason to bet.
For value:
Hero raises A
K
Fish in BB calls
Flop comes A
9
2
Fish checks…
Clearly we’re going to be betting for value here. The fish’s range includes almost any ace, some medium pocket pairs like 88 that will call at least once, 9x, and even some slowplayed big pairs that won’t fold to one bet – TT-KK.
So, to clarify: we think our range not only beats our opponent’s, but his CALLING RANGE vs our cbet will be a significant dog too.
Easy peasy.
As a bluff:
Hero raises 7
6
Reg in BB calls
Flop comes K
Reg checks…
Now it’s a clear cbet, as a bluff. We can almost never get called by something worse, but we have a ton of fold equity given how our range hits that flop, and his misses. When a reg calls OOP, their range is usually heavily weighted towards hands like small-medium pairs, marginal broadways, and some hands like AJ, ATs etc. We even have backdoor draws to barrel if we think he’ll do something like peel once with TT but fold to a turn bet.
So to clarify: we think we can fold out a large portion of villain’s range, which often has us beat, with a bet.
Now, to give some comparison to reason #3, betting for protection, here’s an example where there’s absolutely no reason to bet. Most refer to this spot as a way-ahead/way-behind situation (wa/wb):
Hero raises K
Fish in BB calls
Flop comes A
Fish checks…
Now unless you expect your opponent to call with a huge number of his underpairs, this is usually a spot where checking back is best.
Why?
First, because we can’t bet for value (very few, if any worse hands will call), second, because we can’t bet as a bluff (no Ax hand is ever folding, and clearly no two pair or better is folding), and third, our hand, when ahead, is so far ahead that we’re not so worried about giving a free card.
This play works because it often induces bluffs on the turn (like QJ on a T), rarely even inducing a weaker hand to bet for value (say, TT on a 2 turn), and often times our check back on the flop convinces our opponent to think one of those worse pairs is good, so he’ll call down light on later streets (again, like TT on a 2 turn).
If villain were to never call with worse, bluff or value bet a worse hand on either the flop or a later street, then our check would do nothing other than give a free card to the underpairs. Even their 2 outs would be worth betting against for protection – but to be clear, that’s not the case here, and we’re almost always checking back.
To protect:
Hero raises 9
Reg in BB calls
Flop comes A
Reg checks…
So what’s different about this hand in comparison to the last one with KK?
Well our pair is worse, but what does that mean?
With KK on this flop, our opponents are usually drawing to at best 2 outs, or maybe 5 if they have something like 65 and are drawing to 2 pair or backdoor outs.
Here with 99, our chances of being outdrawn are significantly higher. So much so that we can bet as a combination of a value bet and a bet for protection. Not only does villain have those 2-5 outers going against us, but he’ll also have a some hands like TJ, JQ, JK and KQ that have 6 outs against us, but will clearly almost always fold the flop. So even though we’re ahead of those hands, we don’t mind betting to push them out, and buy our equity share.
So next time you want to put out a bet, make sure you define why you’re doing so.
Thanks for getting this far. That pretty much covers everything, and concludes this article; I’ll be posting more on foundational strategy in the future. Not sure exactly how much I’ll be posting vs how much I’ll be keeping private for my students, but we’ll see.
5 Responses to “Foundational strategy: Why?”
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Well written Taylor. You should post a link on CC. Lots of players there could use this knowledge.
[...] I'll be posting regular updates on my progress. Most recent one was a strategy post about the reasons for betting. I plan on posting what will mostly be fundamental ring game strategy for beginner-intermediate [...]
vn – I second WV’s suggestion, this is gold for a lot of the learning micro players…
Well written article. I am working my way up through the micros and have been improving a lot by planning hands and thinking about the reasons behind my actions. Lots of solid conclusions there.
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