Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (9 page)

Here is another example of using position to pick up a pot you would normally never win. Say the stacks are 200BBs, you raise to 3BBs from the cutoff with 9-7o and the big blind, a tight but straightforward player, re-raises to 8BBs. With stacks this deep, if you know how your opponent plays, you can call with basically anything with the intention of picking up the pot on a later street. Say the flop comes A-8-2. If you know your opponent will continuation-bet every time, you should almost always call. Most likely, if your opponent is straightforward, he will check the turn every time he plans to check-fold and will bet every time he has a strong hand, usually something like A-J or better. So, if he checks, bet around 20BBs. You will win the pot a huge percentage of the time. If he bets again, you know he probably hit the ace, so you can just fold.

The other main use of position is to get an extra value bet out of your hand. Say you raise A-A from the cutoff to 3BBs and the big blind calls. You both have 100BB stacks. It comes K-J-2.

You know your opponent will check-raise any time he hits top pair or better, check-call with middle pair and fold all worse hands. When he checks to you, you should bet around 5BBs. Assume he raises to 14BBs. Call here every time and call down unless the board gets very scary. Say the turn is a 3 and he bets 25BBs. Call again. Say the river is a 6 and he checks. This is a great spot to go all-in, as it is very unlikely he has a hand better than top pair, as he would have pushed the river. Since you can now assume he has top pair, a fairly strong hand, you can push, expecting him to be unable to fold it, winning you 100BBs.

Now, assume you raise from the cutoff with A-A to 3BBs, as in the hand before, and the player on the button just calls. You bet 5BBs at the K-J-2 flop and he raises to 14BBs. In this spot he will fold everything that beats you if you raise and will call only when you are in bad shape, so you just call. The turn is a 3 and you both check.

The river is a 6, you value bet around 25BBs and he will just call with top pair, winning you 40BBs. As you can see, you can get your opponent’s stack simply because you get to put in one extra bet on the river while in position, but you only win 2/5 of his stack from out of position.

In no-limit holdem the pot grows exponentially. The more money you put in the pot early in the hand, the more money you can put in later. In general, when you are in position, you get to put in one more bet in safe spots, as in the examples above, than you could if you were out of position. When you are in position, you determine how much of your opponent’s stack you want to get in the pot, which is quite powerful, considering that stacking your opponents is the name of the game.

You may have heard that you do not want to be dominated, meaning you want your kicker to be higher than your opponent’s. This is true, but in deep-stacked poker, as long as you play well, being dominated isn’t too terrible.

Suppose your opponent raises with A
-Q
to 3BBs out of a 200BB stack and you re-raise with A
-10
. Your opponent calls.

He will check to you on any flop that doesn’t contain an ace or queen, and you will make a standard bet to pick up the pot. An ace or queen will only come around 30 percent of the time, so you win this 20BB pot 70 percent of the time right from the start if you know our opponent will not play back at you too often. If a queen comes, he will check-call or check-raise on the flop and you will be done with the hand. If an ace comes, you will bet the flop. If raised, you can call, and then fold to further aggression or even fold on the flop, especially if you know your opponent will rarely bluff. If he just calls when an ace flops, you will check behind on the turn for pot control and call a river bet. When an ace and a 10 come, you will usually win a ton of money because you can get three full streets of value, often stacking your opponent.

As you can see, position is powerful. If you always folded weak hands from early and middle position while playing deep-stacked poker, it wouldn’t be much of a mistake. If you play in position more than your opponents, you are almost guaranteed to win in the long run.

Putting Opponents on a Range

If someone says, “He raised pre-flop so I put him on ace-king,” or something along those lines, you can be confident that he is a weak player. Professional players put their opponents on a range of hands, which they narrow down as the hand progresses.

For example, say a very tight player raises from early position. You can immediately narrow his range to A-A to 10-10, A-K, A-Q, and maybe a few suited Broadway hands like Q
-J
. You call on the button with 7
-6
and see a flop of 7
-4
-2
heads-up.