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Nov 5th—Sometimes you should not continuation bet a draw in a multiway pot.

One of the things that you want to do to become a better poker player is to stop thinking of situations as “standard” or “automatic.” Each scenario in a hand is different and taking some rote line like you are multitabling 28 tables of online poker is not “optimal.”
 
One of the standard lines that I commonly see players take is always continuation betting a draw after being the preflop raiser — no matter what the situation. Now it is generally good to be aggressive in hold’em as most players do indeed miss the flop. But you have to examine the complexities of each continuation betting situation.  

Let us take a look at a few examples:  Say three people limp in in front of you in a $5-$5 no-limit game. You decide to raise to $35 on the button with K Q. The big blind calls along with all of the limpers. Effective stacks are $800. The flop comes out 6 4 3. Everyone checks to you. What  is our best play here? Even though we have a flush draw and two overcards, our overcards will not fare well against a reasonable check-raising range. We also are not a favorite to be able to make a continuation bet and get through everyone, and it would not be ideal to get raised off of our hand. I think this is one of the most overlooked spots in flop play.
 
When the board comes out straightening, facing heat and multiple opponents, you must disregard your overcards as viable outs. Now, if you take the card in the above example with K Q, your flush draw is hidden and you will not get blown off of your hand.  

Let us look at another example from a hand I played a few weeks ago that does not involve a flush-draw board. It was $5-$10 no-limit at the Commerce Casino and once again I had K-Q but this time of spades. Two people limped in front of me and I made it $50 from the button. Both of the blinds called and the limpers called. The flop came out J 10 2 and it got checked to me. Normally, this is a pretty good flop for K-Q — open-ended to the nuts with two overcards. However, the same concept of bad overcards applies here. I do not want to bet and get check-raised off of my hand, and by checking the flop back I do disguise it somewhat. It got checked through. The turn was the 9. It got checked to the guy to my right, and he bet $150 with $1000 left in his stack. I then raised to $400, everyone folded and he called. River was 5. He checked and I moved him in for $600. He did not take long and called with a set of deuces. The non-bet on the flop really worked out for me.  

Now you never want to fall into passive play. Still, when you are heads-up, or against only a few players, betting as a semibluff is a strong option since most people do miss the flop. Do not get into bad habits of checking say A Q on a K 7 2 board. You want to represent boards that really smack a preflop raising range.  

Nov 2nd— In live, small capped, no limit games about 80-90% of all mistakes are preflop

When no-limit first began to become popular around 2003, right around the time of the poker TV boom, some casino executives came up with an ingenious idea. Instead of having no-limit games be truly no-limit, they figured that if they capped the buy-in at the lower levels, that they would attract new blood. Their assumptions were correct. Players who were traditionally scared of big-bet games (remember Rounders where Matt Damon says “even pros avoid no-limit) now felt like they could sit in without the worry of losing too much money at one time. Since the casinos wanted to entice more people to play, a smaller, restricted buy-in was a perfect fit. Hence the appearance of games like $100 and $200 max buy-in tables with ridiculous blind structures such as $2-$3 or $2-$5.  

Unlike limit hold’em, no-limit has always been an implied odds game when deep. You want the ability to play hands that could win your opponents’ stack when they make a second best hand. That is why small pocket pairs and suited connectors are so powerful. When you are playing short-stacked no-limit though, like in these capped games or tournaments, the game plays with more showdowns. High unpaired cards go way up in value.  

Flipping forward almost ten years, however, people still don’t correctly grasp this preflop strategy. I watch hundreds of hours of low level cash games with hole cards played on Live at the Bike and still most of the biggest leaks I see in peoples’ games are preflop.   

I have mentioned in previous columns that there is a really simple math formula to help you plug these preflop leaks in capped cash games. Check out my podcast over on Seatopenpoker.net titled “Deuce Plays Premium 15-25-35.” A quick application of simple math and stack sizes will drastically increase your winrate. Without getting into too much detail here, simply put, you can never correctly call a preflop raise heads-up with less than forty or so big blinds if the raise size is more than four times the big blind. You really should not be limping or over-limping much either.  

The shorter that you get the more it is correct to either raise, reraise or fold with almost of all of your holdings. Kind of, again, like limit hold’em. It is such a simple concept and it does not take a world-class player to be tight. But at these levels, if you are not playing this way, the games are almost impossible to beat, especially with the rake. ♠

Want Card Player and Bart to provide analysis on a cash game hand you played? Send full hand details (blinds, stacks, street-by-street action) to @CardPlayerMedia. If we choose your hand, we’ll send you a Card Player subscription.

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on twitter @barthanson. Check out his podcast “The Seat Open Podcast” on seatopenpoker.net and his video training site specifically for live No Limit players ­—CrushLivePoker.com. He also hosts Live at the Bike every Tuesday and Friday at 10:30 pm ET at LivettheBike.com