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Oct. 15 — Often times you should give more respect to turn double barrels when opponents bet cards that aren’t scare cards

If you are familiar with the concept of barreling, you know that betting cards that come on later streets that change top pair can be very effective as a bluff. Sometimes, unless our opponent is slow playing, villains often will have a pretty wide flop calling range to your continuation bets (c-bets) — especially on ragged boards. Say, for example, the flop is 9 3 2. We had open raised on the button with Q J and both of the blinds called prelop. If we c-bet here, and this is a good board to do so, our opponents can be calling us with hands as weak as A-2, A-3, any pocket pair, a nine and sometimes even ace-high. Knowing this, overcards like an ace or a king are very effective turn double-barrel cards as they are likely to hit our range but to weaken a flop caller’s holding. If you are a good enough player to also value bet the turn when you hit your hand, it becomes very difficult for players to bluff catch you. In the above example, however, if a competent player double barrels the turn does it necessarily mean that they have a strong hand? Obviously this question is player and situationally dependent, but chances are the better the player the more frequently he will use this scare card as a bluff.

A good player also knows which cards are not the best turns to bluff. Say, for example, we c-bet 9 6 4 into two people on the flop and they both call. The turn brings in the 7. This is obviously not the best card to continue a bluff, as it is likely to improve an opponent’s calling range. The 7 brings a backdoor-flush draw and also gives a lot of hands pairs plus straight draws. The chances are slim that you will be able to bet through both people on the turn. Knowing this, what does it mean then if a competent player bets the turn on a coordinated, non-scare card? Usually, when this happens, we can infer that the preflop raiser has a strong hand — something like at least top pair — and is charging his opponents’ weaker holdings. Can we infer anything about say a K coming on the turn? Probably not.

Let us look at something else. Say you call a raise from an under-the-gun (UTG) plus one player in the small blind with Q J. The big blind also calls and you see the flop three ways. The board comes out J 4 5. It gets checked to the preflop raiser and he c-bets. We call, as does the big blind. The turn is the 6. We check and the preflop rasier fires another large bet. What do you think about the preflop raiser’s hand strength now? And to make this point more clear, let us say that instead of the 6 coming on the turn it was the K. We check and the UTG plus one player double barrels. In which scenario is the preflop raiser more likely to have a strong hand? If you thought the first example, you are right.

However, I have witnessed a lot of inexperienced players not pick up on this concept and call the turn in example one but fold in example two. You see, sometimes a scare card really is not what it seems. Now, yes, the preflop raiser certainly could have hit a king on the turn or he could have been beating us the whole way, but in example two at least there is a chance that he can be bluffing. In example one, if the player is decent, it is very unlikely that he is betting with no equity because he should realize that he should get called a lot wider. Pay attention to this situation and use it to your advantage.

Oct. 10 — Playing in games where only a small win rate can be achieved due to the rake structure is a sideways and backwards move

It is very unfortunate nowadays in America that it is difficult to play online poker on reputable sites. Micro-stakes online used to be a great way to practice and build a bankroll. You could multitable, play a lot of hands, and show a lot of profit. The rake structures in the small games online were nothing like their live counterparts. With most sites offering rakeback, the rake at the lower levels would not proportionally affect your win rate as much when compared to no rakeback in live games.

If you are not familiar with the way that most cardrooms work, most games have exactly the same rake no matter their size. So you could be playing a $2-$5, $200 max buy-in game and the casino drops the same $5 that it does at $5-$10 no limit. This high drop makes it very difficult to beat small, live games. In fact, I tell most of my students, at least in California, that playing poker for profit is really a race to the $5 blind level. The competition just is not that much tougher there and you are getting way more bang for your buck when it comes to paying the rake.

The problem also with these smaller, restricted buy-in games is that the optimal style is normally a short-stacked approach as often times the average stack has fewer than 60 big blinds. When you are dealing with raise sizes of more than four times the big blind as an open, it is very difficult to profitably call with anything. Much tighter is better. The problem with this approach is that you rarely get experience playing after the flop, and when you do get into a pot most of the money is all-in by the turn. These games in no way prepare you for normal 100 or 200 big blind buy-in structures. Also, because the rake is such a large percentage of the overall pot, tables like this make it almost impossible to achieve a high win rate. Even the best players at these levels would have trouble beating a $200 cap game for more than fifteen or twenty dollars per hour, and those are stellar results. Once you fully understand this, you quickly realize that it is almost impossible to build up a bankroll, especially if you are playing poker full time.

You also can get into many bad habits playing severely capped buy-in games, as it is often optimal to play a trapping style, almost backwards. The lower cash levels almost remind me of tournaments.

So low win rate, bad skill of your opponents, and forced optimal backwards play are all reasons that if you stay at the lower levels, your game will be moving sideways, not improving. The next time you are a little apprehensive about making the jump to the $5 blind level with a better buy-in structure, remember the way the larger games are set up. The higher cap and lower percentage of rake lends itself to being a better fit for a player that wants to improve his game. ♠

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 LiveattheBike.com.