If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush the games, check out Jonathan Little’s elite training site at PokerCoaching.com/CardPlayer.
I was recently told about a hand from a $1-$2 no-limit cash game that shows two errors that many amateur poker players regularly make.
A tight player raised to $5 out of his $200 stack from second position at a nine-handed table. Another reasonable player called from the hijack seat. Our Hero in the small blind opted to call with 9♠9♥.
While some players three-bet with their decent hands like 9-9 from out of position, I like Hero’s call. If Hero three-bets and gets four-bet or called, he will be in a tough spot with an ordinarily strong hand.
By calling, Hero keeps his opponents in the pot with all their marginal hands and also gets to see the flop before playing a significant pot. If the initial raiser was from a later position (and therefore should have a wider range), three-betting would become a better option.
The big blind folded. The flop came 10♣8♦5♦, giving Hero an underpair. Hero checked, the initial raiser checked, and the hijack bet $10 into the $17 pot.
While Hero could be crushed by top pair, he is in decent shape against the various draws and he is in great shape against worse pairs and unpaired overcards. Hero should make a point to protect his calling range in this spot by also calling with some hands that can easily call bets on the turn and river, such as top pairs.
If this 9-9 is one of the best made hands Hero has in his flop check-calling range, his opponent will be able to easily triple-barrel him off almost his entire range by the river.
Hero called. The turn was the 7♣, giving Hero an open-ended straight draw in addition to his underpair. Hero led for $25 into the $37 pot.
This is Hero’s first mistake. He has a decently strong marginal made hand that can easily call a turn bet. When you have that hand type, checking from out of position is almost always best.
While Hero can extract a bit of value from various worse pairs and draws, he is never making a better hand fold, meaning when Hero’s bet gets called, he will usually be against a better made hand or a strong draw.
That is not the spot you want to be in from out of position with deep stacks. Hero should instead check, looking to check-call with his marginal made hand and open-ended straight draw.
The river was the 6♦, giving Hero a straight, but putting three to a flush on the board. Hero checked.
Checking is fine against players who will fold the vast majority of their hands worse than a straight to a bet, but in many small-stakes games, some players will call a small river bet with marginal made hands like overpairs, two pairs, and top pairs. If Hero bets the river and gets raised, he should fold against most competent opponents.
After Hero checked, the opponent pushed all-in for $160 into the $87 pot.
This is certainly a difficult spot for Hero. When trying to figure out if you should call in situations like this, figure out your pot odds and how likely your opponent is to be bluffing.
First, Hero has to put $160 into a pot that will be a total of $407 after he calls, so he needs to win 39% ($160/$407) of the time to break even. Next, Hero needs to compare the number of value hands his opponent would play in this manner to the number of bluffs he would play in this manner, while accounting for the fact that he does not actually know how the opponent will play his hands.
Hero loses to roughly 14 combinations of reasonable flushes, so in order to call, based on the pot odds, Hero needs to find at least nine realistic bluffs (9/(9 + 14) = 39%). If Hero can find nine or more combinations of hands he is confident the opponent will bluff with, he should call. If not, he should fold.
Considering the opponent’s range, it is quite difficult to come up with many natural bluffs. A♦ Jx is the main bluffing hand that makes sense, but many players would fold that to a turn lead. Perhaps the opponent would use a hand like A♦ 10x, A♦ 7x, or A♦ 6x as a bluff, but that may not happen because many players would check behind with those, thinking they have showdown value, plus the opponent may not play those hands before the flop.
Since there are very few logical bluffs, I think Hero has an easy fold. Also, as a general rule, most generally tight small stakes players do not overbet all-in as a bluff often at all, which should also lead Hero to fold.
Hero called and lost to A♦10♦, the nut flush. Notice that if Hero simply check-called down on all three streets, he would have still lost the pot, but he would have lost much less while also inducing bluffs.
If you want to avoid making the most common mistakes I see my students make, I put together a course called The 25 Biggest Leaks and How to Fix Them. This course is completely free inside Card Player Poker School!
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Jonathan Little is a WSOP bracelet winner, two-time WPT winner, and the 2024 PokerGO Cup champion with nearly $9 million million in live tournament earnings, best-selling author of 15 educational poker books, and 2019 GPI Poker Personality of the Year. If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush the games, check out his training site at PokerCoaching.com/cardplayer.
