No wasting time on introductions! We’re gonna dive straight into things this week. If you haven’t read the Basic Tournament Theory article out a couple weeks ago, I strongly suggest you do that before continuing as this article will build directly off that without much recap at all. Onwards and upwards!

So let’s give some more practical advice to play poker tournaments.

As discussed previously, the scaling payout structure and chips not having a direct cash value strongly impacts how we should play tournaments/sngs (excepting husngs) as opposed to cash games.

Namely, early game, when stacks are deep, we should be playing extremely tight. This holds true whether we’re playing 6 man sngs or a multiple thousand person 10 handed tournament.

This is mainly for the reason that we can’t win a tournament in the first hand, or even first 10, 20, or 50 hands. In the case of larger online MTTs’, it can take hundreds of hands to make it Heads Up for the victory.

But just one bad decision can end your tournament, even if you’ve been playing incredible poker for hours. The vast majority of the time, there will be someone with a bigger stack who can bust you, or with a relatively similar stack which can severely cripple you.

While later in the game we need to loosen up to account for chipping up for a deep run, the rising blinds, and changing table dynamics (6 handed vs 9 handed play, for example), early in tournaments this is not much of a factor at all, and we shouldn’t risk our tournament life by exposing ourselves to possibility of coolers (in addition to slowly losing chips by playing lots of weaker hands) or in relatively close spots where we’re flipping or slightly ahead of our opponents.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in a cash game we should be taking 52/48 edges allin preflop (vs our opponent’s range) just about all the time.

Early in a tournament, however, we should pass in these spots to preserve our equity. There is significant (although relatively simple) math behind this, which I’ll get into either later this article or in a 3rd (and probably final) tournament theory article if it proves necessary.

I did promise some more practical advice, so I’ll do something I rarely do and provide some example ranges which I believe are quite reasonable.

> UTG – UTG+2: JJ+ AKo AQs+
> UTG+3 – CO: TT+ AQo+ AJs+
> BTN: 77+ ATo+ A9s+ KQo KJs+
> SB: 55+ AX+ KTo+ K8s+

This is approximately from effective stacks ~100bb all the way down to ~25bb, which covers early game play.

As you can see, these ranges are quite tight (and they only apply to unopened pots).

The one thing which could be added are joining in limpedes with suited connector type hands and smaller pocket pairs. Of course, as you become more solid in your postflop decision making you can definitely widen these ranges a little bit, but it really is true that tight is right in these games early and we should just be avoiding marginal spots.

When we do have one of these hands, we want to play it hard.
Stack off with your high pocket pairs preflop, and at lowstakes (probably any NPP free poker online game, and games on Stars through $3s at least) always stack off with AK (just trust me), and it’s also probably reasonable to stack of with AQ all the time as well.

When we hit tp+ postflop on all but the wettest boards, we want to be betting and raising and generally playing for stacks except against other solid players and nits. Anyway, even if you don’t follow these ranges hand-for-hand (and face it, you should be thinking for yourselves and modifying things to fit your games!), they should give you a general sense for just how tight we should be in early game spots.

Click image to check out PartyPokers bonus code offers

Play few hands, but play them fast and hard, and we should be in a generally decent position come mid and endgame, which is what’s important in MTT and SNG play.

So let’s take a short at play from ~12-~20bbs deep, which is an approximation of stacks during the standard middle game of SNGs, and is also relatively common to see in quicker-paced large field tournaments (the slower ones frequently stay deeper wire-to-wire).

Come middle game, our priorities start to shift a little bit.
We still care about survival, because all the money in tournaments comes at the end. But we need to stay on top of the rising blinds or we risk losing the value of our stack by playing too tight.

The goal here isn’t just to survive til endgame, it’s to reach endgame with a playable stack and a chance at victory, although we still do need to attempt to minimize risk. The most sensible way to do this is by widening up in unopened pots from late position.

While we should still be relatively tight from EP, our btn (button) and sb ranges should widen substantially.
A reasonable btn range is something like:

BTN: 22+ A7o+ A5s+ K9o+ K8s+ QJo QTs+

Which is significantly wider than our btn range deep. Our sb range should be substantially widened as well, but I’ll let you guys figure out exactly how to craft your ranges.

Another key difference is our opening size.
While during early game phases opening to 3x+1bb per limper is generally good sizing, in middle game we should probably be opening closer to 2.5x+1bb per limper.

The sizing effectively accomplishes the same thing (at these depths; raising to 2.5x at 100bb deep will get less folds). There’s less incentive to join limpedes here unless there are many limpers in front of you, and you generally shouldn’t be getting involved in opened pots without a relatively strong hand.

When you do, you should not be calling much; be more inclined to jam over to try and utilize the fold equity you have.

This is where I’ll cut this article. I know it’s not nearly as lengthy as some of the previous, but I really want you guys to internalize and really grasp these concepts before getting into the endgame portion, because it’s pretty dense stuff.

As always, leave a message on npp, a comment on the article or on facebook, or email me at duncelanas@hotmail.com with any questions, comments, concerns etc. I don’t bite, you’ll stay anonymous, and I’ll try to help with anything you come to me with (even if it’s a completely different poker problem unrelated to one of my articles).

I haven’t had many messages, but I think the few I have had have definitely helped people understand the content better as well as helping me learn to relay my thoughts better, so definitely feel free to contact me with anything. Until next time, I hope you play solid and run well!

- Gloves

Other articles in the free online poker From The Ground Up series by pro online poker player Gloves.

Part 1 - Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker

Part 2 – Hand Ranges, Playable Pockets, Table Position and Limping

Part 3 - Postflop Play scenarios. Optimal play against different player styles

Part 4 – Poker math – Outs and Odds

Part 5 - Basic poker tournament theory

Hey everyone, Gloves here again with another article in my free online poker “From the Ground Up” series. This article will be focusing on some of the key differences between tournament and cash play as well as how to translate the concepts taught in my other articles to tournament play specifically.

I also plan on giving a brief introduction to a concept called ICM (independent chip model), although I’ll probably devote another entire article to it soon. I hope you all have enjoyed your Christmas and New Year’s holidays and the wait for another article hasn’t been killing you! I think I’m leaning towards writing an article every 2 weeks now to give you guys more time to digest the concepts and ask any questions that spring to mind. Now that the holidays are over the schedule will normalize again! Let’s get to the poker! 

Tournament play has 4 major differences from cash play (note that “tournament” from here on out will refer to either big tournaments or sngs of any size).

> The first is the chips used.

• > In cash game poker (ring games), you buy in directly with your cash.
• > Every time you win or lose a pot, you directly lose that much money.
• > Players can also add on to their stacks in any size increment they want at any time (typically up to 100bb maximum).
• > You’re free to leave at any time, and you pocket the profit (or suffer the loss) immediately.
• > Tournament poker, however, involves paying a buyin which gives you a set amount of chips.
• > You play the tournament until you either run out of chips or accumulate all the chips in play (excepting a few specific tournament types).

> This leads us to the second difference – payout structure.

• > Unlike ring game chips, tournament chips don’t have direct, immediate monetary value.
• > You can’t leave the table and pocket tournament chips as profit.
• > You’re paid out based on your finish position; before then your chips are worth equity but not actual cash.
• > Typically tournaments pay out approximately 10% of the field (most of the world’s best online mtt players cash somewhere between 12-17% of the time) on a sliding scale that’s generally very top heavy.

> The third difference is the blind levels (and, consequently, stacksizes).

• > In ring games, the blinds never change. If you’re playing $1/$2, the small and big blinds will always be $1 and $2 respectively.
• > Because of this and the point mentioned earlier that cash players can always “top up” their stack to 100bb deep, cash poker is almost always deeper stacked than tournament poker.
• > In tournaments, blinds consistently go up (although the number of levels in the structure and the time of each level varies by tournament).
• > While an online “deep stack” tournament may typically start at 10/20 with 3000 chips (150bbs deep, which is deeper than standard cash play), after an hour or two the average stack could easily be 50bb or less.
• > After the first 45 or so minutes of most online “turbo” tournaments, average stacks can be 12bbs or lower which means that the game basically becomes preflop shove-or-fold poker.

> The fourth difference is simpler.

• > When we sit at a fullring (9/10 handed cash game table) on most sites, play will be at least 8 handed the vast majority of the time.
• > At a 6max table, 90%+ of hands will take place with 5 or more players.
• > Tournaments (when making deep runs, at a final table, or playing a sitngo) are more frequently short handed.
• > In fact, to win a tournament, we have to win a heads up match against another opponent.

So how should we adjust our game to reflect these key differences? 

The first, most obvious thing to do is to make sure we can actually play the tournaments we sign up for!

• > An online large field regular speed or deep stack tournament can easily take 6 hours to complete, if not more!
• > Reaching the money typically happens somewhere around the 2 or 2 and a half hour mark.

> Realistically, we only make the money 10 or 15% of the time (and final table the tournament a fraction of a percent, assuming a large, multiple thousand player field, or just a few percent of the time in a multiple hundred player field), so it’s not like this will be an everyday occurrence if we’re just playing one or two tables at a time, but late in tournaments is where all the money is.

If you’ve invested 5 hours playing a tourney, have built a big stack, and are looking to convert a big score, how would you feel if you suddenly had to leave because you made plans with friends, or your wife/gf expects you to do something, or anything of that nature?

Of course, there will be emergencies that cannot be avoided. But not assuring that you have enough time to play to the end if you happen to run deep can cost you hundreds of dollars in equity from a single tournament, even something as low as a $3 or $5 buyin!

Micro and lowstakes tournaments (on pokerstars, the biggest real money poker site worldwide) almost always have thousands of dollars in the prize pool, so you can really cost yourself a lot if you have to leave late in a tourney.

Of course, this is why many players choose to play sit n goes.

• > An 18 man turbo sng (on pokerstars, again) takes about an hour start to finish.
• > So if I have 2 hours to play, I can fire up a session of 18 mans, load games for about an hour, stop loading after that time passes, and run out my games before I have to leave.
• > The time commitment for a sng is much less than for a large field tournament, where you must be prepared to commit many hours after the last game you register for starts.

While on a site like NoPayPOKER with small fields (so tourneys wrap up quicker) and less money on the line (sure, you might lose a few hundred FreeDs in equity, but that only equates to a couple bucks), this is much less of a problem.

In general you should always understand how long the games you start could take to finish, whether or not it’s 10 minutes for a hyperturbo, 45 minutes for a sng, or 8 hours for a large field mtt (multi-table tournament).

If you can’t block off the time, don’t start the game. Consider playing something shorter or sitting cash, where you can cut your session at any time.

Let’s take a brief look at how changing payout structures affect play

We’ll be taking a much more in-depth (and, you guessed it, mathematical) look at this in the near future, so this will be quite basic.

• > Play is entirely dictated by a tournament’s payout structure.  For example, consider a winner-take-all tournament.
• > We’re trying to make the most value every hand to gain all the chips in play.

> Contrast this with a (hypothetical) tournament that pays out the bottom 10% of the field (first 10% to bust).

• > The strategy for this type of tournament might be to go allin every hand and hope to lose, or to raise so we have 1 chip left, fold, and go allin the second hand.
• > Obviously this tournament isn’t real, and this will never be an ideal strategy.
• > But for now, trust me when I say that this applies to all different tournaments.

Payout structures dictate play – a winner-take-all tournament plays different from a satellite which pays the top 50 players equally which plays differently from a top heavy tournament paying 10% of the field (top heavy meaning top 3 get a large percentage of the prize pool) which plays differently from a bottom heavy (less for top 3, more for lower places percentage wise) tournament paying 10% of the field.

A couple articles from now we’ll take an exhaustive look at this. For now just try to realize this fact and dwell on how the differences might affect strategy.

• > A hint: flatter payout structures generally mean we should take less risks and play tighter. But try to get more detailed than that, if you have some time to think on it.
• > Add a reason to my hint if you can, as well.

Now we’re going to have a more in depth look at the third and fourth differences, changing blind levels (and stacksizes) and changing dynamics based on how many players are at the table.

• > As stacksizes decrease (relative to the big blind), play naturally becomes more aggressive.
• > If we’re 100bb deep early in the tournament, raising preflop to win the blinds (1.5bb) is a miniscule addition to our stack.
• > If we’re 8bb deep late, however, assuming a standard ante size of .2bb at a 10 man table we’re picking up 3.5bb, which represents an astonishing near 50% increase to our stack. Just for scooping the blinds!

This directly connects to the number of players at the table, as well.

• > With 10 people at the table there’s much less pressure on us to act because the blinds come around less often.
• > This is why in HU play it’s correct to be extremely aggressive while in ring games and early in tournaments we should be playing very very tight.
• > The blinds are very very important, especially in tournament play!
• > As tablesizes shrink, we’re paying the blinds that much more often.
• > Which means to maintain our current stacksize, we need to steal the blinds that much more.
• > But since blinds go up, maintaining our stacksize is actually shrinking our stack, as the most important measure is not the number of chips but the number of bbs we (and our opponents at the table) have.

> This cycle causes extremely aggressive (and correct) play to become the norm in tournaments when shallow stacked.

I’m going to cut the article here. I understand this is just a broad theoretical look at tournament poker. The next article will be much more practical – in fact, the most practical article I’ve written thus far.

I hope you’ve gained some understanding and this primes you for the next article, which should be out within a couple weeks.

As always, feel free to comment on the articles on facebook, on the articles themselves, on my NPP page, or by emailing me at duncelanas@hotmail.com. Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions…all is welcome! Good luck at the tables and see you soon!

Previous article – part 4

For many more free online poker lessons and the rest of Justins series see the poker lessons directory page.

Here it is, the latest free online poker article looking poker math and how it’s used in the the young aggressive style of play known to many as school 3 poker. Read and learn my friends

Hi again, everyone! Sorry for the delay in this article, what with Thanksgiving holidays, some gift shopping, getting sick, and setting up a new computer I’ve been relatively busy recently and haven’t made time to write another article. My apologies! Hopefully things will quiet down now and we’ll be getting back to roughly 1 article per week.

Today’s article is going to focus on some basic poker math, from basic tips and tricks to applying math at the table to help you make profitable decisions. I don’t really want to waste more time on the intro, so on to the poker! 

Some people may be surprised that poker is a math-based game.

When it comes down to it, poker is all about percentages, frequencies, and concepts like implied odds. Sure, there are elements of chance in poker. The best player in the world can lose for 10,000 hands, and even the worst players are sure to win big pots at times.

But making profitable decisions all boils down to the math. Odds of hitting your cards, weighting your opponents’ ranges towards certain hands, and understanding how to exploit your opponents based on their tendencies (which can be broken down into percentages).

Basics First

As with any topic (in poker or in general), we should thoroughly ground ourselves in the basics of poker math before moving on to more complex mathematical topics (things like balance, ICM, and equilibrium play (and no, I don’t expect you guys to have any idea what those mean! Don’t worry!)).

Fortunately, basic poker math is very simple, and there are several easy-to-remember tricks to help you with your calculations.

2 Core Concepts

The two most basic math concepts in poker are calculating your outs (and consequently your percentage chance of hitting one of them), and calculating pot odds. 

For those who don’t know, an “out” is a card that you feel will improve your hand to the best hand.

> Let’s say you know your opponent has top pair on the flop, and you have 4 clubs (2 in your hand and 2 on the board).
>There are 13 cards of each suit in the deck, and you know that if you hit a pair your opponent will still have a better hand than you.
> There are 9 (13-4) clubs left in the deck – for now, we’ll consider it irrelevant that your opponent may hold a club – out of the 47 cards left unknown (you know 5, your 2 hole cards and the 3 on the flop), 9 are clubs.
> You also know that since your opponent has top pair, if you hit a club you’ll improve to the best hand, so the 9 clubs are your outs.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb which is very very important.

> On each postflop street, any given card has about a 2% chance of coming (1/47 on the turn, 1/46 on the river).

> Therefore, you have approximately an 18% chance to hit on the turn, and another 18% chance to hit on the river.

If you’re placed in a situation where you’re forced allin, you realize the 36% chance to hit one of your 9 outs (18% on 2 streets), but remember that you may face another bet on the turn if you’re not allin, so you may have to fold before seeing the river.

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume the odds of hitting runner-runner 2 pair, a runner-runner straight, etc is negligible (in reality you maybe have 9.25 or 9.5 outs as opposed to just 9). 

Pot Odds

Are also extremely important, as without understanding the concept of pot odds we really have no idea if a call will be profitable (in postflop spots and allin spots especially).

Let’s say we’re HU and each player has 10bb stacks.

> Player 1 goes allin preflop. Player 2 has to decide whether to fold or call.

> The pot is now 11bbs (10bb from player 1 and the bb posted by player 2), so player 2 has to decide whether or not to call 9bb for the chance to win 11bb.

This is generally expressed as a ratio, the size of the pot to the size of the call needed. In this instance, the pot odds would be 11:9 (11 to 9). Simplified, this is approximately 1.2:1. 

This means that for a profitable call, player 2 has to win 1 time for every 1.2 times they lose (or, in other words, once out of every 2.2 times).

When a player is getting 1 to 1 on their money, they need to win the pot 50% of the time to break even calling. They’re profitable if they win any more than that.

Getting 2 to 1, a player needs to win only 33% of the time to break even calling (1 win for every 2 losses, or 1 win out of every 3 pots). This is why when we’re short stacked it’s correct to go allin lighter and call allin bets wider.

The blinds represent a large percentage of our chipstacks, giving us the pot odds to call (remember, if we’re even winning 35% of the time getting 2 to 1 it’s a profitable call). 

The key with pot odds is to put your opponent on a range of hands and calculate the equity of your hand against that range. This is tricky, and requires lots of practice.

When faced with a call or fold situation, though, it comes down to estimating your outs against your opponent’s range (count your outs and use the rule of 2% and 4%) and compare that to the pot odds you’re getting.

In the example above where we had 9 outs on the flop with a flush draw, our call is profitable if we’re getting roughly 2 to 1 or better.

We have ~36% chance to hit our flush and win the hand, and getting 2 to 1 pot odds we need to win 1 time in 3, which is 33%. So we should call, as we make money long term even though we win the pot well under half the time.

If we’re getting 1 to 1 odds, though, we need to win half the time. We only win ~36% of the time, so we can easily fold.

It’s important to remember, though, that pot odds are only perfect in call-or-fold spots when our calling ends the action in the hand, either because our opponent is allin or it’s on the river and our call or fold will end the hand.

When there’s future action (we decide to call on the flop and there’s turn play), pot odds won’t be perfect for our turn decision, even though it’s rarely if ever wrong to fold when we’re getting direct odds to call (we have 9 outs on the flop and are getting 8 to 1 when we only need about 4 to 1 (20%, we have ~18% equity) to continue, for example). 

Warning, now it gets more complicated.

If you’ve grasped everything up to this point, you’ve already learned some important concepts from this article.

If you have trouble understanding this, feel free to contact me (details at the end of the article) or come back to it at a later point. This is an intermediate concept in a series geared towards beginners. 

Implied Odds

For spots where there’s future play, there’s another (slightly) more complex concept, called implied odds.

Calculating implied odds is an attempt to estimate how much future value we get out of our hand when we do hit. While calculating outs and pot odds are an exact science (we have a 36% chance to hit by the river and are getting 2 to 1 on an allin, so we call!), implied odds are just an estimate and are imperfect at best.

The best way to illustrate the concept of implied odds is by setting up an example with super deep stacks.

> Let’s say we’re HU against an opponent and we’re each 10,000bbs deep.

> Our opponent raises to 3bb preflop and we call.

> We flop a 4 flush.

> Our opponent bets pot (6bb).

> We’re only ~18% chance to hit (assuming our 9 flush outs are good) on the turn and we’re getting 1 to 1 (need to hit 50% of the time for our call to be directly profitable), so according to pot odd calculations we should fold.

Implied odds, however, are attempting to estimate our future value when we do hit.

> Let’s say we call and hit the turn.

> On the turn, our opponent bets pot again (now 18bb, 6bb due to preflop action plus his 6bb bet on the flop and our 6bb call).

> We flat again.

> Our opponent pots river (now 54bb due to the 18bb pot on turn plus the 36bb bet and call), and we raise to 150bb and get called by our opponent’s top pair.

Even though we weren’t getting the pot odds (also called direct odds) to call on the flop, we called 6bb on the flop for the chance of winning a much larger pot when we do hit (due to our opponent’s turn and river bets).

Against an opponent who will be aggressively betting the turn and river a high percentage of the time, we can definitely call the flop bet (and maybe even the turn bet) even when we know we don’t have the best hand.

> In the example, calling 6bb on the flop allowed us to win a ~300bb  pot on the river.
> That’s ~300:6, or ~50:1!
> We effectively got ~50:1 on our money, and we only needed ~4:1 (remember, 9 outs = ~18% to hit on each future card). 

But this is where implied odds is an imperfect science.

While in the specific example I gave we did effectively get 50:1, let’s say our opponent pots turn and river with any hand, but only calls our river raise with top pair.

> Let’s also say our opponent has top pair 20% of the time (just making up a number here).

In that case, our calculation becomes more complicated.

> On the turn our opponent puts in another 18bbs every time, and on the river our opponent puts in another 54bbs every time, but our raise to 150 is only called 20% of the time.

> This means that the value of our raise is 30bbs (150x.2).

> So long term, we have to call 6bbs on the flop to win 102bbs (18 on turn + 54 on river bet + 30 from our river raise).

Our implied odds aren’t 50:1 here, they’re 102:6, or 17:1. This is far better than the ~4:1 we needed to call the flop, so it’s still profitable of course.

But in reality the calculations are far more clouded.

> Let’s say our opponent is only betting the turn with top pair and is shutting down on the river without top pair top kicker?

> Or our opponent is betting top pair on the turn only 70% of the time and is betting the turn as a bluff 15% of the time (with his bluff range)?

> It’s not really feasible to sit at the table (or at your computer) trying to calculate the exact implied odds of a play.

Implied odds are at best only an estimate, and in reality will never be perfect. This is unlike pot odds, which are just a brute mathematical concept.

To try and more accurately “guess” implied odds, we need to think about our opponent’s tendencies (as usual).

> If our opponent is loose and aggressive, our implied odds are usually much higher than our direct odds.

> If our opponent is tight and nitty, our implied odds and direct odds are usually closer.

Generally, though, the concept of implied odds teaches us that it’s often profitable to draw even when we don’t have the direct odds to do so.

We have to estimate our implied odds to know what the “true” cutoff is for when chasing our draws is mathematically unprofitable, but this is informed guesswork at best and it takes a lot of practice to even be passable at.

It has to do with putting our opponent on an accurate range and accurately assessing what they’ll do at each future action with each part of that range. 

Reverse Implied Odds

The last concept I’ll introduce here is called reverse-implied odds. 

We have to take into account those times when we hit our outs and we still don’t have the best hand.

This can be through our (assumed) out either improving us and our opponent (ex. we hit our flush out but it gives our opponent a higher flush), or our opponent still having a better hand than us if we hit (ex. we turn top pair but our opponent has a set).

In general, calculating reverse-implied odds is much simpler than calculating implied odds.

When we put our opponent on a range, there will be hands that improve when we improve, and this is easy to account for.

> Let’s say we have a queen high flush draw on the flop and our opponent’s range is top pair+ (top pair, overpairs, any 2 pair hand, any set) and any flush draw.

> We should realize that this range includes ace high and king high flush draws as well as 2 pairs and sets which can improve to boats even when we hit our flush.

If you were able to grasp the math presented in the implied odds segment, you’ll definitely be able to figure out the math behind this (hint: relate implied potsize to percentage that villain’s range improves to beat your hand when you hit and subtract this from implied potsize, then recalculate implied odds with the new potsize), so I won’t delve into that too deeply.

Again, the degree to which reverse-implied odds affect your implied odds varies greatly.

> Against a wide, aggressive opponent it will generally be pretty negligible

> While against a meganit who only raises with the nuts it will be quite substantial (at times even making your implied odds less than your direct odds, although extremely rarely). 

Complex section over, closing and some advice

I know the implied odds and reverse-implied odds sections were quite a bit to handle and were a bit beyond the scope of a beginner series.

That said, they’re important concepts to understand (even if you don’t utilize that understanding effectively at first), and a free online poker site like NoPayPOKER is a great place to play until you have a solid understanding of the game and can make the jump to real money play.

> I would also suggest downloading pokerstove (http://www.pokerstove.com/) or Equilab (http://www.pokerstrategy.com/software/10/), both of which are free, and messing around in them to see how the equity of different hands matches up against various ranges.

I’ll probably write an article on these (and other) tools at some point, but for now just mess around and see how hand strength changes with regard to board texture, against different ranges, in multiway pots, etc.

In order to use pot odds and implied odds, you need to be able to accurately estimate your equity against your opponent’s range, and you might learn some things that surprise you! 

If you have questions about any of the concepts in the article (estimating outs, pot odds, implied odds, reverse-implied odds) or about the tools I recommended (pokerstove and equilab), feel free to comment on the article here, on the NPP facebook page, talk to me (gloves22) in NPP chat, leave me a NPP pm, or email me at duncelanas@hotmail.com 

Good luck at the tables! 

-Gloves

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In this free online poker article Gloves looks at postflop play against the 4 main player types of loose-tight + passive-aggressive in free poker and nano stakes online poker games. Justin, over to you:

For quite some time, I didn’t know exactly what to write about in my third article. Many ideas floated through my head – cover variance perhaps, or start covering tournament strategy and how it’s fundamentally different from cash strategy.

However, while I’ll definitely cover those topics in the future, the title of this series again sprang to mind. “From the Ground Up”. And I realized that in part one some general poker mindset concepts were covered and in part two some general preflop concepts and strategy was covered (and I also introduced hand ranges, which will come into major play in this article – go back and read the hand range section in part 2 if you need a refresher).

So, logically, it makes sense to continue just as if we were progressing in a poker hand. So we get to the flop with a solid hand (remember, no playing trash!)…but, now what?

And postflop play, in my opinion, is really what makes poker such a complex, beautiful game.

Hopefully by the end of this article you readers will both see this as well as know how to play a solid postflop style.

Postflop play is the weakest aspect of most poker players’ games (including mine, no doubt!).

In poker, there are 4 different styles of player (tight/loose) + (passive/aggressive).

In the nanostakes (NPP games and real money games through 5nl (.02/.05 blinds)), each of these player types make a few key mistakes. Hopefully, we’ll look at each player type in depth and discuss how to exploit them.

First, you have the loose-aggressive (LAG) “maniac”

> These are the guys who are betting and/or raising way too often.
> They’ll often cbet (bet flop after raising preflop) almost 100% and will also bet turn and river far too often (keep in mind we hit ~33% of flops long-term).

The trick to playing these guys is to realize that their range in any given spot is extremely wide. What this means is that if you flop second or third pair, calling their bets and raises is often hugely profitable because they’re betting repeatedly with absolutely nothing so often.

They’re somewhat difficult to play against because it takes a lot of guts – calling 3 streets (each a relatively large bet, usually) with third pair weak kicker is not particularly easy, but you have to realize that against some of these guys third pair is basically the same as top pair and so you just shouldn’t fold.

That doesn’t mean to always call down any pair against these players (because there are varying degrees of maniacs; some players will really be betting and raising 100% of the time while others are betting and raising too often but not extremely so).

Another thing to note is that your draws (and as such, suited and connected hands preflop) go way up in value because if you hit your draw you’ll often get paid off bigtime (this is a concept known as implied odds, but I won’t elaborate on this until a later article).

So ultimately against these players pair hands go up in value and draws go up in value. Pay attention at the tables to get a good feel for a player’s range (is he a true spewing maniac, or is he just hyper-aggressive) and try to make these profitable “thin” (not super easy) calldowns against these players.

In general, you should also be waiting for the river to raise these players with your strong hands because they’re going to be betting all 3 streets anyway; you lose lots of value if you raise flop or turn and get them to fold.

A second major player type is the loose-passive (LP) “calling station”

> These guys are often limping or calling hands preflop and not raising very often.
> Postflop they often check-call down while only betting or raising their very strong hands.

These players are very very easy to play against, and you run into tons and tons of them in nanostakes games. Basically, you just want to widen your valuebetting range against these players and never bluff.

So you can often bet down (bet all 3 streets) with hands like weak top pair and even second pair against many of them and just check/fold your bluff hands. When you get raised, you should realize that your second pair and even top pair hands become pretty worthless and you should generally be folding (although again, it depends on the specific opponent).

Draws are also very easy to play against these guys. When we have a draw, we can just check down until we hit and then we can just start betting for value.

Out of position, don’t be afraid to lead on flop and turn if you hit a pair – in nanostakes games you won’t be exploited by these loose-passive players for doing this (against some loose-aggressive and tight-aggressive players you might be) and since they’re unlikely to bet (they’re passive) you will gain value in doing this.

A third major player type is the tight-aggressive (TAG) “ABC Player”.

> In microstakes games, these are generally the most solid opponents you’ll face, but thankfully they’re also pretty rare.

The articles in this series even advocate playing a solid, thinking TAG style.

As you move up in stakes, the real sharks tend to be LAGs, but at micros LAG players make tons of mistakes (generally being overaggressive in bad spots), and it’s also tougher to pull off bluffs (remember, LAG players bluff a lot in order to put constant pressure on their opponents).

> Basically, TAG is how we should be playing at these stakes and we should generally avoid getting into large pots with other TAGs.

> A standard TAG player will be opening reasonable ranges preflop, typically for raises, and they’ll generally be the postflop aggressor as well.

They’ll be cbetting pretty wide but shutting down on later streets a fair amount and they’re very unlikely to spew off their stacks by check-raising or betting down with air.

That said, they also won’t be calling down with their weak pair hands (think second pair and often top pair hands) or draws (without proper odds); they’ll just be generally getting out of the way OOP (Out of position) when they have nothing and playing a solid style IP (In Position) that’s hard to exploit centered around playing solid hand ranges and betting often for value and to get folds out of other tags and tight-passive players.

They don’t get out of line too much. The way to profit out of these guys (when IP) is to cbet flop wide (you’ll get a lot of folds) and to generally slow down if you’re raised.

When you’re OOP, the only real way to exploit these players is to be check/raising flop and turn wide, but you don’t really want to be check/raising with air against thinking players especially at nanos, it’s just super high variance, unnecessary, and will lead to a lot of ugly spots (like when you get flatted after c/ring).

Again, TAG is the style of play we should be emulating as it’s just all-around solid and hard to exploit – don’t get out of line too much (unless you have a read or some other reason to), pick your spots, and get lots of value from other players’ mistakes.

The final major player type is the tight-passive (TP) “rock”

> These players are also pretty common at nanostakes games.
> They often limp in as opposed to raising, and while they call as opposed to 3betting (reraising preflop) they don’t play very many hands as a standard.

They’ll rarely raise you postflop without a true nut hand (think sets or better, usually) and won’t call down without hitting a strong piece of the board (typically top pair).

Thankfully, their tendencies also make them simple to play against.

Their ranges are typically limited to pocket pairs and high card hands (KQ, AJ+ for example), so a ton of middling flops (T84r for example) can be cbet basically 100% as we’ll get folds a ton of the time. We should basically be cbetting flops very wide and shutting down on turn/river if called on flop without a good reason for continuing.

If we have a strong top pair or better, we should continue betting down after the flop. With our draws, we can again check it down until we improve and then bet (although we will rarely get value in those spots).
They’re really straightforward – they only raise with the nuts and are folding too often, so we should raise a lot and bet a lot of flops to profit against them.

Now that we have a solid grasp on the 4 main player types and how to exploit them (but remember, everything is in degrees!

Some TAGs are almost LAG, some TPs are almost LPs, etc…so you have to adjust your play to your individual opponents, these player types are just a tool to help you do that!), I’m going to touch a little bit on a more advanced postflop concept, and it might just blow your minds.

The way we play our hand CHANGES the hand our opponent has.

Think about this for a minute. I haven’t asked you to do an exercise this week, so now would be a good time…grab that notepad and write down why you feel this statement is true or false. Much less work than the last article for sure, where I asked you all to approximate a whole bunch of hand ranges and to provide reasoning for the similarities and differences!

The key to understanding why this concept is true is understanding that poker is not a game of hands, poker is a game of RANGES.

This is another amazing reason why ranges are one of if not THE most important poker concepts to understand.

To illustrate, let’s give an example. Let’s say we’re on the button and it folds around to us.

> We decide we’re going to open (22+, A7o+, A2s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo, QJs, JTs). That’s 23.4% of hands.
> Now let’s say we’re on the button and there was a raise and a 3bet before us.
> We decide we’re only gonna raise (QQ+, AKs) in this spot.
> We’re still on the button preflop, but now we’re only playing 1.7% of hands!

This applies to postflop play as well – if our villain has x range, when we check/raise if he opts to continue his range is DIFFERENT than if we had just called.

Our actions directly affect the range of hands it’s possible for our opponents to have in any given spot. I’m going to let you guys mull over why this is important for a while.

In the future, I’ll definitely delve into it, but for now just think on it and why it might be important to understand, as the true meaning behind this is dense enough to merit its own article.

A few words of conclusion:
I’m aware that thus far things have been more theoretical than practical, and that’s for a number of reasons.

First off, poker is a very fluid, dynamic game, and I find giving specific advice for a general situation is a flawed way of doing things.

In addition, however, this series is about building your game from the ground up. Hopefully we’re establishing a sound theoretical base for a solid poker game with which you guys learn to think about poker (general to specific, as opposed to the other way around).

At that point, you can analyze your game and specific situations yourselves (although poker buddies to talk specific spots with are a great help always, and you can contact me with any comments/suggestions as well as questions (pertaining to the article or just general) by commenting on the articles, on the NPP facebook page, on my blog, or by email at duncelanas@hotmail.com) in addition to getting more into advanced poker concepts (which are really just extensions of these concepts I’m teaching you now, although some are counter-intuitive).

In the coming weeks, however, things will be a little more concrete (at least for some articles), as I have one planned on implied odds and draws already as well as some future thoughts for delving into some basic to intermediate poker math.

Hope you’ve all enjoyed, and the next article should be up in about a week!

-Gloves

Check out Gloves lesson 1 in this series here – Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker”

Check out Gloves lesson 2 in this series here – Hand Ranges, Playable Pockets, Table Position and Limping

Check out Justins personal blog here (more advanced stuff)

Check out all the pro written NoPayPOKER.com lessons on the free online poker training page

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• لعبة البوكر

Hey everyone, Gloves here again with part 2 of my “From the Ground Up” series. As outlined in part 1, the purpose of this series is to take your poker game to the “next level” and to get you thinking about the game analytically with a true poker mindset. This is no easy task – poker is a very deep game and one could write pages on even a single hand, and even the best in the world are learning and improving everyday.

That said, everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right? In the first article, I focused on the single most important ability for any poker player to have. 

The long version of this is “to evaluate every decision you’re presented with, take into account all the information you have, and make the best action”. Or, in short “think about every spot, try not to make mistakes”. Even shorter: “Use common sense”, or even just “think!”

In part 2, we’re going to get more practical. Again we’re going to be mirroring DM Vadnais’ series, this time in talking about playable hole cards and the importance of position.

In part 1, the only “practical” advice I gave was “start with better hands than our opponents by playing relatively tight preflop”.

That was (and is) quite sound advice, but what hands should we be playing and what hands should we be folding?

> How do our opponents’ tendencies affect that?

> How does our table position affect that?

> How does action before us affect that?

Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll have solid answers to these questions and be on your way to really thinking like a poker player.

Understanding Hand Ranges – The most important single poker skill of all

Before I get into that, though, I’m going to define and explain a term necessary to cover poker strategy on any level above absolute beginner. This term is “hand range”.

Basically, the term “hand range” means “the range of hands it’s possible for my opponent to have”.

Let’s say your opponent is super tight and reraises you big preflop.
An example range for them to have is (QQ,KK,AA). You don’t know which of these hands they have, but you know they have one of these 3 hands, so that’s their range.

When writing a range, though, you don’t write out every possible hand in the range. The range of (QQ, KK, AA) is shortened to (QQ+), meaning any pocket pair QQ or above. Writing (KTo+) would mean any offsuit king KT or above (so KT, KJ, KQ – note not AK because the highest card is always written first).

An “o” designation means offsuit, while an “s” designation means suited (ex: K8o+, K7s+ means any offsuit king K8 or above and any suited king K7 and above).

Understanding ranges is hands down the most important SKILL a poker player has – so if you don’t understand this section, reread it, and if you still have questions, feel free to contact me – I’ll get back to you quickly. While this is only examining ranges at the most basic level, I cannot stress how important understanding the concept of a hand range is.

Now that we (hopefully!) understand the concept of a hand range, we can get to the good stuff. I think again I’m going to ask you to grab a pad and a pen and do a couple exercises. In fact, I kinda like this concept, so I might just ask you guys to jot down some stuff each week.

Of course nothing is required, but it should help you to express some of these concepts on paper. It’ll also give you something to look back on a month or two from now and say “Man, look how much I’ve improved!” and also will make for a good review companion, so I strongly encourage taking a few minutes to jot down some answers.

Pretend you’re at a 10 handed NoPayPOKER table playing against people you’ve never seen before.
> It’s your first hand at the table, so you have absolutely no reads.

> Let’s say it folds around to you and you’re on the button.

> You, the small blind, and the big blind are all deep-stacked.

> What range of hands do you open for a raise? (try to write using the range notation I just explained!)

Alright, same table. We’ve played some hands now and we know that both the small blind and big blind are very tight.
> What range of hands are we raising now?

> How about if the small blind is tight but the big blind is loose?

> And finally: How are these 3 ranges different and why?

> How are they similar and why?

Yes, I know I’m asking you to take a few minutes to really invest some thought into these situations and your reasoning behind the differences. Hopefully, though, after reading this article you’ll be able to look at your thoughts and already see a flaw in your thinking.

Or maybe you’ll see that you’re really on the right track! Then after some play, some thought, and some time, you can look at it again and see how you’ve improved your thought processes. That’s why I’m asking you to do these things – so I can help you better, and so even away from my articles you learn to think about your own game and keep on improving.

In fact, if you’re so inclined, feel free to message me (either pm me on NPP or email me at duncelanas@hotmail.com) with your answers to these questions, and I can look over what you send to offer some personal insight on your poker thinking.

Playable hole cards

Now that you’ve put some thought into the exercises (at least some of you!), it’s time to delve into the topic of playable hole cards.

When it comes to what cards we should be playing when action comes to us, there are 3 important factors to consider:

- The action which occurred before our turn to act.
- Our table position
- Our opponents’ tendencies

The first point is pretty self explanatory. If there’s been a raise, a 3bet, and a 4bet all before action has reached us, we should definitely be folding our pocket 9s even though if it folded to us we should be opening them for a raise. The general idea is that most of the times we play a hand we should be opening for a raise as opposed to calling our opponents’ opens.

As such, we should be playing tighter generally and 3betting our strong hands. I’m not going to get into specific adjustments here, just understanding that when our opponents open we need to be tighter is enough for now.

The second point is one that many beginning players don’t think about. At a 10 handed table (or a 6 handed table, 4 handed table…any size table, really), we should be opening progressively wider as we get closer to the button.

There are 2 main reasons for this.

1) First is the fact that because there are less opponents to act behind us, there’s a smaller chance of someone being dealt a playable hand and as such a better chance of everyone folding and us taking the blinds (which is very significant, actually).

2) Second is because we’ll have position on our opponents postflop.

What does this mean? Well, when we’re on the button (for example), our opponents will have to make their action before us on every street. What this means is that we get to act with more information than them at every single point in the hand.

Again, it’s hard to state how huge of an advantage this is (seriously, I wrote 2 pretty lengthy blog posts just on this topic). Basically, the fact that we get to see what our opponent chooses to do before we have to act is a huge advantage.

Maybe our opponent leads into us, showing strength, so we fold our weak hand that we would have continuation bet. Maybe our opponent checks to us, so we continuation bet with absolutely nothing and get him to fold cause he shows weakness.

In every single postflop situation, having position on your opponent will be an advantage. While your opponent has no idea what you have (beyond the fact that you elected to play it preflop), YOU know both that your opponent elected to play their hand preflop AND how they reacted to the flop.

This is such a huge advantage that in heads-up (1-on-1) play, it’s even profitable to open 80% of button hands (including trash like T4o and 85o) just because you get to play the hand in position.

So as we have better table position, our opening ranges should naturally open up.

The third (and also very important) point to consider is our opponents’ tendencies.

> If the big blind is going allin every single hand, we shouldn’t be opening wide from the button at all – because we’ll have to fold to his shove with our weaker holdings.

> If the players left to act behind us are tight, we should loosen up because we have a better shot at stealing the blinds.

If the players behind us are loose and aggressive, there are 2 adjustments we should make.
> The first is that we should should tighten up some because we’ll be 3bet a fair amount and we’re not scooping the blinds very often.
> The second is that we should play more high card hands and less suited connector type hands.

That’s because against a loose aggressive opponent, we can play a hand like KJo, flop top pair, and get it allin and be happy with our play.

However, if we have 87s, when we flop top pair and are faced with lots of aggression, when we get it in we’ll often be dominated by stronger top pairs or hands with more outs against us.

And against this type of opponent, when we miss with our 87s and cbet the flop we’re unlikely to get many folds and our hand has less equity. So high-card hands go up in value while middle connectors go down.

Ultimately, though, it’s very hard to give concrete advice in general situations. Sure, I could give ton of example ranges to play as “a certain stack depth against a certain player type in a certain position with a certain gameflow”, but it’s just not practical.

Of course, there are some hands we’ll almost always be playing (JJ+, AQ+ for example), and some hands we’ll basically never be playing (complete trash, like 52o), but for tons of suited connectors, suited one gappers, pocket pairs, and midstrength hands in general the answer to what you should play and when is “it depends on the situation”.

The great thing about NPP is that it’s a free online poker site – you can change around your ranges and see what works and what doesn’t, how you should adjust in certain spots, etc. with absolutely no monetary loss. So experiment away!

Just remember to internalize the concepts and apply them, and your experiments will lead in a good direction.

Again, generally:

- Play tighter in early position, looser in late position
- Play tighter against loose players, looser against tight players (preflop)
- Play tighter against aggressive players, looser against passive players (preflop)
- Play tighter if there has been action before you
- Almost always play your premiums, almost never play trash

I suppose I should give a couple examples to illustrate. Although they won’t be a complete guide position by position, hopefully you’ll get an idea of how to account for different villain types and a general idea of how important position is.

- Under the gun (first position) 10 handed example range: (TT+, AQo+, AJs+)
- Button range vs tight blinds: (22+, A2o+, A2s+, K6o+, K5s+, Q9o+, Q8s+, JTo, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s)
- Button range vs loose blinds: (22+, A7o+, A2s+, K8o+, K8s+, QTo+, Q9s+, JTs)
- Button range readless: (22+, A7o+, A2s+, K8o+, K7s+, Q9o+, Q9s+, JTs, T9s, 98s)

Limping – What’s it all about and when should you do it?

Now we’ll discuss the one topic left relatively uncovered thus far – limping.

When should we limp preflop? The answer is almost never.

There are, however, a couple situations where we could and should be limping.

> First is a spot where we’re against a loose passive opponent with a marginal hand. Basically, when our opponent is rarely folding to a raise, isn’t attacking our limp often, and our hand isn’t particularly strong but is strong enough to see a flop.

> Second (and much much more common, especially in free poker playmoney and microstakes games), is in what’s known as a limpede.

A limpede is basically when a whole bunch of players decide to limp preflop (limp+stampede = limpede!)

We should join in these “limpedes” when we have either suited connectors or low pocket pairs.

Basically, we’re joining the limpede because we have the chance to flop a very strong hand (in the case of suited connectors, a flush, straight, or combo draw, while with pocket pairs we’re trying to flop a set) for very cheap.

Our goal is ONLY to flop a very strong hand – if we don’t (even if we have something like second pair or a weak top pair) most of the time we’re going to be giving up and check/folding the flop.

That pretty much brings my second article to a conclusion. Remember, feel free to contact me with any questions/comments/concerns you may have (and your ranges and reasoning for the exercises I gave you – I’ll let you know if you’re on the right track!) either by commenting on the article, my blog (which I’ll update soon, I promise!) sending me a NPP pm, or emailing me at duncelanas@hotmail.com . Hope you enjoyed the read and learned something! Good luck at the tables, talk to you guys soon!

- Gloves

Check out Gloves lesson 1 in this series here Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker”

Check out gloves personal blog here (more advanced stuff)

Check out all the pro written NoPayPOKER.com lessons on the free online poker training page