Posted in Poker June 11th, 2009
Calling Bets with Weak Cards in Tournaments
Raising middle pairs over limpers in the early stages (regardless of buy-in) is somewhat risky. You are likely to get better long term value from set mining cheaply. Most of these calls in early stages are correct for implied odds strategy. A five times raise is not a big hit to their stack and you mostly just don’t narrow the field enough. You’re immediately faced with a more difficult decision regarding a continuation bet man you’ve got over cards on the board. Why not open raise, but once there are limpers, avoid attacking them when its deep stacked and when the blinds are very small.
You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. So if the pot is now one.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You raise to 3BB, making the pot 5.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. As at result he is getting good odds to make a call here at nearly 3:1.
You are pretty much never more than a 3:1 under dog pre flop, which is what Gus is on about. However there is a problem. Maybe even more than one problem.
Firstly your problem is bet-ability of a marginal hand. This could mean rags facing off against ace king. The flop comes down 5 J Q. Even though your ahead, it’s difficult to know how much you can bet here? will you even be able to call a continuation bet if it comes? But what if you just bet into the pot? Then what are you going to do when he smooth calls? Now do you bet once more here? How deep a hole are you going to dig for yourself with your bottom pair hoping that it is good?
But what if you have something like pocket threes pre-flop? With three big cards flopping, you can theoretically assume your opponent miss the flop, but you are stuck with how much to bet since it missed you as well?
So yes, you had correct odds pre flop, if you could get to showdown for something approximating that pre flop investment. But when everyone has a lot of chips you can’t do it. You still have 3 betting rounds before you get to fifth street.
However there is another problem as a result. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. This means when you do make you hand you will win less. You will also lose more chips, because your opponent can bet you off a better hand because he has position.
If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. Implied odds is what you need to be looking at here.. i.e. what is the size of my stack and my opponents stack. My calling range is rather wide if this bet represents 5% of my stack or less. If they have a big pair and I have little connectors, I am okay with that. If they have AA, and I want to be playing my little cards. When it gets higher, like ten percent, I am more likely to fold. Still, I am only concerend about the size of the bet compared to my effective tournament stack.
My cards may be 56s and be up against big slick. But unless I make and OESD, Flush draw or 2 pair or better, I will be surrendering pretty much every pot on the flop especially if I am OOP. Occasionally I might check call on a low board with a low pair, but still there would have to be some read to make me do that.
Even in Every Hand Revealed, Gus Hansen regrets a lot of his calls from players who raise early position. Partly because, such calls often become more difficult place post flop. Gus can look at his opponent for tells, and after all his is The Great Dane. There are no person to person tells and we can’t play like Gus. Importantly also, our opponents are not Gus’ opponents. It’s also important to know if your opponent can get away from a top pair, or are more willing to let it ride.
To sum it up, pre-flop pot odds are less important than post flop implied odds. You might choose to play a given hand anyway, but do it for the reason of implied odds and not pot odds, if that makes sense. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
