Friday, November 2, 2007

Deep Stacked Tip of the Day

This one might seem kind of obvious to some but I'll say it anyway.

In a cash game where stacks are deep it can be highly advantageous to 3 bet your speculative hands early on.

It's a tournament concept, too (just remove the "early on" part).

If I am going to 3 bet someone when we both have alot of chips, I'd much rather be doing it with a hand that plays itself such as 89 suited or 9-10 suited rather than a hand that could get me into a ton of trouble on the flop such as KQ, KJ, A-10 suited, etc.

Of course you'll also be 3 betting with your premium hands, but initially 3 betting light can result in a couple things which work in your favor:
  1. You take down the pot preflop a couple times when you are given credit for a big hand
  2. You make a strong and well disguised hand on a raggy board and get an overpair to commit a lot of chips.

The goal in a cash game is to maximize your wins which means if you 3 bet with a hand like KJ and get called, you're going to need to stick a sizable amount in the pot with a c-bet if the flop comes Jack high. Now if you are raised, you potentially face going broke with KJ which is not typically going to win a lot of hands when you face an all-in bet from an opponent who knows what he/she is doing.

I used KJ in my example because it is one of the biggest trouble hands in poker, but I could have used 88, 99, or 10 10 in my example as well.

These are decent hands, but the flop is usually going to bring an overcard to them and you don't want to start building a very large pot in this situation unless you know your opponent well.

You'll also need to adjust your play after the first time you show down one of these speculative hands you 3 bet with preflop since any opponent who is paying attention will start giving you a lot less credit going forward.

It will also take them a long time to re-adjust to you switching over to a TAG style of play once you've shown them a "reckless" play.

I love doing this against table captains and people who use the chat box because they are almost guaranteed to use their player notes to label me a maniac when in fact I'm just being selectively aggressive at the beginning of a session to set them up down the road.

Good luck.

2 comments:

Fuel55 said...

I don't think I have talked about 3-betting suited connectors much, but I have discussed responding to 3-bets when you have suited connectors several times:

http://fuel55.blogspot.com/2007/06/calling-reraises-with-suited-connectors.html

http://fuel55.blogspot.com/2007/01/calling-reraises-in-position-on-pure.html

CzechRazor said...

I like. Same principal when you boil right down to it - seeing flops with speculative hands that play themselves very easily versus the range you can put your opponent on.

I love calling the way you wrote it out, too. I just think realizing you can call with those is easier than realizing you can raise with those.