Being aggressive with middle pairs to me is rather costly for early stage play.  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. If you raise it that much, it’s still not a big hit to thier situation, and you will likely NOT get others to fold. You end up most times trying to decide whether to continuation bet into an overly large pot with over cards on the board and it all gets a bit too much like hard decisions for me.Sure you can open raise, but if there are multiple limpers I would just avoid attacking them when everyone is comfortable stacks and mzones.

You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. If the pot is 1.5BBs 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.

If you think about it, you’re probably never too far behind pre-flop if you decide to play. But there is a problem. Or rather a couple of problems.

The main problem is betting ability of a weak hand. This could mean rags facing off against ace king. The flop comes down 5 J Q. Sure you’re now ahead, but really how much can you afford to bet at this point? Can you even call a standard Cbet with bottom pair out of position? But what if you just bet into the pot? What happens when he calls? Do you fire again on the turn? 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 a board full of over cards,it’s still tough to bet even though statistically your opponent will have missed as well?

Sure you had right odds preflop here, but you are assuming you can get to showdown as well. But when everyone has a lot of chips you can’t do it. You are going to have to play 3 more streets of poker before you get to showdown.

Concurrently, this also creates the 2nd problem. 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. It also means when you don’t make a big hand, you will lose more than your fair share because the player in position will bet you off marginal hands with a worse hand himself.

If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. I am only ever looking at implied odds.. i.e. what is the size of my chip stack and my opponents chip stack. If we are talking about five percent or less of my stack, I am calling with a LOT of cards. If they have AA, and I have 53s, all the better. I want them to have AA when I am playing 53s for a raise. 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.

I might have 56s and be up against AK. 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. You can play a pair here by checking and calling, and by doing somay give you more information about your opponent’s hand.

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. Now he has physical tells to work with, and, as mentioned, he is Gus Hansen. There are no person to person tells and we can’t play like Gus. Importantly also, our opponents are not Gus’ opponents. Whether you are up against people who are capable of folding strong hands or whether they just can’t surrender TPGK is an important distinction.

So for what its worth, I’d recommend not falling too much in love with pre flop pot odds in deep stack situations. Hey, you may play the hand anyway, but look at it from an implied stand point, not just pot odds. 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.

Tags: Ace, bet, Blinds, Bottom Pair, cards, Cbet, Chips, Continuation, Hard Decisions, Implied Odds, Online Poker, Opponent, Pairs, playing out of positiion, poker tournament strategy, Pot, Rags, Stacks, Stage Play, Threes

by PokerWriter on May 20th, 2009 | RSS | trackback