Defence on the Poker Felt

One tricky betting scenario is when you are able to entice your opponent to call or raise your bet.  Consider the scenario where most of the players at the table are evenly stacked and the blinds are at $15/30. You look down and see pocket 88’s and decide to raise from middle position.  You get called by the big blind who you think is riding high with an A-9.  The flop falls:  As, 8d and 3d.  What a flop!  Middle set, but you don’t want to give away the strength of your hand, so how do you bet to get the most out of your opponent?  You really want to try and make your hand look weaker than it actually is and there are a few ways to do this.  If you are acting first and your opponent isn’t overly-aggressive, you can make a relatively small bet, maybe half the pot, and hope that he calls.  Assuming he doesn’t raise, we can bet again on the turn or check and hope he takes the lead thinking his ace is good.  If he does raise on the flop, you should call and re-evaluate on the turn.

If your opponent is likely to lead out on his own, you should check your hand in the hopes that he bets for you.  Depending on how strong you think his hand is, you can either just call his bet to see the turn, then put in a raise of your own, in order to build the pot even more.  If your opponent is first to act and checks to you, bet your hand and hope for a call, but maybe a smarter play would be to not bet here and check behind him so your opponent  feels more confident about betting his ace on the turn.

Defensive betting is when you try to entice either a call or a fold from an opponent while preventing them from leading out or raising your hand.  Why bet defensively?  Usually you are making these kinds of bets when there is a draw, and you haven’t made your hand yet.  For example, let’s say you’ve loosened up your game and decide to play 7s-8s in middle position.  You get called by the button and now you are looking at a board of Ks, 10s and 5c.  You really have nothing more than a flush draw, and while checking here is okay, it may not be the best way to play it because you may be giving up some potential profit in the event that you hit.  Then, at the same time you are giving your opponent a chance to make a bet that may force you to fold your hand.  You may also want to bet here because 50-60% of the time, you are going to win the pot.  The trick to betting defensively is to find a number big enough to provoke either a call or a fold from your opponent, while keeping the bet cheap enough that it is not costing you too much to hit your draw.  Often times a bet of about 1/3 the pot is the right size bet to accomplish this goal.

Luck and the Loose Table

As you develop your skills and strategies by playing and practicing at the tables, you will find very quickly that a lot of money can be made at the tables that are considered “loose”.  In this article, we are going to try and explain how some loose games differ from others.

Before a discussion can begin regarding strategies, you should know that there are different types of loose games that you are likely to encounter.  The first game is called a loose/passive game.  In this situation you will find a lot of players who like to limp into the pot pre-flop.  Most players in these games will not raise before the flop without a solid starting hand.  Because there tends to be so many limpers in loose passive games, often you can enter the pot for very little money, which means that you can play loosely yourself since generally there is little fear that there will be an opponent that will raise behind you.  As a result, you will find yourself playing in a lot of multi-way pots.  These games often provide good opportunities to limp in early position with speculative hands like small pairs and suited Ace’s, where you are hoping to hit a set or make a flush, since your initial investment is minimal.

In a loose/aggressive game, you will find that players will be making a lot more pre-flop raises, often with a much wider hand range.  Since most pots are raised, you are less likely to have a lot of players seeing the flop in these kind of games.  Because there is more pre-flop raising in loose/aggressive games, you should be looking to play more high percentage hands like big pairs, AK, and AQ.  Playing speculative hands can also be profitable in these types of games, but only if you are in position.  Playing speculative hands out of position will often become too expensive to justify.

In either type of game you can expect to see a wide variety of hands at showdown which makes it harder to steal pots in loose games because an opponent is more likely to hit the flop, especially in a multi-way pot.  Don’t ever feel like you need to get caught up in the action or build a pot in a loose game.  It only takes a key hand or two to bring you some nice profits and turn things around.  In loose/aggressive games especially, your opponents will tend to overplay hands such as top pair which means that you will have the opportunity to sit back and trap them with your big hand.

How to Play the Turn

We’ve all heard someone say how their fate changed on the turn of a card.  One card here, one card there, a card away from a championship….in poker, sometimes the fate of your hand often changes with the turn card. 

The key to playing the turn is to understand when you want to shut down any further betting and knowing when to leave the betting open.  Closing the action simply means that your opponent can’t bet again on that round.  For example, if your opponent checks to you and you check behind him, then you’ve closed the action and you will both see the River card.  On the other hand, if your opponent checks to you and you bet out, the action is still open and you are giving your opponent a chance to call or raise you. Likewise if your opponent bets the turn and you call, you are closing the action, but if your opponent bets and you raise, you are leaving the action open, giving your opponent the opportunity to three-bet against you or maybe move all-in. 

The reason this is important is because many times you may be holding the best hand on the turn, but it’s not strong enough to withstand a raise or a re-raise from your opponent. This is often true if you’re holding something like top pair, which can be especially vulnerable.  If you only have one pair on the turn then opening up the action to your opponent is dangerous because if you get check-raised, you are most likely going to have to fold AND you may well be folding the best hand.

Here’s an example.  Let’s say you have KC and JH and the board is KS, 9D, 4C and the turn is 7H.  If your opponent checks to you, checking back isn’t bad because the board isn’t dangerous and giving your opponent a free card isn’t likely to hurt your hand.  In other words, it’s unlikely your opponent has a straight draw and the board isn’t textured to show a flush draw. However, betting here may cause you trouble if you already have your opponent beat. They are probably intending to do one of two things after you bet, fold or check/raise.  If your opponent folds, then your bet will earn you nothing, of course you do win the pot, but you don’t make any more money from the hand.  If your opponent decides to check/raise you, your original bet will have made you loose the entire pot, because you would probably fold KJ, which is even a worse outcome.

If you are up against a better hand than yours, then betting isn’t good either.  If you check,  then you lose absolutely no money on the turn, but if you bet, you lose the amount of money that you bet in addition to whatever money was already in the pot. Betting marginal hands can be costly on the turn and raising them can be profitable, because when you raise on the turn you are putting the pressure on your opponent. For example, you may raise with a 9-10 on a K-9-4-7 board and by raising you could potentially force your opponent to fold the K-J hand.  You can raise by either check/raising out of position or by just raising when you are in position.  Either way it is a very strong play because it makes it very hard for your opponent to call, even if they are holding a hand like KQ. 

So remember, raising on the Flop can often signal weakness, raising on the Turn will usually signal strength, which is why it is a more effective play. In short, closing the action on the turn with a marginal hand is generally a smart move.