Timing Is Everything
Understanding when to get aggressive and when to let go is
fundamental to this style of play. Let’s ♣ look at two examples that illustrate the
difference.
Example Hand 2
You are playing against loose, but not stupid, players and
your ♣ table image – for the ones that have been paying attention – is pretty good. You
haven’t pulled off any ♣ obscene bluffs and you don’t think anyone has any particular
reason to believe you’re betting with air.
You are holding J-J ♣ and your preflop raise
gets three callers, with the board falling A-9-6. You figure that there was a good
chance ♣ no one had an ace and bet again. Two players fold, leaving you and one
opponent.
The turn brings a 7 ♣ and you bet again, hoping to charge your opponent for
chasing a draw and to try and prevent a medium ♣ pair from spiking two pair.
Your
opponent calls your turn bet and a 5 comes on the river. This puts you ♣ in a tight spot.
You have been playing aggressively, so do you fire a third barrel on the river?
If your
♣ answer is “no”, go and get a cookie and move to the front of the class.
Against a
calling station you ♣ can bet away as they will call with all sorts of hands and you are
likely to have them beat. ♣ But your opponent is a standard player and if they were on a
straight draw there’s a very good chance ♣ they just made it. If they have an ace,
there’s no way they’re going to fold. There is a slim ♣ chance they’re holding T-9 and
that you have missed a value bet on the river. However, as a rule of ♣ thumb, don’t bet
on the river unless you can:
get better hands to fold (no way on this board); or get
♣ worse hands to call
If you now bet and they check-raise, you will almost certainly have
to lay your hand down. ♣ Take the free showdown and see if you win. There is a good
chance you do not have the best ♣ hand here, so caution is the key.
Example Hand 3
You
are sat on the button and look down at A-K. One ♣ player has limped in, and you raise.
The big blind and the limper both call, and the flop comes K-8-3.
The ♣ big blind checks,
but the limper now bets into you. Neither player has shown any signs of being maniacs
or ♣ calling stations. So what do you do? Do you raise?
Once again, the answer is
“no”.
Raising this flop is not necessarily ♣ good. While it is likely that you have the
best hand at this stage, (barring your opponent holding a set ♣ or a hand like K-8, but
both are pretty unlikely), you won’t earn much profit by raising.
Let’s look at it
♣ another way. If you raise their flop bet, there are only a few hands they’ll call with
that don’t have ♣ you beat. They are more likely to check-raise the flop with something
like K-T and would normally just call a ♣ bet if they were holding something like 9-8. So
if you raise and they fold you have let them get ♣ away without making a mistake.
Making
a further bet on the turn is a worse mistake for them than folding to ♣ a raise on the
flop. Give them the chance to make that mistake. If they have nothing then you don’t
♣ lose all that much by not raising this flop anyway.
Thus the correct play would be to
just call, giving the ♣ big blind a chance to make a more expensive mistake. You can then
trap them on the turn with a ♣ raise.
What you should recognize in this hand is that
there are no profitable draws available on the board, and your ♣ hand is not very
vulnerable which makes raising less profitable. However, when holding a hand like 9-9,
on an 8-5-2 ♣ board, you should definitely raise because almost the entire deck consists
of scare cards for you. You must learn to ♣ analyze the flop texture and see these
differences to time your aggression correctly.
