Just a little background on who I am. I’ve been playing poker for a living for the past year and been playing online for the last 4 years. I’ve been playing cash games exclusively since November and have improved dramatically over this time period. I play approximately 100,000 hands a month. I mostly play between 2-4 and 5-10 NL 6-man cash games.

I haven’t written an article in awhile and kind of missed it. Writing an article on a specific hand helps me critique my own play and gives me a chance to receive feedback. Thinking about and critiquing my play has made me a much better player, and to improve and get better I need to continue to do this. <READMORE>

Probably one the toughest things to learn is when to 2nd barrel a good but not great hand. It can be very tough out of position against both good and bad players. Let's say we have KJ and raise from middle position (6 man table), and the button calls. The flop comes J94, and there is $30 in the pot. Both of us have a full stack of 100bb’s ($400) to start the hand.

Before we even make our bet in this situation, we need to know how we want to play this hand against THIS opponent. This opponent was a solid 2-4 multi-tabling regular. Our Pokertracker stats on him are as follows: 2000 hands we’ve played together, a 21% VPIP (percent of hands in which he voluntarily puts money in the pot), a 16 PFR% (pre flop raise percentage), and an overall aggression factor of 5. In my mind, all this adds up to a solid, aggressive TAG. So given his stats above, we determine his calling range to be any mid-small pairs, suited connectors (8-7 up to KQ), and suited 1-gapers (i.e. T 8 suited, Q T suited). In my mind, he would reraise all pocket pairs 99+, as well as AK, AQ, and possibly AJ and A10 suited.

So we now know what type of opponent we’re up against; back to the hand. With our top pair and solid kicker, we do our standard continuation bet of $25 into the $30 pot, and he calls. Immediately I’m thinking draw, KQ, KT, QT, T8, or hearts. Why wouldn’t he have a set here???? The reason is pretty simple--because his overall aggression factor is above average (I would say average for this game is about 3-3.5), he would be raising a set here probably 99% of the time. He knows he needs to raise this hand to shut out his any draws we might have. Even a strong hand like a set is very vulnerable to this type of flop. Some hands I eliminate from what he could have are big draws like QT or KT. These would be insta-raising hands for an aggressive player like our opponent.

So now the turn is the 6, a great card for us. No draws got there, and we can be comfortable that we still have the best hand. So now there is $90 in the pot. We still have approximately $350 behind us, as does our opponent.

Here is where we have to be comfortable in our reads. We have determined that we are still ahead in the hand, so we should bet this hand to price out draws. An 80-90% of pot bet here makes it a mistake for our opponent to call with his draw, so we bet $80 into the $90 pot, and he folds.

Notice that while it'd have been a mistake for him to call there, we still gave him the opportunity to make that mistake. If he were to show that he had A8, we would know him calling $80 here is +EV for us, given that he would only have 12 outs (9 hearts and 3 aces) with 1 card to come. Too many times here I see my opponent in this circumstance be very indecisive about betting this turn. The time bank runs down and they end up putting out a half-ass bet of $45, pricing in every draw in the world. Many players also have this notion, “I don’t want to build a pot with just one pair.” In certain circumstances this is true, but in this situation where we are 95% sure of our opponent’s range, we want to be the aggressor and be looking to take down the pot on the turn.

Now let’s look at the same hand against a very different opponent. Our Pokertracker stats on this new opponent are as follows: 700 hands we’ve played together, a 45% VPIP, a 5.5% PFR, and an overall aggression factor of 1.3. These stats in my mind would add up to a pretty bad player--a player that plays too many hands and does not raise enough preflop or on any other streets. These guys are great to play with because it’s really simple: when they raise, you fold.

So just like above, the flop is J94, and we have KJ. We use the same continuation bet of $25, and he calls. Similar to the above, we now have to put him on a range of hands. It is a little bit more difficult, because his range is so large compared to the 1st example. Because his preflop raise % is so low, we have to include hands like kk and qq into his possible range. We also have to include ANY suited cards. Players like these love to play any suited cards, including terrible hands like 9 4 suited and 8 2 suited. We probably can eliminate a set from his range of hands. 1.3 is a very low post flop aggression factor, but my experience with these players is that the 1 thing they will raise is a set. On a side note, if we were raised in this spot by this player, it would be an instamuck. With such a passive player, we’d have to put him on an overpair, a set, or 2 pair.

So he calls the $25 C-bet, the turn is the 6, and there is $90 in the pot. In opposition to the above hand where we were pretty sure the aggressive TAG was on a draw, against this player it's hard to have any idea what he's on, so it might be time to slow down. We can be pretty sure he does not have a set, but he could have KK, QQ, AJ, J6, 46, or 96. All these hands are way ahead of ours. In this case I like checking to our opponent, trying to keep the pot small. We obviously don’t want to build the pot if we are way behind in the hand. We check, and he checks behind, which is a welcome sight.

The river is a harmless 2, a great card. Now I am pretty sure we are ahead in the hand. He would have bet the turn with an overpair or 2 pair. The river 2 could have connected with his holdings, but it’s very doubtful. So now it’s time to go to value town!! We bet $60, which is not too big and not too small. He calls with 109, and we take down the $210 pot.

My point with this article is that you need to adjust to the players at your table and play every hand according to your reads. Buy pokertracker and PAHUD to help you with your reads, and you’ll see your profits increase more and more.

GL everyone at the tables,

Kevin
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