Poker Articles

continued from Part 1


The Light 4-Bet

How it’s used: You open raise with a medium or weak strength hand. Someone behind you re-raises, and you shove all in while praying to your personal God that you aren’t called.

Current utility: Massive live and online, but with the caveat that it needs to be done with considerable selectiveness. If you just start 4-betting light all day every day you are going to wind up being a massive spew. However, this is a play that needs to be in your arsenal in high stakes MTTs for the sake of having a balanced range. Otherwise every time you 4-bet all in pre flop your opponents will know you have a range of only quality holdings and can start adjusting their calling range accordingly. This play’s effectiveness online and live is often for different reasons. Online most of this plays effectiveness comes from the fact that many players are capable of 3-betting light these days, and in order to prevent yourself from getting run over out of position pre flop you occasionally need to put a foot in someone’s ass with the light 4-bet. In live poker, this plays effectiveness is more a result of players making pre flop 3 bets without a real plan for when they are 4-bet, and then talking themselves into folding an overly tight range to your shove. An example I have comes from a 4 bet that actually didn’t work during the Aviation Club's €10k Euro buy-in event last summer.

A player on my left who was a French guy was 3-betting me quite frequently, especially since I was pounding the two overly tight players on his left. During one hand I open raised 98o on the button to about 5000 and he 3-bet me to about 18,000 out of the small blind. I had about 64,000 in my stack and moved all-in on him (it’s not perfect math-wise, as for 4-betting light I prefer to have at least four times a person’s raise size in my stack, but in live poker you can shave it a little) and the player in the SB went into the tank for several minutes, seemed to consider folding, then reluctantly called with AQ. Although this 4-bet didn’t work the point is still relevant, many players still make 3-bets just hoping you’ll either fold or you’ll flat call and the hand will play out in some easy and straight forward manner post flop, not really expecting the 4-bet. When you do 4-bet, they won’t be sure if you’re capable of making light 4-bets, and they’ll often talk themselves into folds with hands that should be a snap call. For anyone whose unsure, if you are in the French players seat you should SNAP CALL the AQ, smash it over on the table, then yell, “Your dead pal!”

The Post-flop Min-raise for Value with a Huge Hand

How it’s used: You’ve got a massive hand that you really want value from. Your opponent makes a bet and you raise the minimum to keep him paying off.

Current utility: Highly opponent dependant, but its use is often mediocre compared to other options. The problem with min raising in a lot of situations is that it alerts your opponent that something is wrong, and since the move is so rarely used as a bluff (especially on the turn and river) people will often quickly give you credit for the big hand that you have. There are some situations against loose opponents who might get away if you make a larger raise where the move becomes more appropriate, but for the most part I’d recommend going with a standard sized raise in most instances. One situation I do often like to use the min raise is when you get the river in a live hand where you likely have the best hand and want to get more value, but know your opponent is very weak and won’t pay off a big raise and also won’t re-shove unless he has a huge hand. An example would look like:

Your stack: 10,000, Big blinds stack: 10,000.
Blinds 100/200.
You hold 54 on the hijack.
Big blind is a weak and loose player not capable of advanced bluffs.
Pre-flop: Folds to you on the HJ, you raise to 600, folds to the BB, BB calls.
Flop: K T 5 rainbow (Pot 1300)
BB checks, you bet 800, BB calls.
Turn: 9 (Pot 2900)
BB checks, you check behind.
River: 4 (Pot 2900)
BB bets 1200.

Here’s a spot where min raising to 2400 with the intention of folding to a reraise might be best. Because of the stack sizes and the likely hands that your opponent calls your raise with, making a very small raise here may be optimal against many opponents as they will likely still call you with KQ/KJ/AK but on the times he comes over the top you can feel very confident he has the best hand. If you raise his bet to a normal amount of like 3500-4000 you commit a much larger portion of your stack, put yourself in a gross spot when he shoves, and KJ/KQ/AK will talk themselves into a fold much more often.

Stealing UTG

How it’s used: You open with a mediocre hand UTG in a spot where you expect to get considerable respect and often have it folded around.

Current effectiveness: Moderate and highly table dependant. The play has lost a lot of it’s utility since it’s heyday around 2006 when very few players would suspect you ever had anything but a very big hand when raising UTG. Now everyone at HSMTT’s is aware that thinking players are capable of this, and in many cases online guys shove so wide pre that opening up too loose in early position can wind up being a spew. However, it’s still a play worth having in your arsenal on tables with thinking players in order to help balance your range, but high use is not recommended. At live tournaments full of straight forward players you can use this play with decent frequency and expect it to work often, so long as you don’t have a very aggressive image or have a table full of stations that don’t care about what position you’re raising from.

That’s all for now at the moment, if you want to leave a comment on this article discussing other plays you want to see discussed please do. Thanks again to everyone who gave feedback on how to continue the series, I now have enough ideas for several more articles.

* This is Part 2 of 2 of Bond18's Poker Trends and Plays article.  Read Part 1

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Tony Bond18 Dunst is a PocketFives.com Triple Crown winner and a respected poker author.  This article is Part 22 of his Things it took me a while to learn series.  To read more articles from Bond18, visit his PocketFives profile page, our Poker Articles section, or his blogsite, www.tworags.com.

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