Beating Low Stakes Limit Hold'em
I realize that there are many books out there on beating low limit hold’em, but as you may notice, in the intro to most of them, it mentions that although following the directions in the book will most likely allow you to win at the game, there are ways to win even MORE big-bets-per-hour at it using slightly more complex strategies, which they usually don’t go into.
Some no-limit hold’em players make consistent and large sums of money even though they are not that great at calculating odds, or doing much math when they play. You might not believe this, but it is true. How can this be? No limit hold’em is a mixture of math and psychology/observation. If you are good enough at one, it can actually more than make up for the other in many cases. Clearly it is much better to be good at both, but being great at one can actually be enough to be a winning player. That is no-limit holdem. That is not what we are discussing today. We are discussing LIMIT holdem. It is very very important that you get this through your head, as it is probably the most serious problem that a lot of players have when they try switching from no limit to limit. Limit holdem is NOT no-limit holdem, so do NOT try to play them with the same mindset, or the same strategies.
Limit holdem has many different levels of stakes to choose from. Online you can find games as small as $.01 $.02, and in live casinos you can usually find games as low as $2 $4, but the stakes can go way up high, online up to around $150 $300, and in live casinos… well lets just say they can be VERY high. The point is this. You can play any stakes you want, but this article is dealing with LOW stakes holdem, mainly $3 $6 and below, and at these stakes the game is nearly ENTIRELY mathematical. Psychology and observation will help you a bit, but at least 90% of you income will be off of the horrendous mistakes that your opponents will be making, not off the great reads or observations you will be making off them. That is why this article will be on the math/statistics based portion of limit holdem. You can ask Mike Caro to teach you the rest. Also, although it is math, and statistics based, you will not see any math in the article. It is implied. I am assuming you know how to calculate pot odds, and that you can trust me when I say something like “according to statistics you need such and such a hand to have the best hand on the flop on average”.
Limit hold’em is a game of matching your cards to the situation you are in. What do I mean by this? Different hands are better at different things. Some hands do well only when a lot of people are going to see a flop with you, but nobody has raised, and other hands are going to be better when almost nobody is in the hand with you, and YOU are the one who raised. Some hands are not good in any situation. Some hands are good in nearly any situation. The key is learning what hands match well to which situations. So how do we determine this? I am about to tell you.
According to math and probability, one can figure out what the average winning hand is given various amounts of people seeing a flop. For example, when only two people see a flop, just having one of your two hole cards match ANY of cards on the board is going to mean that STATISTICALLY speaking, you most likely hold the better hand. That means bottom pair… yes… I am serious… and no I did not just tell you to raise reraise and then reraise again with bottom pair against one opponent. However, it is important to note that while bottom pair is a statistical winning flop against one opponent, top pair top kicker, or even an overpair to the board is NOT a statistically best hand on the flop against 7 or 8 opponents. Two pair is. This means that if you hold pocket aces in your hand, and the flop is queen ten 5 of three different suits (a very safe looking flop) you are mathematically NOT supposed to be holding the best hand on that flop on average. Not because you are unlucky, and deserve to lose with your aces, but because when you have 7 or 8 opponents, it is really just on AVERAGE not going to be the best hand on the flop. So let’s review what we just learned. Against 8 random opponents with unknown pocket cards, you are most likely NOT holding the best hand on the flop if you have an overpair to the board, but against 1 opponent you ARE most likely holding the best hand with a mere bottom pair. It is very important that you understand what kinds of strengths of hands you need in relation to the number of players who saw a hand, because this will play a HUGE role in what hands you will pick to play before the flop.
Now that you understand that the more people there are in a hand, the stronger your hand needs to be to be an expected winner, we will discuss how you will go about playing hands that will most often give you a hand that you need in order to have the best hand at the table the most often. Here is what we will do. Instead of JUST trying to barely have the minimum statistical best hand for the situation, like bottom pair against one opponent, or two pair against a bunch of opponents, we will instead make it more fun. We’ll ensure our chances of having the best have even further by playing hands that will either flop a much stronger hand than the minimum required to beat the statistical average top hand of the flop, or if the chance of having the top hand is low (like when a lot of people see the flop) at least a hand that gives the best chance at a draw to a hand that will beat the statistical best hand. Here is what we’ll do:
1-3 opponents: We want to have a hand that is very likely to make top pair top kicker, or if its just one opponent, just a hand that is likely to make top pair, and good but not top kicker will be acceptable. What hands do we want? It depends on how loose or tight your table is, but at a loose table, you’ll want to have something like A 10, A J, A Q, A K, K Q, K J, K 10, A A, K K, Q Q, or J J, in a situation against one to three opponents. At a tighter table you will only want something more along the lines of either A K, A A, or K K. The idea is this. At a loose table, making top pair and a solid kicker will earn you a LOT of money over time when you have between 1 and 3 opponents, because they are loose, and they will pay you off with whatever they catch nearly every time, and what they catch will normally be worse that what you catch, since you are going to be catching at minimum top pair good kicker, and simply folding any time you don’t. Every once in a while they will have you outkicked, or simply hit a monster flop, or draw out on you, but in the long run, having top pair good kicker against 1 to 3 loose opponents will net you a lot of money. This is why you will only play hands that are likely to hit top pair good kicker (or an overpair to the board), and that is why I told you to play the hands that I mentioned above. If you look at them, EITHER card in all of those hands has a very good chance of being the top card on the board if it hits, so unlike king 2, where only ONE of the two cards has a good chance of making top pair on the board, a hand like King Queen has two different cards that are likely to hit the top pair on the board, plus the other card is a big card as well, meaning you will outkick you opponents the vast majority of the time when you hit your pair. At a tight table, or a table where your opponents are strong players, you cannot really play A Q, A J, A 10, K Q, K J, K 10, because the times when you plow your way to the river and then some with you top pair but merely good kicker only to find yourself staring at their top pair top kicker will neutralize all the profit you are making off the dolts who paid you off with hands weaker than top pair good kicker. This is why it is much better to play at a loose table, with a bunch of bad players than one with a bunch of tight good players. In the one with bad players, they will always pay you off with inferior hands to you top pair good kicker in this situation, as well as hands that beat your hand, but the vast majority of the time your top pair good kicker against 1 to 3 opponents will be the best hand, so you will MAKE money over time. Whereas against good tight opponents, you will still have the best hand on the flop the majority of the time in this situation, but the problem is that they wont pay your off when you have them beat, they will only pay up when THEY have YOU beat, so it doesn’t work as well. Okay well that is the idea behind the strategies you should use when you are seeing a flop with 3 or less opponents.
Now if you have played low limit holdem for any reasonable amount of time you probably already know that at most tables you wont be seeing a flop with between 1 and 3 opponents, you will instead be seeing a flop with between 4 and 8 opponents, probably around 6 opponents on average. That is why this section is the most important section of the entire article, since it deals with both by far the most common situation in low stakes limit holdem, but also often the most profitable situations in low stakes limit holdem.
Just as before, we want to have a hand on the flop that, given the number of people who saw the flop with us, is likely to by far be the best hand on AVERAGE. In this case that is not going to be so easy to do like it was before. Against only a couple opponents, it was easy. Pick a couple of big cards. See a flop, and if you hit one of them, you will have the best hand on that flop the majority of the time. When you have more like 6 opponents, instead of just 1 or 2 opponents, it gets trickier, because you will want to have a lot better than just top pair good kicker. Instead you will want either a set, a straight or a flush, or better. You might be shocked that I want you to have such a strong hand. Why not just two pair? You remember earlier I said that on the flop having two pair is enough to statistically have the best hand even with a bunch of opponents. Well that is true, but there are two problems. The first is that we don’t want to JUST have a hand that is the bare minimum best hand on the flop (just like how against 1 to 3 opponents we didn’t just want middle pair, even though that statistically might have been right around what is expected to be needed, we wanted better, we wanted top pair good kicker, to beat the average best hand requirement by a cushy margin), we want to have a hand that beats the minimum average best hand given then number of opponents by quite a bit. This way we wont be putting in raises and reraises with hands that are just barely probably the best hand but maybe not. The second and more important reason why I want you to have at LEAST a set on the flop, or a draw to the straight or the flush is that although two pair might have been the best hand statistically speaking on the flop, your opponents are NOT immune to picking up DRAWS on that flop, so you want a hand that can usually survive not just the flop, but also the turn and the river. This is why you want to play hands that are most likely to give you a set, or a straight draw, or a flush draw, or a straight or a flush on the flop, and of course if you only have 4 opponents, you will need a bit less of a hand than if you have 8 opponents, for instance against 4 opponents, any straight or flush where you are using both of your two hole cards to complete the straight or flush is a very very strong hand, but against 8 opponents, you will instead want to simply have the nuts, or a draw to it, rather than a non-nut straight or flush. Okay so now lets look at some of the hands we want for this situation. We want any pocket pair, and suited connector, any suited ace, and if the table is especially passive preflop (rarely any raises preflop) even suited gapped connectors. The idea is that these hands are the ones that are the most likely to give you a set or a flush or a straight or a draw to a straight or to a flush, and those are the types of hands we want to make, so that is why these are the starting hands we want to play. Now how do we want to play these hands? Well we want to play all of them the same way preflop, in the exact opposite fashion of the hands we played against 1 to 3 opponents.
We want to play them as CHEAPLY as possible preflop. Unlike the big cards we were playing against 1 to 3 opponents where we would raise preflop, knowing that there was a good (roughly 1 in 3) chance that we would hit the requirement of top pair good kicker in order to go on with the hand, and thus not fear putting in some added money before the unknown flop, since the flop would be appetizing a good portion of the time, we are now playing cards that have only a slim chance of making the required strength to fill our appetites. For example hitting a set or better on the flop only happens about once in 8.5 flops seen, and hitting a draw to a straight or to a flush also only happens pretty rarely, so this is why we do NOT want to have the flop be as expensive as possible before we know what it looks like, instead we want it to be as cheap as possible. So what we want to do is simply call before the flop with any of the hands I mentioned above, (the pocket pairs, suited connectors, suited aces, and suited gapped connectors) and fold everything else. Yes that means I’m telling you to play aces and kings the same way you play 2s and 3s. This is because you will be folding every time you don’t hit your set or flush or straight draw or better on the flop, even if you have top pair good kicker, or an overpair to the board. Those hands are simply not strong enough against such a large number of opponents.
Now a lot of books you may have read talked a lot about “position,” so you are probably wondering when I would get to that subject. Well it turns out that you only really need to worry about position if you table is aggressive before the flop. If your tables rarely ever raises before the flop, you do not need to worry about folding 7 8 suited in early position, and only playing it in late position, because it is unlikely that anyone will raise between the time that you limp in and the time that the big blind double taps his index finger on the felt. At a table where this is a siginificant amount of raising before the flop, position will matter, because you do not know whether it will be raised after you limp in, so the more opponents there are to act after you, the more likely it is that someone will raise after you limp in, and the more strongly you are going to have to consider folding the marginal hands that you want to play against a large number of opponents, like suited gapped connectors and such. It is twice as “good” to see a flop for one bet than for two with one of these flimsy yet dangerous hands, that may flop a monster or draw to one, because they rarely do it, so when it costs twice as much to see if they do or not, that is just quite simply twice as bad as if it weren’t raised. Think of it this way… say you were driving up to a bridge to cross a canyon, but there was a big curtain in front of you, so you couldn’t see if the bridge was there or not. Now say that there was a man operating the curtain and he would let you get out of your car and peek around the curtain to see if the bridge was there or not. If it is there, you get to cross the canyon. If it isn’t you obviously don’t. And it is very important that you know whether it is there or not, because if it isn’t and you try to cross anyway, you will undoubtedly die. Now say you can either choose to pay 5 dollars or 10 dollars to peek across the curtain, which would you rather pay? 5 obviously!!! That is essentially what is going on when you have these marginal hands that you are looking to hit a big flop with against a bunch of opponents. You are simply paying a FEE preflop and you want it to be as small as possible. So when you have pocket aces in the dealer position, and everybody at the table calls before it gets to you, DON’T raise, just call and see the flop, and unless you hit your set or better on that flop, you have to fold. If your table is aggressive preflop, you’ll need to be folding most of the hands that I want you to play in hands that have lots of opponents when you are in early and middle position, because too often you will be double or triple charged to see that flop when it gets raised or raised and reraised after you limp in. This is too hefty a price to pay with most of the flimsy hands, so you need to just assume the worst, and fold in preparation when you don’t KNOW what is going to happen. When the table plays really passive preflop, its as if you do KNOW what is going to happen even when you don’t literally because you are I early position, because based on what you have seen for the last hour, given that there has only been like 1 or 2 raises total, you can just assume it wont be raised, and then limp with any of the hands I mentioned above. This explanation of position that I just gave was probably pretty far off from what you thought I would say. You probably thought I would mainly mention the importance of position as far as how it affects the POSTFLOP rather than the preflop, if you are a no limit player. Well in no limit it is true that most of the importance of position is postflop, but in low stakes holdem, post flop is purely mechanical. If you flop a hand that is less than what I said you’d need to have given the number of opponents who saw the flop with you, you fold. If you flop a draw to a required hand, you go with it if you have the odds to call (if you don’t know how to calculate pot odds, you can look it up in any of the major limit holdem books, it is very simple) and fold it if you don’t. And if you make a great but beatable hand, you try to make it as expensive as possible to get outdrawn on as you work your way to the river, and if you have a great and ubeatable hand you try to get as many chips as possible into the pot out of your opponents by the river as humanly possible. And that is it. Position just isn’t nearly as important in limit after the flop, because you pretty much know what you are trying to do at any given time, and if you are playing low stakes limit, which is what we are discussing, you also know more or less what your opponents are going to do (call, bet, raise…. Etc based on what you have seen… unlike no limit where you may know he will raise you, but you don’t know if he’ll raise you 10 chips, or 10,000 chips, where position can be very important postflop).
Okay so lets sum it up. In low stakes hold’em we want to look at how many players we are going to be in the hand with, and then play a hand that matches this number of opponents. We want big cards that are likely to make top pair when playing against a small number of opponents, and we want cards that are likely to make straights, or flushes, or draws to them on the flop when we are going to have a lot of opponents. We also want to pick tables where there is minimal preflop raising, and maximal players per hand, so that we can virtually ignore position, knowing that when we limp in from early position with 5 7 of hearts, there is almost certainly not going to be an ugly raise to deal with, and we will most likely get a nice juicy number of opponents to play with post flop, in case we actually hit our big draw. We want to stay away from tables that are aggressive preflop, if we can choose ones that are more passive, because we are giving up profit when we sit at tables where we need to fold almost everything, due to being afraid that we might get our marginal hands raised after we limp in from early or middle position. We want to always have the odds, or at least the implied odds to chase our flush and straight draws post flop. And lastly, after we make tens of thousands of dollars winning at low limit holdem after reading this article we want to buy a car OTHER than a Ford. -Merry Winter, James
