7/27/2019 Preflop Limit Holdem - An Important Balancing Act.doc

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Preflop Limit Holdem: An Important Balancing Act

by Ian J

In high stakes poker, players often find themselves playing against the same smallgroup of players on a day to day or week to week basis. This poses some interesting

problems when trying to implement a solid strategy to follow. The main problem isthat you must balance your play, or else youre going to be like an open book to your

smart and experienced opponents. Many people havent considered the importance

of balancing with regards to their overall strategy. They have a certain way that theyplay a given hand and they stick to that plan.

When it comes to limit holdem, my view of balance involves a strategy that is geared

towards not allowing others to narrow your hand range greatly based on a singleaction you make in a hand. A good example of this would be playing in the BB

against a button raise. Many solid, winning, tight aggressive players make veryblatant errors in their play of the BB against the button raise. The error isnt so much

fundamental, but more lacking in balance. Their general strategy is to call with a

high percentage of their hands, and three bet the really good ones. For instance, ifthey three bet you from the big blind, you can pretty much narrow their hand rangeimmediately down to A8+, 55+ and KJ+. That seems like a fairly accurate range for

the player Im trying to describe. Youre probably thinking, that seems fine, thosehands are all ahead of the buttons range, so why not three bet and get the money in

while I rate to have the best hand? Well sure, that makes some sense. However,now youre playing against someone who is an aggressive player, a good hand

reader, has position on you, and now youve told him about where you stand in thehand. This is a very bad thing.

To counteract this obvious problem, I had a bit of an epiphany. What if I just called

in the big blind against a button raise every single time I wanted to play the hand?Now, not only does the button not know what you have, but hes very likely to give

you excessive action after the flop when you have a strong hand. Now when you

checkraise a given flop, the player on the button cant really narrow down what youhave that much based on the fact that you only called preflop. If its in the back of

his head that you could have a hand like JJ or AQ right now, youve won a smallbattle.

Playing in the small blind against a button raiser is another situation that Ivethought about and discussed extensively. Ive had some good discussion with a few

expert limit holdem players about the merits of calling a button raise while in the SBand what hands to do it with. Since I advocate balancing my play, I contended that

you should sometimes call with A8, sometimes JT, and other times 67s. The norm ifyoud like to call it that is to fold the 76, call the JT, and three bet the A8. This is not

to say that I never three bet the A8 because its my standard play with that hand.However, if they can know for sure that when youve called in the small blind and

checkraised an A 7 3 flop with two suits that you dont have the ace, the button isthen at a huge advantage.

Im not really sure when this idea became so clear to me. Back in the hey day of

online limit holdem (read: Party 15/30 up to 100/200), I would play with such anobvious strategy that Im surprised I ever made a nickel. If I raised in early position

and got three bet, I would cap JJ+ and AK religiously when heads up. By doing this, I

7/27/2019 Preflop Limit Holdem - An Important Balancing Act.doc

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was making it very easy on my opposition because I was essentially telling themwhat I had. If they were paying enough attention, they could just correctly fold a

hand like AQ instantly if the flop came 552 with two suits and I had four bet and betthe flop. If I were just calling with my whole hand range in this spot, they would feel

much more inclined when I checkraised them on the flop to continue and hope that Ihad a flush draw or 88 when really I could have them drawing slim or dead. The

extra value you make up in these situations by not exposing your hand strengthwhen heads up and out of position is enormous.

On the other hand, you can use another strategy to balance your big blind playagainst a button raiser. That is, you could start three betting with a much wider hand

range than just the premiums. This would just involve mixing in a bunch of three

bets with hands like 86s, Q9, K3s etc. I have only one issue with utilizing thisstrategy. I was talking to one of the best limit holdem players Ive ever played

against one day and I mentioned how I felt like a sissy when I played him out ofposition because I ended up checking and calling a lot because I never knew where I

was at against him. He said to me, (paraphrased), I dont think its ever a mistake

to play smaller than normal pots out of position against good players. I got tothinking about that and it seemed to make a lot of sense to me. Therefore, I believe

that just calling the overwhelming majority of the time in the big blind is superior tothree betting a larger range. By three betting a larger range youre often heads up

and firing away with no hand out of position against a good player. This concept alsoapplies to my thoughts on calling from the small blind with some hands rather than

three betting any hand youre going to play.

One instance I can recall from a recent session where I put the concept of not

exposing hand strength when heads up and out of position to good use came in a$200/$400 game on Pokerstars. I was the small blind with AKo in a four handed

game and the first two players passed to me. I raised and the big blind three bet me.Many people would cap this hand right here, I elected to just call. The flop was AT3

rainbow and I checkraised him. He called and raised me on the turn when an 8

came. I was now able to three bet him and bet the river, he called both bets, and Ibeat his AJ. If I 4 bet preflop, its likely that he would raise the flop, I would threebet and he would call me down, profiting me 5.5 big bets. By calling preflop and

getting to put three bets in on the turn, I was able to make 6.5 big bets on the hand.This was obviously a perfect situation for me, but its the type of small edge you

have to push to be as successful as possible in poker.

In closing, balancing is an often overlooked but very important aspect of limit

holdem. By balancing your play, others will have much more trouble playing againstyou because you will make it that much harder for them to deduce what you have in

a given hand. They can never know which flop textures would be favorable for youwhen you just call their button raises from the big blind. This is because you could

have AK, TT, K5, T9, 56, or any hand in between. Once you get to the point whereyoure playing high stakes and seeing the same competition all the time, keeping

your opponents guessing and causing them to make mistakes against you shouldbecome a key part of your strategy.