All-in online

When playing table stakes, you may not borrow or reach into your pocket during a hand. You may only bet, call, or raise with the chips/cash that you have in front of you. If you run out of chips during a hand, a side pot is created for others still involved in the hand. A byproduct of table stakes is the exciting all-in play. You may have seen Daniel Negreanu toss several $50,000 bricks of cash into the pot and announce: ‘I’m all-in’, during GSN’s High Stakes Poker telecasts.

Phil Laak has been known to sloppily push all his chips forward and then tie his hooded sweatshirt tight to prevent a tell. These professionals are moving all-in to pressure opponents or induce them to gamble. When you move in, two good things can happen, and only one bad thing can occur.

Comparing all-in plays during no-limit tournaments and no-limit cash games starts with a basic supposition. When involved in tournaments, players push in far more often, especially pre-flop, because the escalating blinds often create large blind-to-stack size ratios.

When playing cash games, the blinds are stationary and relatively small when compared to an average stack at the table. In addition, when you are in a cash game, you can buy more chips when your stack size gets tiny; thus you can regulate your stack size-to-blind ratio. As a simple rule of thumb, if you are a tournament player breaking into cash games, I’d recommend you play these ring games as you would play during the first few rounds of tournaments where stack sizes are deep compared to the blinds.

Online tales

Since the all-in play is almost always pivotal in cash games, it deserves much consideration. In our last issue, with the assistance of guest contributor Alphonse Mekalainas, a top no-limit cash game player, we examined several cash game strategies. In this article we’ll delve into several additional concepts, using my own online experience. As both a no-limit hold’em online participant and a Las Vegas casino regular, I find that there are general, major differences.

Online players act quicker, bluff more, have a propensity to move allin earlier in a hand and are more prone to calling an allin bet. These traits are especially evident at lower limits such as $1/$2 blinds.

Perhaps it is because online competitors are not touching real money or even chips. With these features in mind, I tend to play more of a trapping game online, while more of a lead bettor game in casinos. Of course, I modify these general strategies based on the individual player composition and relative chip stack sizes.

Playing along

Let’s take a look at three hands I played recently in a nine-handed, no-limit hold’em online game. The blinds in this game were $3/$6. Observing the no-limit hold’em lobby before playing is something I recommend. When I began to play, eight $3/$6 games were in action. The fastest table was averaging 111 hands per hour; the range was between 78 and 111 hands per hour. The mean pot size at the eight tables was approximately $100 with a high of $168 and a low of $54. While all this information is valuable, it’s the ‘Plrs/Flop’ column that greatly influences my table selection decision. This statistic tells me how many players, on average, are seeing the flop. I adhere to ‘the more the merrier’ philosophy, thus I picked the game where 27% of the players were in for the flop.

I don’t recommend going overboard on this helpful information because the numbers jump around quickly. This tells me the sampling base is small and players who influenced the history of the numbers may have moved to other pastures. I bought in for $500 (the minimum buy-in was $120 and the maximum $600).

HAND NO. 1 After monitoring the action for 20 minutes (35 hands) while I was on the waiting list, I had an early read on several of the players. Finally, I was seated to the left of an aggressive player, with the handle of ‘McShove’, who owned the biggest stack ($2,817). The smallest stack was $132. Since McShove started with a maximum of $600, I assumed he was aggressive and action oriented. I picked up Q-Q in early position. After McShove folded, I made it $24 to go. This was the standard opening raise at the table. After two more players folded, a solid opponent who was sitting behind $155 raised to $75.

Everyone folded to me. Should I move all-in or simply call? I chose to call. My opponent had $81 remaining, thus if I went all-in, his calling odds would have been 3/1 ($80 to win $240). I was certain he would call my re-raise. But, if I smooth-called and then pushed in on the flop, he would be forced to make a decision – and perhaps a very difficult one at that. Let’s give him A-K and assume he misses the flop (as he will do approximately two out of three times). He is now staring at a threesuited flop of 9-6-2 and a $80 bet. He believes he has six outs assuming I haven’t landed a set (in reality, he is a 3/1 underdog after the flop). He may release his hand, which allows me to escape risk and pick up the $240.

My strategy has given my opponent a chance to make a mistake. Forcing opponents to make decisions where they can err is part of a strong player’s strategy storehouse. Don’t reflexively move all-in when facing a short-stacked adversary without weighing up the pros and cons first.

HAND NO. 2 It seemed like I was picking up my good hands in early position all day. Now under the gun, I looked at A-K offsuit. I clicked $24 into the pot. An opponent in the cut-off position showing $149 took an inordinate amount of time and finally raised to $70. Everyone folded to me. I sat behind $453 at the time. Should I fold, call or raise all-in – effectively putting my adversary at risk for his remaining $79?

I decided to move all-in. Why did I adopt a different strategy from that in hand No. 1 where I just called a raise with a hand of similar strength? Because A-K is a drawing hand and Q-Q is a made hand. When holding A-K – if the flop comes with rags – I would be vulnerable because I am without a pair and acting out of position. Raising all-in removes my position dilemma and eliminates the possibility that I will be bluffed off the hand on the flop. Finally, this player had shown that he was capable of re-raising with marginal hands, thus he might have a weaker Ace or K-Q. So, folding was not a logical option; he had pocket 4s and won when no Ace or King hit the board.

HAND NO. 3 In this scenario, a player under the handle of ‘Janni’ raised three times the big blind (to $24) after two players had limped. That sent up a flag. While raising three times the blind into an unopened pot is a standard raise, you should add to your raise when one or more players have simply called the blind ahead of your action. In this case, I would have raised to $36 (increasing by one big blind for each caller).

Since Janni had been playing a decent game prior to this basic strategy departure, I assumed he/she wanted to encourage action with a drawing hand such as K-Q suited or that he/she might have been holding a small pair such as 6-6, and would either jam if he/she flopped a set or fold if it was missed (you will flop a set 11.76% of the time). Both hands play well against many players. Conversely, if Janni had been dealt a pocket pair, such as Q-Q, I believe he/she would have raised more than three times the blind.

We’ll never know Janni’s holding because he/she folded on the turn after being check-raised when the flop came J-2-2. The lesson here is that when a good player diverges from good play, look to gain information on what they are likely to be holding by thinking along with them. Another read you will often get is when a player makes a huge re-raise pre-flop.

Typically, if I raise to $24 and a player re-raises all-in for something like $150, I will put him on a medium pair or A-Q. Both are holdings that he would deploy a ‘closeout bet’ to win uncontested.