Make Money From Big Hands

Extracting maximum value is earning as much money as possible from hands where you have a positive expectation. Whenever you win a hand and fail to get the maximum reward possible, you are theoretically losing money.

Of course, this is not a precise science, so we have to judge how much money we can squeeze out of our opponent when we have the best hand without chasing him away or conversely, making it too cheap for him to continue, therefore losing value.

A very basic example is flopping top set on a 5-8-J rainbow flop. We could bet the minimum on every street and would very often get three streets of value, but would rarely win a decent pot with a very strong hand unless our opponent raised.

We could instead overbet each street, but most often we will see our opponent fold prematurely and we win a small pot. We need to find the middle ground that will extract the maximum value in the long run.

So, how do we go about deciding how much to bet and when? The following are some of the things we need to consider:

1 Hand strength compared to opponent’s range
Hand reading skills are the key to extracting maximum value. Only when we can confidently assign a range of hands, can we use this information to our advantage and be able to successfully win the maximum amount. By knowing which hands our opponents may have, we will know how much they are willing to pay, even if they are not confident of winning.

2 Opponent’s hand strength compared to our perceived range
We also need to try and work out not only what our opponent has, but also what our opponent is guessing that we have. We can then play on his expectations and exploit them. We need to think about what worse hands our opponent could have that he can call with, and how much he would be prepared to call based on the strength of his hand compared to his assumptions about ours.

3 Board Texture
This often tells us whether to speed up or slow down when we think we have the best hand. Obviously the way we play top set on an uncoordinated board will be completely different to the way we play top pair on a draw-heavy board. The board texture needs to be taken into consideration alongside all our other information.

4 Opponent’s playing style
Every playing style has an optimum counter style. When trying to extract value this may include betting big on every street with a top pair hand against a bad calling station, or slowing down against a good TAG with a strong hand in order to set up a river bet or in order to induce a bluff.

It may be more specific, for example if someone is three-betting then continuation-betting the pot with great regularity but often folding to a four-bet. Against this player we may want to just flat call with our A-A and let our opponent bet for us.

5 Position
It’s obviously much easier to extract value when playing in position as we have the luxury of our opponent acting before us post-flop. Extracting value is not easy though when out of position as we are often playing blind.

We may prefer to take a pot-controlling line with more marginal hands that we would be betting for maximum value with when in position. In other words, we may want to be playing a stronger range of hands for value when out of position compared to when in position.

6 Stack sizes
Sometimes, against short-stackers it’s easy to let them do your work for you. There’s just no need to think too much about maximum value as hands that progresses past the flop will often result in an all-in situation anyway.

When playing deep though it’s much tougher to get opponents to commit a lot of chips to the pot with a worse marginal hand. They have much more to potentially lose and this often creates unease in players and makes them play more conservatively.

7 Size of pot
Not only do we need to base our betting around the size of the current pot, but often we need a plan to get the pot size to where we want it. We may, for example, want to put enough money into the pot on the turn, which if called, will leave a three-quarter-pot shove on the river.

8 Our Table Image
Obviously, the looser our image the easier we will find it to extract value with our winning hands. Conversely, if our image is super-tight, we will find it much more difficult to get paid off. We need to be aware of our image and play in a way that takes advantage of it.

Extracting Value in Practice

Once everything is considered we can make an informed decision as to how we can play the hand optimally and win the biggest pot possible versus weaker hands. Let’s take a look at an example hand and then discuss some of the decisions afterwards:

Scenario

You are playing in a six-handed $1/$2 no-limit hold’em game. Everyone has a full stack. The player in the big blind has been fairly loose post-flop, calling down with marginal hands fairly frequently. You have only shown down legitimate hands so far in the session.

Pre-flop

You are in the cut-off with Qd-10d and open raise to $7. The big blind calls. A fairly standard raise from late position. We can’t yet assume too much about our opponent’s hand other than he probably doesn’t have complete junk

Flop Qc-10d-8c: (pot $15).

The big blind checks, you bet $12 and he calls. The flop contains a lot of draws so slow-play here is a no-no. His check-call suggests he has caught something but is not overly confident and may be trying to play a small pot with a marginal made hand and/or draw. We should also be aware that he may be trapping.

Turn 3c (pot $39).

The big blind checks, you bet $32 and he calls. We know that any flush draw hit but we can’t check here and give our opponent a free card as the board is now extremely draw heavy. We aren’t pot committing ourselves here and should be fairly confident that our top two-pair is ahead when our opponent only calls.

River Js (pot $103).

The big blind checks, you bet $50 and he calls. The big blind calls and shows Kc-Qh and you win the $203 pot. Can our opponent really have a nine or A-K here? Would he check the river with a straight or a flush? Against this player in this specific scenario we feel we still have a positive expectation and make a small value bet.

Hands we lose to other than the flushes and straights we have discarded above are Q-J and J-J. We do, however, beat missed straight draws and other paired hands including overpairs. By betting small on the river we are asking our opponent to make a fairly cheap call with a hand that we judge to have some showdown value.

By offering over 3/1 pots odds we can induce a call with a worse hand such as A-Q, K-Q, J-10, and one pair hands that contain a club such as Ac-10s.

Overall Analysis

There were a couple of occasions in the hand where it would have been easy for us to slow down and take a pot-controlling line, when in fact, the safest option and the biggest reward came from betting all streets for value.

We could have said, ‘the board is now very scary and I’m happy to win this $100 pot without risking any more money although I think I’m ahead.’ This is a perfectly acceptable line against some opponents, but against someone who is happy to call down with poor hands we should be taking advantage and making him pay.

Some of the time we will lose the hand and other times we will be check-raised and forced to fold. But by betting all streets for value we are forcing our opponent to make tough decisions and put more money into the pot with what will be most often, in our opinion, a worse hand. We are also going to showdown less often which enables us to keep information from our opponents that fold.

If in the above hand we thought our expectation was slightly negative, due to slightly different read on the player or just a different ‘feel’ about the hand, we could instead check behind on the river.