Twiggy thin value

Most poker players understand the difference between value-betting and bluffing, and have some understanding of when and why to do either. But as you move up to the higher-stakes games you will frequently encounter players whose hand-reading abilities are ver y well honed. These players are able to accurately put their opponents on hand ranges and predict what they might do with parts of them based on factors like history and game flow. And if you want to succeed against these players you need to make your play much less predictable.

One way of doing this is to make thinner value bets against players with whom you have some history and whom you have identified as likely to call you down lightly in certain situations. This will have a number of advantages, but primarily it will help de-polarise your hand ranges from ones where you are typically only betting with a very strong hand or a very weak one.

The inherent problem with having a polarised range is that it tends to bias you towards weakness in a thinking opponent’s eyes, since it is hard to make a big hand in hold’em. De-polarising your range makes you harder to read and forces other players to call you down with weaker holdings. This is the sort of dynamic that evolves in higher-stakes cash games between regular players and is part of the reason you can see people making some very light call-downs and looking like geniuses (or idiots).

KEY POINT

Making thinner value bets – or value-betting in more marginal situations – is vital in the higher stakes cash games, as it prevents your range from becoming polarised and therefore exploitable by good, thinking players

RANGE MERGING

Consider a simple situation where you are playing in an aggressive six-max game and you have second pair on the river on a dry board like K?-10?-7?-3?-2?. Your hand may be something like J-10 or 10-9, and your opponent is a player who raised pre-flop and bet all three streets.

Against a player who would only bet A-K or better for value on the river here, you would have a simple decision. You need to assess whether he is value-betting a very strong hand or bluffing with a missed draw like Q-J, J-9 or 8-9 or the spade flush draw that arrived on the turn.

Of course you would need to consider factors like position, pre-flop action, history and so on, but against a player prone to bluffing you would expect to show a profit here by calling. There are so many more bluff hands in his range than strong made hands, and you only need to win one out of three times if he bets the pot.

However, consider how this changes if you’re playing against a good thinking player who knows that you are capable of making calls like this, or with whom you have some history of aggressive play. Now he will be able to profitably value- bet a much wider range against your calling range, including more Kings and hands like Q-Q, J-J or maybe even A-10.

Against a player who makes thinner value bets in this spot you will be in a much tougher position with a medium- strength hand. Note also how in the first instance it wouldn’t matter much if your hand was 8-8, 9-9, a 7 or even K-Q. All of these hands would essentially be bluff-catchers against a value-betting range of A-K+, but you can see that in the second instance the ranges have partially merged.

KEY POINT

You need some playing history with your opponent before you begin to make too many thin value bets. Once you do, however, it becomes much harder for your foes to make hero calls against you

HOW THIN IS TOO THIN?

Now, if your opponent is capable of making thin value bets, you need to consider a range of possibilities. He could be betting a very strong hand for value, one slightly stronger than your own, or even a slightly weaker one for value that is too thin (as well as bluffing of course). This makes things far more complicated for you.

If you have something like K-J here suddenly your river decision just got a lot harder. Now you can no longer always make a confident fold against a player who doesn’t bluff a great deal but has bet all three streets. In comparison, against a player who doesn’t value-bet thinly but doesn’t bluff much either, you would be able to fold easily.

This concept can apply in all sorts of situations where the value-betting ranges of weaker players might be overly polarised. It can also apply where you are up against weaker players who like to call you down and don’t allow for the possibility that you are betting a hand for value that they may not put in your range.

The latter is a common situation against average players where they will incorrectly assume a player making a big river bet must have a ‘nuts or nothing’ hand. Thin value-betting will be very effective against these type of players who are prone to making ‘hero calls’ with very weak hands.

Against good thinking players, these kind of thin-value situations can become a battle of wits, with each player playing their own hand range against the other and needing to make accurate reads in order to succeed. In lower-stakes games where there are more players and the regulars do not adjust well you need to be careful when making plays like these. For example, against a tight-aggressive player at the mid-stakes levels making very thin value bets or call-downs is unlikely to be profitable.

As you move up through the levels, however, it becomes much more important and is an essential part of any high-stakes player’s game plan. It helps significantly in protecting your bluffs, since in hold’em it is rare to make hands that you can bet for value on multiple streets or on a very scary river.

Making thin value bets in marginal situations will add significantly to your value-betting range and give it a better weighting against your bluffing range. If you don’t do this, your bluffing range might make up too large a part of your overall hand range, meaning you’ll get called down lighter by good players and will be rendered completely incapable of making a profit.