In this exclusive extract from The Education of a Modern Poker Player Emanuel Cinca and Thomas Tiroch explain the importance of pot control
The strength of your hand changes based on the cards dealt on the board and your opponents’ actions. A-A can become weak and 7-2 can make the nuts postflop, that’s how drastically the value of a hand can change. Based on your opponent, his actions and the board texture, you have to decide how much money, or how many bets, you want to put in with your hand. You can decide you want zero, one, two, three or more extra bets to go in until you get to stack off. Since the strength of your hand changes so often, you have to correctly respond to the information that affects this.
As with everything in poker, the number of streets of value you want to get is very dynamic, unless you have the nuts, when you want to do everything possible to get your opponents all-in. In order to become more successful you have to learn how to control the size of the pot appropriately, based on the relative strength of your hand. You should avoid bloating the pot with a weak hand, make sure that you win a decent sized pot with a very strong hand and try to get to showdown cheaply with your medium strength hands.
Changing plans
Let me illustrate how the value of a hand changes with an example. You hold K-T on a K-T-2 flop with a flush draw. You will usually want to stack off with this hand. To do so you bet and get called. The turn now brings a disaster card – an Ace that completes the flush draw. You no longer want to stack off and now want between zero and one streets of value depending on your opponent. Sometimes it’s better to check and try to induce a bluff or a lighter call on a good river. Sometimes you can bet if he is likely to call with many worse hands and fold to a raise, since now you are forced to put in more than one bet. Had the turn been a Three that didn’t complete the flush, your hand would be just as strong and you would probably still look to stack off. Other turn cards make your decision tougher, such as a flush draw completing low card or a rainbow Nine, Ace, Queen or Jack. All these cards change the relative value of your hand, so you have to reconsider how many streets of value you want.
In this example we only discussed board texture. Let’s look at how the actions of a player can change your plan. You open A-K in the cutoff, the button folds, a passive small blind calls, and the big blind folds. The flop is A-T-6 rainbow. Here you probably plan to get three streets of value. You c-bet and the SB calls. The turn is a Three, with no flush draw possible. The SB checks, so you continue with your plan of getting three streets of value and bet, but the SB check- raises. Now you have a decision.
Is he raising as a bluff or with a worse value hand? The problem is that now it’s likely you’ll have to put in an extra bet compared to your initial plan. The SB
is passive, which means he is unlikely to be bluffing. What hands worse than yours could he have? A-Q? Rarely, since a description of a passive player is that he only raises with very strong hands. You have to fold your A-K here. If you call, you will probably be faced with a river shove or have to shove it in yourself against his turn raise. This means that more money is going to go into the pot than you wanted and, more importantly, not in the way that you wanted it to against a passive player. The key to being a solid winner is to be able to identify when the value of your hand changes and not be surprised by any actions your opponents make.
Control board
Let’s now look at some situations where you don’t want to make the pot too big and discuss how you can control its size; this is pot control. Of course, this is strongly linked to the concept of streets of value. Hands that you want to pot control are hands with which you want three streets of value in the most favourable scenario, which will happen very rarely. That means it’s usually between one and two streets of value. I think this will be easier to explain with some examples.
Let’s say you raise T-T in the cutoff and everyone folds to the BB who calls. The flop is J-7-3 rainbow. Although T-T is now a medium strength hand, you can definitely consider value betting here. That said, how many streets of value do you want? Against a passive and rather loose opponent you probably want two. What is the best way to get these two streets of value? You can bet the flop, bet the turn and hope the river can go check/check, or bet the flop, check the turn and decide on the river. Maybe you can check back the flop and bet the turn, bet the river or call the turn and decide on the river. You don’t want to bet and call a raise for your two streets of value, because you are likely to face another bet and your average opponent will rarely bluff or raise a worse hand.
If we change the board to J-9-8 rainbow, your made hand is now somewhat worse (your opponent’s range now contains more two pair type hands) but you have a good straight draw to go with your middle pair. In this case, I would be tempted to check and try to realise my equity, although I still think I get called by worse. The nice thing here is that even passive players bluff on four to a straight boards some of the time, so you get some value by inducing bets as well, whereas betting would have made him fold his bluffs. This example illustrates how, although your hand is still medium strength, when you have good potential to improve you should use your position to see as many cards as possible. This is how board texture affects the way you get value.
Pot controlling out of position
The harder part of pot controlling is doing it when you’re playing out of position. Whenever I have a hand that is not worth three or more streets of value, I like checking the flop, even as the preflop raiser. Many players disagree with this, but if you make sure you also have some good hands that can call three streets on most runouts you will do well. The thinking behind this is that if you don’t want to get three or more bets in, but a maximum of three, once you c-bet the flop the player in position can mess up your plan. Once you bet and he calls, two things happen:
- His range is less bluff heavy. Yes, some people call c-bets without a made hand to take it down later, but he will usually have some equity and most of his air folds anyway.
- You have to pay more to see the river, where you can usually decide whether your hand is worth that one extra street of value.
I believe that checking has a lot of benefits:
- You only pay one or two bets to see the river with a hand we said is worth two streets, maybe three on a favourable runout.
- You keep the complete air in your opponent’s range. If he has more air, he is likely to bluff more often. Apart from this, your range will consist of hands that can face a bet on each street as well, which means he will also very likely bet worse hands than yours.
- It greatly increases your chances of getting to showdown with the best hand. When out of position, it’s a lot harder to get paid off and it’s easy to get bluffed out of a hand. I believe that this strategy will maximise your chances of getting to showdown with the best hand and minimise the risk of getting bluffed.
This play works better with either a mediocre hand with good redraw potential like T-T/T 9 on J-9-8, or a good hand when facing an opponent unlikely to call down too light, like K-T on K-9-4.
There is one last very important thing to mention here. Passive players chase draws passively. That means they call until the river. Against them, I think you can very often get three streets of value using the bet flop, bet turn and check/call line on rivers that don’t complete the very obvious draws. This works very well, because a very strong hand raises the flop or turn (most often the flop) and medium strength hands will check back the river. That leaves your opponent’s betting range full of missed draws, so you can call with your medium strength hand, which would be worth less than three streets against other opponents.
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