Raising Continuation Bets Light

Raising continuation bets light is an effective strategy versus regulars in NLHE because players tend to c-bet with a range that is either balanced between air and value hands or one that is overly weighted towards air. In my game, I had a difficult time finding the right spots to apply this concept. It’s easy to raise a continuation bet when you have a very strong hand and I recommend doing so most of the time. There are two spots where you are going to have to make tough decisions whether or not to raise a c-bet: with a bluff and with a medium strength hand.

With any bluff we need to evaluate two things: our chance of winning the pot immediately and the chance of improving on a later street. Check raising with total air is unlikely to be a very profitable move in itself, although it is somewhat likely to be breakeven if the situation is average or good. The profit we make from it can easily be equated to our chance to improve on later streets and get value.

Out of position we want to be check raising hands with a significant chance of improving on the next street. Besides the obvious flush and open ended straight draws that are strong enough both to call or raise with, we want to use our back-door draws, because they tend to give us a lot of cards to improve with on the next street. Take a hand like JTs on A93 with one of our suit. When we check raise this board we represent a fair number of hands for value like 99, 33, and A9. Then we have 16 cards to continue barreling with on the turn, a full third of the deck. Any Q, 8, or card of our suit is a good barrel card. If we do end up making a straight or flush we are likely to get paid off.

This move can be even more effective when you have a backdoor flush on a 2 flush board. That way we can represent the flush if the turn brings a 3 flush to the board. The only downside of these boards is that our opponent is more likely to 3-bet his strong hands on the flop.

In position we can be more liberal with our raises as bluffs. Hands like gutshots become a lot more viable to bluff raise because we can see both a turn and river card usually to complete our draw. Gutshots have a fair amount of equity: 16% if our 4 outs are all good. If we can take it down about half the time with the raise and then win the pot when we complete our draw, this is going to be a quite profitable play. The downside with these hands is that fewer cards improve our hand on the turn.

With a medium strength hand it can also be advantageous to raise as opposed to calling. Here is a perfect example. Our opponent raises from the button and we call in the big blind with Tjs. The flop is J73 and he c-bets. If we simply call there are two negatives; our opponent is unlikely to bet again as a bluff or with a weaker hand for value on a blank, and any Q K or A provides him both with a good bluffing opportunity and possibly the best hand. Check raising in this spot gives our hand some protection and our opponent also sometimes calls and checks down with a weaker hand.

Most people don’t compare calling and raising, they evaluate each individually. If you compare raising to calling it often only costs a small percentage of the pot. In this particular spot you want to make your raise a little smaller; usually the size of his bet + the pot. If he bets $4 into $6.50 you can check raise to $10.50 or $11. For that extra $7 you give yourself a decent chance to immediately pick up the $15 in the pot and protect your hand.

In general I think if your raise c-bet is under 15% you are probably missing out on some profitable spots to raise people’s cbets. There are two consequences to this: your opponent can start folding some of his stronger hands to your check raise if they have enough information, and you also miss out on those profitable spots that you could take advantage of. Look for the spots where you are likely to have good bluffing opportunities later or make a concealed made hand. Also look for the ones where you need to protect your hand to win the pot.

Interesting work mate!!! will follow.Best of luck in anything you do

Actually I'm not sure about this one. x/r'ing here is basically a bluff and there aren't too many hands we have to protect against. Villain won't call w/ worse too often and we have a hard time continuing OTT if he calls. Against most of my opponents I would just call.

It is a bet mostly for protection but for a little bit of value too. Especially out of position I believe it's important to check raise here. There are 12 cards that can come that seriously decrease the value of our hand. Our opponent is going to get two chances to hit one of those, so by the river there's about a 45% chance that an overcard will come. There is also a potential that they gain a draw on the turn, which will allow them to double barrel profitably and we have to fold or make a really thin call. We are taking away these opportunities with our raise. Say our villain bets 4 bb into 6.5 bb, we make it 10.5 bb so our raise is 6.5 into 14.5, giving us a really good price on our protection.

I don't think our opponent is usually going to have enough information to formulate a winning plan to take advantage of our light raise. If they knew what we were doing then they could float the flop raise and bet the turn. But, we have a decent amount of sets which they will put in our range which will discourage them from getting too out of line.

The difference between this and a bluff is our opponent can't just call with a bluff catcher and check down. They have to put additional bets in the pot to win it.

Good stuff, will read this one every day

Lovin' it. Nice idea.

fantastic

if you are likely to get paid off on the river when the flush hits that means that you weren't actually repping much and thus its a bad bluff.
Dont you think?

Great thread imo, once your done with this you should turn all this in a .pdf file, would be handy. Keep on going!

Actually I think it's way better as a bluff because of this. Our opponent is less likely to put us on a draw and more likely to put us on a made hand, so our turn bet is likely to get a lot of respect. We don't need very many folds to make it profitable because of our equity and potential to value bet the river.

Handling Aggression

Constant aggression is one of the things that poker players have a difficult time dealing with. Many amateur and professional poker players make their biggest mistakes facing pressure from an opponent on a series of several hands or a session. A common reaction is to improvise and start fighting back in situations that you wouldn’t normally which can get a player into some difficult spots. There can even be an emotional need to fight back and try to win some of the pots with weak holdings or make hero call downs, stemming from our desire to win. This can work some of the time, but it is very unlikely to be our optimal strategy.

Poker strategy is very complex. It’s not an easy task to come up with a strategy to counter your opponent’s while playing. We might have a general sense that our opponent is aggressive, so we can gather that they have looser ranges than our typical player. In itself, that doesn’t tell us enough information to react. For example, against a player that likes to fire multiple streets with their bluffs or semi-bluffs, we might want to just continue with a tight range against their initial aggression. Our strong hands are more profitable because they are putting a lot of money in with weak hands. If they like to only bluff once at the pot, continuing with a wide range becomes a great option because for the small price of calling we get a lot of information about their hand. If you assume the former but our opponent is of the latter type, then it can end up costing you big.

Fighting back is not a legitimate strategy to countering aggression. It is an emotional response to protect our ego. A common response to a frequent 3-bettor is to try 4-bet bluffing. If someone 3-bets us a few times in a row, 4-bet bluffing can be a costly decision. First, an opponent's range tends to be stronger when they take an aggressive action immediately after taking a pot from you or 3-betting you. Second, the timing you have fighting back tends to be transparent and your opponents realize that your range is weaker than normal. Having a set range for 4-betting for value and bluffing makes you more unpredictable. Third, there is a decent chance your 4-bet will get called in a small stakes game, making your hand value more important.

The correct way to deal with aggression is to tweak our ranges. If they truly are playing overly loose and aggressive, then we don’t have to do anything except tighten our ranges. We can just wait until we have a big hand and take advantage of the fact that they put a lot of money in the pot with a weak range. If they have more of a style where they take one stab and give up frequently on the turn or on the flop in a 3-bet pot, then we certainly should loosen up our ranges to their aggression.

If our strategy is poor versus our opponent's strategy, the correct time to deal with that is away from the tables. Coming up with a good strategy while at the table is a difficult task. We need to look at our ranges away from the tables to figure out the best way to react to our opponent's anticipated strategy. Also, it's important to consider whether they are using the strategy to exploit a weakness in our game, or if they just tend to be more aggressive than average.

One thing we need to evaluate is how much our opponent's aggressive tendencies affect our profit from our bluffs. A common mistake made when stealing is focusing too much on our opponent's 3-bet percentage or their fold to c-bet percentage. Since we have a weak hand we are not that concerned how often they are taking an aggressive action because we can fold and not think twice. It is much more important how often they fold to the steal or c-bet. If your opponent folds to 80% of steals then it doesn't matter if they 3-bet 20%; your steal is going to be profitable. In this case, we would not want to tighten up our opening range to counter their aggressive strategy.

When we are facing an opponent playing an aggressive strategy it is important to have a specific strategy in mind to handle them. If you are not prepared to face a strategy like theirs, then it is more likely to cause an emotional response and cause mistakes. It's very important to understand when you have to tighten up versus aggression and when you have to loosen up to maximize your profits. If you master the skill of handling aggression from your opponents, then you are a step ahead of the rest at small stakes No Limit Hold'em.

not read all the articles yet but this is a great idea OP. subbed and look forward to reading this thread on a daily basis

i think there is one ultimate strategy that solves probles caused my aggrotards- switch the table. there s no need to have to waste mental energy on unprofitable or breakeven tables with aggro spazzers while there are plenty better tables available

I actually used to have a similar philosophy. Ultimately though the most important thing about the tables we play at are the weak players at the table with us. I am willing to deal with someone who is tough to play against to play with a couple fish. Many of the players that I described in the article are not that great of poker players anyway.

3-betting for Thin Value

Browsing the poker strategy forums, you will notice a lot of people using the reasoning “I’m not going to 3-bet my AQ or JJ because I don’t want to get 4-bet.” The thought is that you have your 3-bet value range which you will get in preflop and your 3-bet bluff range which you you fold to a 4-bet. This is a perfect strategy if our opponent only folded or 4-bet, which is sometimes the case. If our opponent is calling a decent percentage of the time though you should definitely have a 3-bet thin value range.

Let’s define what a thin value 3-betting range is. Your thin value range has good value versus your opponent’s 3-bet calling range and poor value versus your opponent’s 4-bet range. A perfect example is when we have KQ and we are 3-betting a wide button open. Our opponent is likely to 4-bet any hand that has us in rough shape; QQ+ and AQ+. The range of hands that they are calling with we have great equity against.

Many times when we 3-bet an open our 3-bet has a polarizing effect, making our opponent 4-bet their strongest hands, call their medium strength hands, and fold their weak hands. Thus not only are we getting fold equity from our 3-bet we are getting crucial information about the strength of their hand; whereas our hand range is not capped.

3-betting for thin value can be especially effective versus an opponent when you’re in position. Many opponents at the small stakes will have a calling range from the cut off and small blind when facing a 3-bet. Since they are out of position, they are less likely to slowplay their big hands preflop so their calling range usually is even more weighted towards medium strength hands than in position. Furthermore, being in position we can better control the size of the pot postflop.

To those who don’t like 3-betting a strong hand when they might get 4-bet off it, I have a simple question: How strong is our hand once we get 4-bet? This is a matter of relative hand strength to our opponent’s 4-betting and calling ranges.

You say that the correct way to deal with loose aggressive players is to tighten our ranges, but i would say the opposite is true. Unless u mean widening our value range whilst not having a bluffing range? If we tighten our range as a whole, then the lag is playing profitably vs us no?

agreed to the above to some extent. i think depending on the aggrovillain's tendencies we should treat hands that usually are meh hands as strong hands and get value for them but what op means is also true: we shouldnt start making crazy moves with crappy hands that we would normally muck as that s exactly what villain (if he s not a drunken tard but thinking) wants us to do.

so the overall effect is that our ranges are tighter as a whole but weighted differently than before

My point was against players who are reliably going to fire multiple barrels, we need to make a decision early in the hand whether or not our hand can stand up to the pressure. What we want to avoid is calling one or two bets only to end up folding the hand. Thus when the big bets are going in, we are getting the best of it.

Another way I was saying that we should tighten our ranges against aggressive players is preemptively. If they are 3-betting a lot then we should strongly consider opening a tighter range. If they are check raising a lot, we should check back some of our hands that have showdown value but can't stand a lot of heat.

The Calling Bias

No Limit Hold’em cash game players have a fundamental bias towards calling over folding. We can hypothesize reasons to explain it: not wanting to be bluffed, fear of folding the best hand, or trying too hard to win pots; but, all that’s important is that we recognize this bias. Since most players err on the side of continuing too far in hands instead of folding too early facing aggression, our overall postflop strategy against those players should be centered around getting value from our good hands.

This bias can be demonstrated in a simple way. Say we call AJ in the big blind preflop facing a button steal, and we call flop and turn bets. The final board is AQ3rT6. This is a board our opponent can viably try to 3-barrel bluff to get us off of hands like QK, Axs, and AJ, but he also has a relatively wide value range. Say he bets 2/3 pot, so we are getting 5:2 odds on calling. We happen to know our opponent is bluffing or value betting a worse hand exactly 2/7 times. Is it better to call or fold here in terms of our general strategy? I guarantee with this knowledge 95% of players would snap call on the river.

They will cite reasons like “If I don’t call in a situation like this, then my opponent will be able to bluff more often against me in the future.” However, the opposite logic is also true, “If I call in a situation like this, my opponent will be able to make more money off of his good hands.” In reality our villain is a lot more likely to be bluffing less than 2/7 of the time than they are to be bluffing more than 2/7 of the time.

The truth is that regulars at SSNL in most situations don’t bluff frequently enough to make bluff catching profitable or even break even. The reason why is because they have adapted to the fact that most players call too much, whether they have consciously realized it or not.

This is why our general mindset as the preflop aggressor should be to get the most value from our good hands and only bluff when our opponent has a lot of weak holdings in their range. Facing aggression from an aggressive player, our strategy should be to avoid spots where we are likely to end up with a bluff catcher (i.e. 88 on a J high board) by either folding, raising early in the hand, or calling planning to turn our hand into a bluff facing further aggression.

+1

Big thank to you, this is an incredible opportunity for me to learn some excellent strategy!

Malaise

Sometimes we as poker players get the sense that something about our game isn't quite right, but we can't put our finger on it. Although this is always true; our game is never perfect, this particular symptom of lacking confidence or insecurity causes mistakes. This feeling of malaise motivates us to change our strategy up for no particular reason other than trying to fix what's wrong in our game. It causes us to lose sight of the bigger picture of our poker strategy.

This concept applies to many different skills. I first noticed it working as a fundraiser, training some of the newer guys. The most important thing in any fundraising interaction is building a rapport with someone; making that personal connection with him or her. In addition to rapport building, there are many other techniques which come into play: the way you present the information, the way you ask for a donation, the way you make sure your contact is engaged with the conversation, etc. What would often happen when someone was going through a slump is that they would focus too much on the technique of the skill and not the art and intuition of it.

In poker the idea of what it takes to be a winning player is very abstract. People could have styles that are much different but achieve similar results. I would say the art and intuition of poker is finding edges over your opponents as well as preventing your opponents from having an edge over you. The techniques are 3-betting, value betting, semi-bluffing, check raising, etc. We can only focus on a certain number of things at a time. If we follow our intuition we naturally pick out the most important things and focus on those things; however, if we focus too much on particular strategies we might miss out on other more important factors.

What I recommend is to follow your planned poker strategy at the table and not to focus too much on particular techniques except for the sake of learning. Changes to your game that you want to make should be well thought out, and ideally consulted about with other good players. Being good at poker doesn't require doing one or two things perfectly, it requires doing a lot of different things proficiently. Take everything you know and put it together at the poker table even if you don't know as much as you would like to.

these little strategy articles are great!

Great thread!

shouldn't take long for 5 star rating. Thx op keep up the fab work.