What's up guys
Here's a pretty simple question that I hope to get a few replies on. So, besides getting a winning hand and stealing blinds, how do you guys still have stack chips if you're dealt garbage? And don't steal blinds? Obviously, outplaying the other person with nothing and cbetting dry boards that don't hit the opponents range very hard can be beneficial, but I'm looking for some more advanced concepts here. Thanks!

You lose. Sometimes it just isn't your day.

i'll go with the same as above, if I'm dealt garbage and never hit a board to save my life, I just stop and go do something else

why are we not stealing the blinds? if all we're getting is garbage we should have a tighter image and be able to steal more often

Watch the other players to see who folds too much and bluff those ones.

In tournaments, you just have to pick a hand and go with it at some point, due to your stack size. In cash games, one thing that separates the good players from the rest is that the good players are usually more capable of showing the discipline to simply fold when getting a long streak of playable hands. I've folded for a couple of hours straight at a live table filled with players who are so loose that you usually have to show down a hand to win. Bad players will start playing too many hands at that sort of table, thinking that all they need to do is flop two pair.

If you are looking for a formula for winning every time you play, you are looking for the wrong thing.

1. Stealing blinds and dead money preflop
2. Cbetting when it is right and making up to marginally better hands fold
3. Bet-sizing to reach an equilbrium between desired result and the right minimum amount
4. Knowing when to fold'em - and when not to play. Money not wagered is money won, to play when having better equity.

LOL at finding a formula to win everytime even with dead hands. This is gambling.

If you want to win money everytime, that's what jobs are for.

Here's the paradox of poker. While from the outside it looks like play is a super sophisticate game of wild bluffs and pure aggression, the reality is it comes down to knowing the range and the players.

Probably one of the most watched was when Durrr bluffed Barry Greenstein and Eastgate out of a big pot on High Stakes Poker. On TV, it looks like Durrr just doing a super aggressive bluff that somehow works like he always does. However, he revealed in a "Poker Road" thread that he had been playing for 3 hours completely ABC. All of the players were initially wary of him, but were letting their guard down a bit since he wasn't doing any bluffs. Barry Greenstein obviously had an overpair and durrr knew that he was never going to risk his stack on an overpair in a multiway pot. He also knew that Eastgate had bought in for a significant portion of his total net worth. It was a lot of money to Eastgate, such that he wouldn't likely want to risk it all on trip 2s with a lousy kicker.

By reading the hands and players, he made a high % bluff that worked. Note that the key wasn't some super triple GTO double think. It was a simple reading of the situation and reacting. If you want to win pots where you don't have the best hand, you have to develop your hand reading skills and know your villains extremely well.

It is as simple and as difficult as that.

Playing live cash games vs. a table full of sticky opponents, I simply don't play a hand until I get a hand. If that means I fold garbage for 2 hours, then finally raise AKo from SB, get 3 callers and the board is 865 two tone, I'm going to check fold. Then go back to folding garbage for another 2 hours.

If you can't achieve this trivial level of discipline, don't play low stakes live cash games. In fact, probably give poker a miss altogether.

Patiently folding isn't very advanced imo, but slowly and steadily it wins. You can't win every tournament, obviously, and trying to force it doesn't usually work out well. Luckboxes get big stacks or go busto in the short run, but nits get all the money in the long run.

+1

Here is a more advanced concept for you. You are never card dead. You may have been card dead for the past 3 hours, and you may end up being card dead for the next 3 hours, but you don't know what will happen in the future, and the past is irrelevant, so at the beginning of any given hand you are just one player waiting for the 2 cards to be dealt.

I see a lot of people who have been getting bad cards, widen their range and play mediocre hands aggressively - saying "QT is the best hand I've seen all night". They end up losing their stack, but somehow justify their play because they have to play with marginal hands because they aren't getting good ones.

In tournaments, sometimes you have to make a stand with a marginal hand, because the blinds get big and you don't have a lot of choice. But in a cash game, don't change your game just because you haven't been getting cards. I've had many nights where I didn't get a decent hand for a few hours - then suddenly within 20 minutes I get 3 monsters in a row and take down huge pots.

I agree with what's been said and I think mainly OP's question stems from the difference between cash and tournament games. In cash games, it's all about keeping balanced ranges, while in tournaments you have to make do with what you're given for the most part.

This has a lot to do with the fact that the game itself revolves around a struggle for the blinds as David Sklansky pointed out many years ago. When you're relatively deep, as in cash games, the blinds are less valuable than when you're relatively short, as in most tournaments. This is also why playing looser when antes are in play is theoretically correct. Think about it--if there were no blinds (or blinds were infinitely small), why would anyone have any incentive to raise anything other than AA?

That being said, depending on the table, if you have an exceptionally tight image, it would almost certainly be profitable to make some plays versus the blinds in position, etc.

Maybe because they can make money by raising hands other than AA.

In the past I've read people on forums throwing out the notion that if there were no blinds people would only raise with AA. I have never seen any logic in this, and certainly no evidence of it. In games where the blinds are very small (therefore fairly irrelevant), people raise with a wide range of hands. They do this because they are hoping to win more money than if they don't raise - not because they hope to take down the blinds.

I think you could do an experiment with a home game. Play it with no blinds or antes. Preflop you could simply check, and would not have to fold unless someone raised. I'm pretty sure that not only would people raise preflop with less than AA, people would also call raises with less than AA.

The reason you have not seen the evidence behind this is because the average player does not play correctly and is willing to put money into the pot incorrectly. It is a more extreme version of the fact that bad players are willing flat behind with garbage hands, like Q2o just to see a flop. The reason you are immediately thinking that this example is ridiculous (I am assuming) is because you are considering only a typical game where stacks are, say, 100bb deep. However, what if I told you that the big blind was $100 and you were HU with stacks $150 deep? You should see that it instantly becomes correct to play any hand in this situation.

Now, think about the fact that if you only play As when there is a forced bet, you will be paying 34bb on average (222 hands = 22 orbits) to get a shot at winning a pot where you profit more than 34bb. As and Ks together would still only be 90% of hands for 17bb on average.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if there are no forced bets, there is theoretically no reason to open a pot with anything other than the best hand. Mathematically, you can instantly see that this makes sense, just because of the situation I just brought up. Say you're playing 9max 0nl with $100 stacks and you open the pot UTG with AK thinking that you have a premium hand. If it costs your opponent $0 to wait for As and to guarantee that their range is stronger than yours, why would they choose to play any other hand? You can make the case that they will "try to bluff or outmaneuver you postflop", but then you'll see that if this is the case, you wouldn't want to open with AK in the first place--and so you yourself will only open with As.

Consider your example where players can simply check to see a free flop. You arrive at the flop 9 handed (or less, it wouldn't matter) and the pot is $0! If you bet any amount of money, you are giving your opponents 1:1 pot odds, so there is literally no reason for them to call unless they know for a fact that they have you beat (in other words, equity of 100%). So, what are you trying to gain by making a bet? You're either making a really bad bet with something less than the absolute nuts (your pot odds for the bet are undefined, x/0), or hoping that your opponent doesn't understand poker and makes a terrible call.

The reason you will hypothetically wait for As without a forced bet is because hypothetically, that's what the other players should be doing. Actually, I would even go so far as to argue that you should be playing no hands, because your opponents should theoretically also no be playing anything worse than AA, thus breaking the game. Without blinds to win, there is no reason to open a pot, since without having to pay 1.5bb every orbit, there is no limitation to how long you can wait for a hand, and thus you want to maximize your range against your opponents.

This is why the concept of the blind/ante is universal in poker. Of course, the average player will put chips in the pot anyway because they don't understand this concept--this is why you say that you could make money with hands other than AA. Poker is a zero sum game, and the only reason there are "good" players is because there are "bad" players that make mistakes such as putting money into the pot with hands that are too weak.

This is awesome.

I really appreciate the responses. It all comes down to reads and ranges, and if you get dealt gravel for 3 hours, so be it. We are all just waiting for the monster.
That being said, sometimes it pays off to raise pre with garbage every orbit or two if you aren't catching cards so that when you pick up aces or kings and start betting heavy people don't think "oh this kid hasn't played a hand in 3 hours, he must have a monster".

Thanks again!

No.

It's worth raising with garbage if it's +EV to do so. So for example if it folds to you on the button and the blinds are the nittiest nits that ever nitted, you can raise ATC and it's profitable.

It's not worth raising with garbage for the sake of your image for a couple of reasons, firstly it loses money which is bad and secondly, the rest of the table didn't come to the casino in order to fold cards. They might think 'oh he has a monster' and then they think 'so I will crack his aces' and then they call.

If there's no way to blind out, then you can literally just wait for aces and only play pots where you'll have 80%+ equity if someone makes the mistake of calling. There's no incentive to play a worse hand than the nuts when you lose nothing* by folding it. In other words, you only play the game when your EV is maximised, since that has the greatest EV.

* This is in a hypothetical vacuum, of course, where you're only dealt one hand and it's either aces (play) or not aces (don't play). In the real world, life is short and time is money. IRL, people play games where they don't maximise the "game EV", because they can't afford to wait around for a better opportunity. e.g. If bumhunters waited around until they had a seat on the "perfect" table where they are guaranteed to win with aces, they'd miss many opportunities to play with a profitable edge. Life is too short to wait for aces... and rising blinds make life even shorter.