Discussing advanced poker strategy

Right, now I am going to provide you with a perfect demonstration as to why advanced poker strategy in poker games can be so confusing. No doubt that you will have seen and read numerous books in which the author seemed to contradict themselves and this may have left you confused or lacking confidence in the author in question.

Well I am going to give you advanced warning here by telling you that I called a raise in the big blind in this hand. Yes I know what I have told you in previous hands but for every rule in poker then there is an exception. I have told you the rule about calling raises from the big blind and now I am going to provide you with an exception to that rule. In this game, I was playing $25-$50 NLHE and it was folded around to the button who open raised to $175.

Now for any rule to have an exception then by sheer definition, there must be circumstances surrounding why the rule has been broken and why. Those circumstances will be explained here and is basically to do with how my opponent had been playing from that position and how I had been responding. My opponent was a very aggressive player who nearly always open raised if it had been folded to them in the cut off or on the button.

They would raise and both myself and the small blind usually folded our hands. On two occasions the small blind had decided to take a stand and re-raised pre-flop. On both occasions, their re-raise was met by a further raise by the original raiser which forced a fold from the small blind.

While this was not an awful lot to go on, I was beginning to feel that here was a player who loved to push other players around to the absolute maximum and if anyone played back at them then he just played back harder and thus won an even bigger chunk of money from people who were getting tired of their bully boy tactics and had decided to play back at them.

To be quite frank, I was getting a little sick and tired of this myself but based on what had happened to the small blind, I decided to confront them in a different way. My move was planned before I even saw the flop. I would call their pre-flop raise with anything decent and then check raise the flop. If they re-raised then I would move in and if they called the flop raise then I would reassess the situation but I would probably move in on the turn.

I had the move all worked out before the hand was even dealt and it was folded around to them on the button and they duly raised to $175, the small blind folded and I called. The pot stood at $375 and my hand was the Jc-9h. The flop came 8s-4c-3d and I checked the flop. My opponent bet $275 and I check raised to $1100 and they immediately re-raised to $3000.

At this stage I should point out that we were both sitting on substantial stacks with me on around $7000 pre-flop and my opponent on about $9000. I pushed in my remaining stack and went all in and much to my relief, they folded their hand. Sometimes of course, you are going to get called when you play like this but that is the nature of the beast in No limit holdem.

But in this hand I won over three thousand dollars simply because I recognised a betting pattern with one of my opponents and had the courage and the bravery to back my play to the absolute hilt when I played back at them. My opponent suffered in this hand and it takes an awful lot of successful blind steals to claw back what they lost in this one pot. But after a play like this then I simply batten down the hatches and don’t look to make any more big moves for that session.

What I don’t want to happen is for an astute opponent to see my betting pattern in that hand and then look to possibly set me up while holding a big hand. But you will see the difference between my pre-flop call in the big blind and that of another player who calls and then looks to hit the flop with a “fit or fold” mentality. Of course my play comes with high risks, in fact it should come with a government wealth warning attached.

On top of that I will add this, if you aspire to ever play in high stakes poker games either live or online then you had better take some new weapons with you and restock your arsenal because your current game will probably not be strong enough.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”
Come and spy on the poker players on your table with Sharkscope.

Popularity: 1% [?]