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opponent to figure out what Bill is up to. Some opponents won t be
paying too much attention. If you guess this is the case say because
your opponent is 18-tabling then you might checkraise most times
on the turn for a few cycles until he figures it out. Then, and only
then, do you switch to the balanced line.
Transitions are opportunities. Your opponent expects you to do one
thing and will act accordingly. Punish him. Do whatever costs him the
most. Here checkraising works well, because it extracts extra money
out of the button.
What About Other Flops?
Did you notice we only went though Bill s lines on a K75 rainbow
board? What happens on an ace-high flop? What about a highly
coordinated middle board like Tc& 8c& 7e&? The proportion of strong
and weak hands in Bill s range changes quite a bit. For example, on
an ace-high board, Bill will hit top pair or better over 30 percent of
the time, since he plays many more hands with an ace than hands with
a king.
Flops are perfect information. Everyone can see them. It s a minor
point but important for line balancing, because your lines may be
unbalanced only on certain flops. As a common example, a line can
be balanced on an ace-high board but not on other board types. Also,
when boards are coordinated, drawing hands enter into your ranges,
adding another dimension.
When adjusting an unbalanced line, ideally you should work
through three or four different flops. At a minimum, test an ace-high
board, a coordinated board with a face card, like Qe&Tf&2e&, and a low
flop. Your thinking opponents know you are less likely to hit a
5c& 4f&4e& board than an Ae&Je&Tc& board. If you want to survive in
the modern game, do your homework and check your balance across
multiple board types.
294 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD EM
Some Typical Unbalanced Lines
Chances are early in your career you had many severely unbalanced
lines, but they didn t cost you much. Your opponents probably
weren t good enough to realize your lines were unbalanced, or they
didn t know how to exploit your flaws. To survive in the modern
game past $1 $2, you must eliminate most of these severely
unbalanced lines. There are too many strong opponents not to.
We re going to go through several common unbalanced lines.
We ll give suggestions for correcting the problem after each. If you
feel a twinge of recognition, make the general corrections we suggest.
You can fine tune later.
For example, here is a betting line that is terribly unbalanced for
most $1 $2 amateurs:
 Bet flop, bet turn, bet river.
Imagine yourself doing just this. You bet the flop, turn, and river.
What do you have? If you are like most amateurs, your range consists
of big hands and big hands alone. You might be a really frisky
amateur and once in a while do this with a flopped flush draw, so
instead of a 100%/0% range you proudly have a 95%/5% range. Good
for you, but you re still dead. We crush you by folding. What happens
when we fold to your big hands, but you pay off ours? We win, and
you complain about running bad.
If ever there were an argument for a three-barrel bluff, this is it.
You very much want freedom to bet your big hands across three
streets. To protect that freedom, you must balance your  bet flop, bet
turn, bet river line by bluffing sometimes. What is sometimes? If
you re not bluffing at least 10 percent of the time you make that third
bet against tough opponents, you might as well get a day job. You
should be bluffing on the river more like 15 20% of the time against
BALANCING YOUR LINES 295
skilled opponents.* Keep in mind you can  bluff with top pair. The
point is you should be trying to get a better hand to fold a fair
percentage of the time.
Don t take this the wrong way. We are not advocating randomly
firing three barrels. Rather, when you make a flop semibluff,
sometimes you should follow through on the turn and river.
Alternatively, when you c-bet with a gutshot draw and one opponent
calls out of position, think again before checking the turn. A half-pot
or two-thirds-pot turn bet can be quite powerful. If that bet gets called
and you miss, don t be shy about firing a third barrel a fair percentage
of the time.
Also, remember that flops are perfect information. What happens
when you  bet flop, bet turn, bet river on an uncoordinated board?
Are you an overwhelming favorite to have a huge hand? If so, it s
time to fire a few turns with second pair or a gutshot, and follow
through with a river bet more often than you might be comfortable
with. If you don t, good players fold to that river bet unless they have
a huge hand.
Another way to help balance the bet-bet-bet line is to bet a wider
range of made hands all the way. As with bluffing, this makes it
harder for an opponent to fold correctly.
Once you attempt to balance the bet-bet-bet line, take a few
minutes with your favorite tracking software to see how you did.
Isolate the hands that followed the line and see for yourself. How
often was that third bet a bluff? If your answer is less than 10 percent,
you are going to get eaten alive by skilled opponents.
Here s another typically unbalanced line:
 3-bet preflop out of the blinds.
*
We are not going for game theoretic bluffing frequencies here. That would be
foolish against a typical $1 $2 player who calls too much and overestimates
opponents bluffing frequencies.
296 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD EM
What do you have? Many amateurs have only strong hands such as
a range of AA-QQ, AK. This is way too tight. Blind stealing is a huge
source of profit in online games. You want to make it at least a little
expensive for the thieves to steal from you. The most potent way to
punish a blind stealer is to 3-bet. At a minimum, you should 3-bet
with a much broader range such as most of AA-99, AK-AJ, KQ, and
some suited connectors. The suited connectors help because they form
the bulk of your bluff hands and make it possible for you to hit any
flop.
How about this line:
 Raise preflop, bet an ace-high flop.
At first glance this doesn t seem like much of an unbalanced line.
But it is amazing how many weak players bet that flop 90 percent or
more when they have an ace or three of a kind and check it half the
time they don t. If their preflop raising range is heavily skewed
toward ace hands, such as AK-AT, KQ,-KJ, AA-TT under the gun,
then on an ace-high flop with lower cards they have:
Preflop Range: AA-TT, AK-AT, KQ-KJ
Line: Raise Preflop, Bet An Ace-High Flop
Board: A`&9e&8e&
Flop Holding Percent
Three of a kind 2.8
Top pair 44.9
Weaker pair 22.4
No pair 29.9
Suppose this player also has a common amateur habit. He
habitually checks KK-TT when he hits second pair on an ace-high
flop. This results in him checking when he has an underpair or no pair
half the time. Since he also bets the flop around 90 percent of the time
when he hits top pair or better, his flop check range looks something
like this:
BALANCING YOUR LINES 297
Flop Check Range Adjusted Percent
Top pair or better 15.4
Underpair/No pair 84.6
See the problem? When he checks the flop, a skilled opponent will
bet to steal. The line is too unbalanced. For example, say the pot is
10bb and an opponent bets 6bb every time when checked to. If the
checker folds all but top pair or better, the bettor wins 84.6 percent of
the time for an immediate 7.5bb in expectation.* If the checker also
calls with KK-TT, then he folds 48.3 percent of the time, and the 6bb [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]