Card Dead Poker

‘I haven’t had a decent starting hand in hours! You just can’t win a tournament like this without picking up a few good hands’. It’s a commonly heard refrain, and one that you’ve probably uttered yourself. You sign up for a tournament, and then sit for hours as you’re dealt rag hand after rag hand. 8-3, J-4, 9-2. The stream of foul cards is seemingly never-ending. You feel powerless, and watch as your stack dwindles until you’re finally forced to push all-in with a weak hand. Being card-dead is undeniably many poker players’ worst nightmare. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Poker is as much a game of people as it is a game of cards and we want to show you how to build a stack without ever needing to pick up a monster starting hand.

Terms & Conditions

To help you put theory into practice, we’ve rated each technique and put together a checklist of the conditions that should be in place before you attempt the move

Difficulty

This rating indicates how hard the move is to execute. The scale runs from one to 10, with one being ‘very easy’ and 10 being ‘very hard’.

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is also judged on a scale of one to 10. An effectiveness rating of nine would mean that the move is highly likely to yield chips.

Frequency

The frequency rating indicates how often the move can reasonably be attempted without becoming exploitable. A high frequency move can be pulled off once a round or more, while a low frequency move is very risky and should only be tried once or twice in an entire tournament.

Ideal M ratio

Most good no-limit tournaments include antes as well as blinds, and when antes are in play, the common stack measurement of ‘x big blinds’ doesn’t cut it. M is a measure of how large your stack is compared to the blinds and antes, and is calculated by dividing your stack size by the sum of the blinds and antes. For example:

Blinds 100/200, Ante 25, nine-handed, Stack size 25,000. Your M is 25,000 / (100 + 200 + [9 x 25]) = 47.6

Blinds 250/500, Ante 100, six-handed, Stack size 5,000. Your M is 5,000 / (250 + 500 + [6 x 100]) = 3.7

Pre-flop play

This explains whether the move is executed before the flop

Post-flop play

This explains whether the move is executed after the flop

Image

This concerns the ideal image that you should possess for the move to have the best chance of success

Position

This refers to whether you should have position on your opponent(s) when trying to execute the move

Move 1 Stealing the Blinds & Antes

Difficulty: 2 Effectiveness: 5 Frequency: High Ideal M: <20 Pre-flop play: Yes Post-flop play: No Image: Tight Position: Yes

In tournament poker you can’t simply wait for a good hand before you enter the pot, or you might run out of chips by the time you get one. You sometimes have to raise without a strong hand, hoping everyone will fold and you win the pot.

Even in today’s ultra-aggressive poker world, stealing the blinds is still one of the most important strategies. However, it’s sometimes overused. In the first few levels of a tournament, when the average stack usually has an M ratio of 40 or more, stealing the blinds won’t make much difference to your winning chances. Raising with weak hands in an attempt to steal the blinds at this stage is a recipe for disaster. As the stacks decrease in size relative to the blinds and antes and your M drops below 20, it becomes more important to steal pots in order to stay afloat. The lower your M, the more you should try it as the reward is proportionally higher.

There is another reason to steal the antes. If you only ever enter the pot with strong hands, your opponents will notice this and you won’t get any action. It is important to maximise your wins when you get them. By raising occasionally to steal the blinds, you create a balanced strategy and increase the likelihood that you’ll be paid off when you have a strong hand. The ideal situation for stealing the antes is when the stacks are not too deep, you have a tight image, nobody else has entered the pot and you’re in late position (ideally, on the button or in the cut-off). Also, it helps to have a hand that is not totally worthless.

Summary

The easiest way to pick up some chips – just don’t try it every hand! If your steal-raises become too predictable you will be re-raised

Move 2 The Three-Bet Re-steal

Difficulty: 4 Effectiveness: 8  Frequency: Medium Ideal M: <15  Pre-flop play: Yes Post-flop play: No Image: Tight Position: Yes

If raising to steal the blinds is such an important part of tournament pokerhow can you defend against a steal-raise, and not allow your blinds to beconstantly robbed?

The answer is that you need to re-steal occasionally. If your opponents arestealing the blinds frequently, they’ll often be entering the pot with weak hands. You should take advantage of that by re-raising, whether you have a strong hand or not, knowing that if your opponent is weak, he’ll have to lay down his hand.

Early in a tournament, the re-steal is much less valuable. Your opponents will typically be playing tighter in the early stages, and are less likely to have entered the pot with a weak hand. Also as the stacks are deeper, your opponent may well call your three-bet, hoping to win a big pot from you after the flop.

The ideal stack size for this move is one where you can three-bet all-in by slightly overbetting the pot. This denies your opponent any implied odds, and if he has a weak hand, he will not usually be receiving the pot odds to call either.

However, if you have few chips, your opponent will often be getting significant pot odds and will likely call even with a marginal hand. When your M drops below 7, you’re better off trying to maximise your chances of winning the pot uncontested by pushing all-in as the first raiser.

Summary

A powerful, but risky defence against opponents who are stealing the blinds and antes. But be sure to choose your timing carefully!

Move 3 The Stop and Go

Difficulty: 6 Effectiveness: 6 Frequency: Medium Ideal M: <9 Pre-flop play: No  Post-flop play: Yes Image: Tight  Position: No

When you’re a short stack, you don’t have much room to manoeuvre. You don’t have enough chips to three-bet re-steal with nothing – it’s too likely you’ll be called. So your options are limited. Perhaps you pick a hand to shove with and hope to win the pot uncontested, or you call off your chips with a marginal hand, hoping to get lucky and double up.

A great way to avoid the variance of these situations is to try the stop and go. It goes like this: an opponent makes a standard raise of about three times the blind. You’re on a short stack, with an M ratio of less than nine, but higher than three. You need to act first after the flop, which usually means you’ll be in one of the blinds. You also need to have a hand with some value like a small pair or suited connectors.

Instead of moving all-in over the top of your opponent’s raise, you flat call, and move all-in after the flop.

For example, imagine your opponent has A-K, and you have pocket sixes. If you re-raise all-in before the flop, you’ll certainly get called and you’ll be around a 55% favourite to win the pot, depending on the exact suits involved. The other 45% of the time, you’ll be out of the tournament.

Now imagine you flat call, and the flop comes 9-7-4. You move all-in, and your opponent has to decide whether to call you with his unimproved Ace-high or not. He may be getting the correct pot odds but fold, or he may be getting insufficient pot odds, but call. Either way, you gain.

Summary

A great way to reduce your variance and induce mistakes in your opponents. However, don’t try the stop and go with trash!

Move 4 The Float

Difficulty: 8  Effectiveness: 8  Frequency: Low Ideal M: 20+ Pre-flop play: No Post-flop play: Yes Image: Tight Position: Yes

Don’t you just hate it when you call your opponent’s raise, miss the flop, and then have to fold to their bet? If this sounds familiar, you may have a leak in your game and are calling too many raises, or you may not be floating often enough.

Floating is an age-old technique that works particularly well against opponents who continuation bet frequently. Essentially, you are calling a bet, planning to bluff your opponent later in the hand.

You call an opponent’s raise in position, and go to the flop heads-up, both with deep stacks. You know that your opponent is likely to bet again in an attempt to take down the pot. The flop comes low and unconnected. Your opponent bets, and you sense weakness and call. The turn is a blank, and your opponent checks. You bet, and your opponent folds.

This move is an excellent defence against a common leak in many players’ games (c-betting almost 100% of the time after raising pre-flop). However, there are conditions in which it should not be attempted.

First of all, don’t try this when you or your opponent is short-stacked. If you don’t have many chips, you simply can’t afford to call them off speculatively, when it’s possible that your opponent may bet again on the turn and you’ll have to fold. It’s also more likely than before that your opponent will simply move all-in on the flop, depriving you of the opportunity to make the play. Secondly, don’t try the move when the flop is very draw-heavy or against multiple opponents. It’s more likely that your opponent hit the flop and you’ll be called when you bet, or you’ll give your opponent the free card he needs to hit his draw.

Summary

An excellent defence against the continuation bet, and a great (although risky) way to pick up some easy chips early in a tournament.

Move 5 The Squeeze Play

Difficulty: 10 Effectiveness: 10  Frequency: Low Ideal M: 15+ Pre-flop play: Yes  Post-flop play: No Image: Tight Position: Yes

The squeeze play is one of the most dangerous bluffs in poker, and yet also one of the most effective. Using the squeeze play, you can go from being the shortest stack at the table to one of the chip leaders, all in a single hand. But you can also be needlessly eliminated if your timing is wrong.

The squeeze play goes like this: a loose opponent opens for a raise, a second opponent calls, and you put in a big re-raise with a weak hand. Both opponents fold. By re-raising, you are ‘squeezing’ the first opponent out of the pot. He’s trapped between you, representing great strength, and your second opponent, who could be slow-playing a big hand. His only option is to fold unless he has a strong hand.

By flat calling, the second opponent shows weakness. This, combined with a loose initial opponent, makes the play tempting. However, you can’t make this move with a short stack as you will very likely be called, and you shouldn’t make it against either experts (who will see through the move, and call you) or beginners (who aren’t thinking about what your hand could be anyway, and will call).

To make this move, you need a good read on your opponents. It’s not the kind of move you can make more than once or twice in a tournament, and rarely should you attempt it twice against the same players. However, if you pick the right time, this play can completely change the course of your tournament.

Summary

One of the most impressive bluffs when it works, the squeeze play can also go disastrously wrong. Pick your moment carefully!