PokerWorks

Rather than give you entire hand histories where you have no idea what is going on, I thought it would be beneficial to just summarize the hands that addressed some of the key concepts we have discussed in the earlier articles.

Playing middle pairs and small pairs in early position

The first hand is an example of why it is often beneficial to limp in early position with hands like J-J and 10-10 early in no limit hold em multi-table tournaments.

The blinds are 15/30 and starting stacks were 1500 in a tournament at Full Tilt Poker . It is the 2nd hand of the tournament and player A raises UTG+1 to 150. Player B flat calls from middle position and player C re-raises from the big blind to 300. Player A calls. Player B moves all in. Player C calls. Player A folds what he said was J-J. Player B has A-A and Player C has Q-Q.

So how could limping have helped? Player A still was able to get away from the hand, so an argument could be made that, by raising, he was able to get the information that he wanted to make the fold. However, if he had limped in the likely action would have been player B raises, Player C re-raises. Then Player A can make the same informed decision and fold... at a cost of only 30 chips rather than 300 chips. Remember with hands like medium pairs (and early in the tournament that is all J-J is... a medium pair) you want to win big pots and lose small ones. By raising in early position when there are so many people left to act, you might face the possibility of what to do out of position if it is re-raised. Position is key with these hands... J-J might be a re-raising hand in other situations, but in early position, early in a tournament, you should tread cautiously with it.

The second hand highlights not only the benefit of limping in early position with medium pairs, but also shows the high implied value that exists for these types of hands.

It is about 30 minutes into a tournament at Pokerstars . Blinds are 40/80. Player A limps UTG with 10-10. She has 2100 in chips. Player B, in the cutoff, makes it 350 to go, leaving him with 1975 in chips. Player C in the big blind calls, leaving him with 1250 in chips. Player A calls and has 1830 in chips after making the call.

The flop comes Q-10-3. Player C checks, Player A leads out with their set for 669. Player B moves all in. Player C folds and Player A calls. Player B has A-Q and is crippled when he does not improve.

Limping did two things for Player A. It kept her from having to commit pre-flop. If she had raised, she might have had to face an all in re-raise. Limping allowed her to see the flop to try and win the big pot. The second thing it did was it hid the strength of her hand. It would be easy for Player B to put Player A on a hand like K-J or K-Q or J-10 given the fact that she had limped. Additionally, players have a very hard time folding top pair, especially in tournaments where the structures move fast.

If you play medium and small pairs enough early in tournaments, you will learn that they will be the hands that make you the most money over the long run.

Raising and re-raising

Two concepts discussed in Part 3 were raising when there were limpers and re-raising when there has been a raise and a call of that raise.

When raising limpers, Part 3 stated that you should add 1 times the big blind over your standard raise for each limper. In the following hand, I found myself facing 4 limpers in the big blind with A-K. My stack size at the time was 3200 and the blinds were 50/100. My normal raise is 2.5 times the big blind or 250 total. With 4 limpers, that meant I needed to make my total bet 650, so that is what I did. Everyone folded and I picked up a nice pot uncontested.

The raise signified strength, and because no one had shown any strength, I knew that the only way I was going to get action was if someone had been slow playing a big hand... and at that point they would have to know that I likely was going to fold so for someone to be able to come over the top of me... they likely could beat A-K. The raise did two things for me then... it gave me the opportunity to define my opponent's hands and allowed me to win the pot uncontested. If I had been called, it would have also given me value for my premium hand if I flop top pair.

The 2nd hand is a little more difficult because you'll seldom find yourself in situations where you are going to re-raise when there has been a raise and a call of the raise. This play is commonly referred to as the "squeeze play" because it puts pressure on the initial two players. The initial raiser knows they cannot close the action because there is one player left to act after them, so generally speaking they can only continue with a big hand. The 2nd player usually won't have a strong enough hand to call your re-raise with. If they had, they probably would have re-raised in the 1st place.

It was about the 5th hand of the tournament and I was dealt A-A on the cutoff. An early position player had raised to 4 times the big blind and was called by a middle position player. Blinds were 15/30 meaning there was 285 in the pot (120+120+30+15). Part 3 said that in these situations you should make your total bet 1.5 times the pot size. I rounded 285 to 300 and made my total bet 450 (300*1.5). Now it was 330 for my friends to call. The initial raiser called and the other player folded. I busted my opponent when the flop came 9 high and they could not fold 10-10.

This raise not only applies the "squeeze", so to speak, on your opponents, but it causes them to make errors if they do decide to just call. They are telling you that they are unsure of their hand. If they had a monster like aces or kings, they would come over the top all in. This is an awful lot of information at your fingertips and you can use this to your advantage. Often times you can trap your opponent post-flop by slow-playing your big hand. You can also use this play in select situations to pick up big pots with no hands, especially if you have done it before with a big hand against observant opponents.

This concludes the pre-flop primer. I hope you found it helpful and if you have any questions, please post them in the PokerWorks forum .

Part I - Part II - Part II