Sometimes people ask me how they should play a hand, in which they get to the river out of position with a medium-strength hand.
All the poker questions people ask are about medium strength hands.
Not because they’re the hardest to play.
Just because they lead to a lot of close decisions.
If I say, “If you check, he’s probably under bluffing, you can make a really clean fold.” That doesn’t excite people. Check to fold? That’s losing!
No, it’s not.
Reframe folding. Making a good fold saves you just as much money as making a good bet earns you.
Respect folding.
If you tell me when I check, if my opponent bets I can make a good fold – I get excited.
Good folds, good bluffs, good calls – are what great poker is made of. It doesn’t matter which one.
In competitive sports, there is a concept of paths to victory.
I had this in Magic: The Gathering – when I was ahead in a game, I’d constantly ask myself – “what are my opponents’ outs”.
When I was behind, “what are my outs,” and I do my best to play towards them.
In 2007, in the semi-finals of the world championships, I was far behind, and only one card in my remaining 40-card deck could save me.
2007 Worlds Finals: Uri Peleg vs. Patrick Chapin, Game 1
I was well aware of this and made every decision as if this card was coming, since any other scenario was a moot point.
Spoiler – it came, and I won.
Poker works differently. In poker, often folding is victory. Your money is a resource, and you try to only make good investments. Going all-in over someone’s bet is sometimes your only route to victory, but that doesn’t make it the “right play." It’s only victory in the narrow sense of winning the hand, but it isn’t a victory in the broader sense of maximizing your expected value.
How does this meet life?
Decisions take time.
Sometimes you start something, and yes you could see it through, but it’s a better decision to fold.
Don’t get trapped by pretty cards and sunk costs. You’re not pot-committed as often as you think.
Learn to fold.
Beginners in poker sometimes think that if they lost the hand, they should have done something differently. And while in many aspects of life this is correct, in poker it often isn't.
You gave him a bad price, he hit his gutshot and stacked you – you still played well!
How do you beat a player who takes random actions every hand? Completely unpredictable?
Rank your hands from 1-100 on each street (preflop/flop/turn/river) – and the better your hand is, the more money you put in.
This strategy very clearly destroys this kind of player.
How do you beat a player who always puts in an amount of money appropriate to his hand?
He is constantly face-up, so you can make the pot too big for his hands with a very wide range, and it’s difficult for him to respond to.
How do you beat… but we’ve already covered 99% of poker players.
One thing the best players all do incredibly well:
Imagine every hand as a number between 1 and 10.
Poker is a dialogue:
- UTG raises – "Guys, I have an 8 or better."
- Button 3-bets – "I have a 9 or better."
Understanding this invisible dialogue is extremely important.
It happens postflop, as well.
It's a big mistake to get married to a 9, when everyone in the room has a 9-10. 9 is actually the new 1 in that case!
Recalibrating like this is hard, but crucial.
Classic and simple example:
- UTG opens.
- UTG+1 3bets.
- You have .
- Just fold.
The biggest mistake recreational players make is preflop.
They know charts exist.
Yet they don’t follow them.
Because they don’t understand the “why”.
“Every poker hand can make magic happen.”
But some hands do it more often than others.
suited makes straight draws 1.5 times more often than suited.
“But when my hits, nobody will put me on that hand!”
That’s true. The charts are taking this effect into account.
Start playing preflop well, and your win rate will skyrocket.
A question from the lab, the answer might surprise you:
Question: How should you play if in your games, people are too loose preflop, 4-5 people seeing the flop constantly?
My Answer:
Raising small doesn't make sense, since you can't steal the blinds.
So – play a combination of raising large and limping. Coincidentally, this is how a lot of live pros play in this exact environment!
People often gravitate towards good exploitative strategies over time through a process of trial and error.
Another topic that came up in Lab 2.0.
Question: How to go about studying all the different flop bet sizes – what is or isn't important in that world?
My Answer:
Think of the betsize you choose on the flop like the first move in a chess opening.
It's not very important! The important thing is that you know how to play the rest of the game tree after.
Getting flop bet sizes accurately is one of the last things I'd recommend you study.
It's better to get the flop betsize wrong every single time, and then play turn and river well. Rather than getting it right every single time and be winging it throughout the rest of the hand.
Playing when you miss made easy:
Think of as a preflop draw, just like .
- 11% you flop a set, now play it like a set.
- 50% of the time you flop an overpair, now play it like an overpair.
- 38% an overcard comes on the flop. That's a lot. Play it like a middling pair.
If you know how to play sets, how to play overpairs, and how to play middling pairs (and I'm guessing you probably do), playing is easy.
The difficulty comes from thinking of as a premium rather than a draw, and then being lost when your "draw" misses, and not playing the correct hand-type.
First time I ever played live poker was in atlantic city in 2007. I had just won MTG worlds for 40,000$, but was still a nit , so went to play 0.5/1$. The only poker I knew was from watching High Stakes Poker.
3 Memorable Hands:
- I limped behind offsuit, because you have to play small cards to be tricky :) (Thanks, Sammy Farha!)
hit a board, someone tripled, and I called down. He said, "Aces up" angrily. I was like "aces what?" and he said "Just joking, you win". - I had on some low board, I bet super small three times, I was terrified of sets. My opponent showed a missed open-ender and gently berated me for giving him insane pot odds.
- Last hand, I remember I had ! Obviously limp... It was like a 7-way pot, board had on the flop, me and another guy went all-in in a clicking war. Honestly, I was completely lost about what to do. Somehow the stars aligned, and he had rather than trips.
Ended up 300$ and with a very distinct feeling that poker is easy :)
The best things in your life feel like the choice is so obvious, you couldn't realistically have chosen otherwise.
The moment I decided to be a poker pro:
I finished my computer science degree and started working as a programmer. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't in any way passionate about it. And when some guys around you have that "fire," you can tell the difference. I decided to quit and study something else – Psychology. And in the meantime, until the degree started, I had some time to try out poker.
As I progressed with my studies, so did I progress with poker. By the time I'd finished psychology (2 years), I was a 10bb/100 winner at nl200 and had built up a roll to tackle mid-stakes.
I stood at a crossroads – On the one hand, study a year for a test, 3 years for a Masters, 3 more years as an intern at minimum wage, and then I can start practicing as a therapist and see if I like it.
Or... just keep doing what I already loved and was good at RIGHT NOW.
There were definitely downsides, but it didn't really feel like I had a choice.
When you get a read on someone, the value can be insane. It feels unfair – as though you're playing a game in three dimensions while they're playing two. Years ago, on PokerStars, there was a big grinder who had a flop sizing tell. You could tell from the sizing whether he was strong or weak.
I tend to go for the throat with these – every time he'd bet weak I'd raise regardless of my holdings. But that wasn't enough for me. I'd flat his opens wide, with hands that had no business being there, just to get more opportunities to farm the sizing tell.
This was SO in his face that he tried to fight back, and this is where it gets unfair. He'd cbet his weak size, I'd raise, then he'd 3bet. But I knew he was weak due to the size... so I'd 4-bet, and he'd fold.
At some point, he suddenly started checking. And I'm the guy who keeps raising – surely he wouldn't check a strong hand?! So when he checked, I bet and won. And when he bet, I stopped raising unless I was strong, and stacked his top pair when I was.
Online isn't like live, where you can get a physical tell, but various other types of tells are there in abundance, and when you catch one it's worth a ton. It's worth it to constantly keep looking.
Some people size bets according to what they want you to do. That can be a double-edged sword. Case in point: Heads up vs a reg I called a 3bet and a cbet with on an board. Turn came a , and my opponent bet 80% pot. I got a very strong gut reaction. This is the wrong size!
Let me explain – if you have a queen on this board, you have the nuts, and it's fairly dry. You want to get two streets of value. But if you bet too big, you narrow your opponent to only calling with a queen himself, so you'd end up chopping a lot.
This is how 4-straight boards often work – you have to size down.
What series of thoughts could lead someone to size up?
Holding a queen wouldn't do it. Theory wouldn't do it. How about if when he sizes he asks himself the question "How much do I bet to make Uri fold a one pair hand." That would definitely do it!
I called, the river went check check (I was calling though), and got shown suited.
These moments, where someone sizes wrong and turns his intentions face-up, happen a lot more than you'd think in poker. It's still somewhat a game of "gotcha".
My favorite poker hand I ever was played with offsuit, before solvers.
In the metagame, I was a check-raising maniac with a 30% check-raise because everyone overfolded.
Vs an unknown reg, rainbow, I check-raised my , and he 3bet me in position.
I immediately realized nobody would do that for value vs the aggro check-raising redliner maniac. You'd slowplay on the driest board ever.
So I threw in a 4bet bluff. He called.
Turn , and in my head, he has air. I bet 10% to not let him free-card, he raises, I call. River . He can't have an – he'd have just called the turn! I check-call for stacks, and he shows .
The reason I love the hand so much is – a new player who'd just joined the table immediately said "You guys are too crazy for me," and got up and left.
Biggest blinds poker hand I ever played was at a home game, against the game-runner.
I raised huge with offsuit, board ran out . I check-called flop, called a turn overbet (villain wouldn't bet ace high or a low pair, very polar and he was very aggro), and when he overbet-shoved river, it felt like a snap – he wouldn't even do that with a anymore, empty value range.
He had and I scooped a 5000bb pot. A few hours later, I went to cash out, and turns out I'm not getting paid.
What do you think – who outplayed who?
