Chapter V.2 More play in the blinds: Early Middle Play

A small preamble before the substance of this chapter.

I started doing this blog after a friend of mine, a gamer by nature with a statistics/probability background in the finance biz, started getting hooked on the game and asking more and more detailed and complicated questions. Today I told him to shut up and read the blog, so we can get on playing tennis.

Early on I covered a lot of MATH. Yes, I was a high school math wiz, and a lot of poker is the repetition of the same math problems over and over, just like high school, just disguised as a bunch of cards of different colours. This game will hook you in, and the patterns will emerge from the chaos. You will find you have seen this flop and this situation before (Example: on Wednesday I saw A10 and 44 put their chips all in on a A - 10 -4 flop.) The sense of deja-vu will become inescapable, but experience and good advice will help you avoid the same mistakes twice. When you read the mathy parts, you don't need to follow the calculations, just the concepts: the huge drawing potential of some hands, and how dead a succulent-appearing hand may actually be.

This series of blogs is not meant to be the POKER SATANISTS' ANTI-BIBLE. Even if Poker is followed like a religion with Lady Luck our Goddess, following my style by rote is not my intention.

You will find that, when you finally hit a live table and see who's playing, how many players try to look and play like clones of their pro heroes. You will see (and these are not stereotypes these are observations):

• 20 something white Caucasian males with big baseball hats, huge sunglasses, and bigger headphones: watch them try to play like loose aggressive Young Guns like Scott Fishman:
• Older Oriental men who like to push all in and gamble:
• 20 something oriental men who try to project a Tuan Lee or John Juanda look and play a similar style.

Some of these guys can pull it off and are real players, but these "clones" usually have a flaw: you can predict their play (Loose and Lucky is a Tuan Lee clone, and we discussed his failure to mix his play earlier). These guys are overprojecting their image, and need to play their hands, not their image. If the Young Gun clone is caught raising with crap, everyone will reraise him out of the pot. If the Tuan Lee close is consistently trying to play drawing hands, he will be called or raised preflop and then forced to flod draws with big bets post flop so he can't make his hands. If the OOM is consistently raising big with a large A, he will be trapped easily by observant players with premium hands.

I will give an example of OOM doubling me up.

I have come to the tourney a bit late. The first hand I see is 10 10, and I raise OOM in position and he calls. It is a low flop: he bets small and I simply min raise. When the J hits the turn he pops all in and I have to fold (think Rita Raiser on the short stack). This is early play.

Then I notice through a few hands that he is all in on the flop, or all in on the turn, frequently. I realize this for what it is: he is hoping his opponent can't call, and is afraid of a showdown.

So, again in position, OOM has raised the 50/100 blinds to 250 and I see AA. I intended to raise, but I wind up calling.

With a flop 2-10-J (rainbow), He checks, I bet 500, he calls.

When a K hits the turn, he is (predictably) ALL IN. I call like a shot.

He has QK, and I have 1/4 of his straight draw outs in my hand. He can't catch up.

All these "stereotypes" have the weakness of predictability, and smart players will exploit them. Don't be a PokerMonster clone. As I criticize, critique, and contradict established poker authors, criticize, critique, and contradict me. And experiment. Take the same hands and flops and situations and try them a different way. See how it works for you. Like any great guitarist is a blend of his influences, so is every poker player. You may not like or be comfortable with my style of play, or find that it is not as easy as I make it appear to put people on hands so accurately, and that you cannot make the reads, at least at first, that make this style successful.

You will find at the casino, among with the image-projecting "Clones" a bunch of ordinary people who have put on no face at all. For example, most women I play with who are good players have adopted no "pro style", and are usually a mix of solid poker theory, women's intuition, and their own personality. Some of us mix up image. On Saturday I pulled on the Trogdor hoodie, brought the headphones a prop, and did played the role of Mike the Mouth meets UniBomber. In Wednesday I went corporate casual and kept the comments to myself. Some days I am silly, chatty, loose and wild. Some days I'm silent as a cat on the prowl. I always bring the same game. My game includes misdirection and deception: hence I offer up a very varieties of poker personalities to suit my mood or my goal in a game.

Okay, poker in the blinds.

Great, here comes the big blind. UTG was bad enough, where I limped in 44, the best hand I've seen since Monday, only to be raised and reraised out of the pot to watch a 4 hit the turn card. Now I get to pay off again. Even if the table lets me see the flop, I won't know if I'm good.

Wrong. Learn to enjoy, and thrive in, the challenge of playing from the blinds well.

I have mentioned already some excellent plays coming from the small and big blind, from myself and others. Playing well from these difficult positions will pay off in several ways:

• you win pots (the point of the game!), small usually, but when the antes kick in, the difference between simply surrendering the 400 chips you were forced to post (as well as 10 hands of antes) and picking up 3000 chips will at the minimum keep your stack stable rather than slowly slipping away to nothing a blind and ante at a time:
• Players who respect your play from the blinds and your out-of-position play generally will be reluctant to steal from you for fear of playing a big pot with you with the wrong hand or a bad flop. You will get more limps from the late positions from players who still want to see a flop and win a hand, but would be happier keeping the pot small, so if they are outplayed the payoff is small. You will see more flops and more opportunities for pots form these positions as a result.
  
• Sometimes you will hit MONSTER BB SPECIALS, and, played correctly, can pay off huge. So many of my double ups and knockouts in this portion of the tourney (and, as you can see, we are speaking primarily of the graduation of the game from early middle play to the heart of it, when every pot is critical and the crisis point is drawing near.)

let me start with a small pot story in relatively early play of good blind play when the flop isn't gorgeous for the blinds like 733:

Blinds are 50/100 last saturday, I have recently chipped up with KK, as told. I am in the SB. UTG minraises to 200, and 4th calls too. The rest of the table folds to me, and I see 910 offsuit. This is not an exciting hand, but it is a hand with potential. I have no problem affording 150 on my 50 to see a flop. BB does the same to close the betting

FLOP is 9 Q K rainbow, giving me bottom pair and a gut shot. Certainly nothing to write a blog to the world about, but a piece and a small draw ain't nothing. But Q and K are cards that are quite possibly in early limped hands ( I often play QK UTG with a limp and then call the right raise later, because I like to play this against an ace, I can disguise a pretty strong hand as something else, like a small PP, and get away from it easy if the action in front is heavy or the flop wrong).

I check, and the 3 others playing check behind. No one looks like its a happy flop. If someone had a king with that odd drawing flop (10J has already flopped straight after all, and it gets played...Thanks Doyle, these folks often pay off) I would have expected at least a "lets see where I stand" bet.

With a garbage 3 for a turn card, I check and three check behind. If someone had a Q, I expect that person to bet to see where second pair stands. I strongly suspect that the 9 is good, and I am getting 2 free cards to find a gut shot which will only be beaten by A10. With the river a 5, I still check, the BB checks and the original UTG minraiser decides to make a bet of 450, a little over half the pot. With #4 folding, and the play to me, I strongly suspect A5 suited just tested the waters, J10 is value betting, but, most likely, just a small bluff by a complete miss in a mediocre pot. I tell him I'll look him up, throw in the 450, and ask if my 9 is good. He mucks. I rake.

Never give up on bottom pair. If your cards are still live, keep your head in the hand. My investment of 200 chips picked up a profit of 1050, 10% of the starting stack.

In this tightening portion of the game, the early middle and on, before all hell breaks loose and the short stacks can't handle the blinds any more, you will see very little early position calls or raises. Sometimes there will be no action at all, or just a limp, offering you a cheap look at a flop in the SB or free in the BB.

As you can see, very low flops are presumed to be "BB Special" flops, and a 6 high flop followed by a bet out of the blinds might just end the hand there and rake in, whether you had a piece or not. Certainly, any pair caught in a low card flop may be ahead of the BB and the limper, and a bet is the only way to find out. If you check here from the SB, the others will check, and the K will hit the turn and you will have no chance to represent that K. Your opportunity has been wasted. Because the BB is often willing to give up and move on, the BB will often fold. The limper deliberately minimized his investment, and will fold unless trapping. You can make a very reasonable bet here and see where you stand. Smooth calls to your bet indicate big draws, a low set has been made, or your opponent is feeling lucky. Raises usually mean trapping: the trapper was hoping for a real hand, not a limp in and a bad flop offered to the SB and BB. The trapper wants out of the trap now before it traps him. If you have only one pair, read it for what it is, and oblige. Live, you should get a gut sense of the strength of the hand being trapped (usually AA or KK) from the posture of the limper preflop and his reaction to the flop. You may sense some disappointment from him coming from the lack of action.

Now if you get these tells with a BIG BB SPECIAL FLOP, spring your own trap by betting exactly as if you had made middle pair on that nasty flop: a probe, 2/3 pot size bet will do. The raise will come. If he acts swiftly, reraise all in as swiftly in response: AA is in a panic/blood frenzy, and will throw them in . If the response to your bet is bad acting, and then a raise, do some bad acting yourself, and consider just calling. Another probe bet on the next card (as long as it isn't big and likely to turn a big PP into a set...think A,K,Q, and sometimes J...that set busted your 2 pair or trips).

The trapping PP is especially vulnerable to the BB Special, but BB Specials have vulnerabilities too. A few examples.

• You hold J4 and the flop is J 9 4. Top and bottom pair.
• IF your opponent has AJ, he can bust your 2 pair with his own 2 pair. He has 3 live Aces, 3 live Nines, and 3 live of whatever the turn card is, or 9 outs, as good as a flush draw, but bustable by a 9 or 4, for a net 30%. If he has a flush draw too (the 9 and the 4 are the same suit as his AJ) add 8 outs for 17 outs with 2 cards to go. And he won't be folding this one no matter what your raise. Another monster draw favorite of almost 70% even though you flopped the superior made hand. You have only 4 catch up outs for full house for a net of about 58% in favour for AJ sooted.
  
• IF your opponent has AA you fare better. He has 2 Aces, 3 nines, and three to the turn card to improve, and no flush serious draw unless the board is three of the same suit and he holds the A of that suit (and you would be less enthusiastic about this flop anyway). 8 outs which need to escape your 4 suckout busters gives AA only a 25% suckout rate (which is exactly why AA seems to get burned in this situation so often) The 2 ace outs are unbeatable however, as another card to give you a full made him an Aces Up full.

You are a little better off with top 2 pair but only when your opponent has top pr, live kicker. That kicker must be better than your second pair, but it usually will be.

• Holding J9 on the same J-9-4 flop offers AJ 3 aces and a possible runner runner suckout out only if the turn is 10 or better. This is mathematically less than one net out, since those 4 cards represent 4 of 13 possible ranked turn cards, and that likelihood now needs to hit one of three left If we lower the middle pair a little, the math improves a bit for AJ, but never significantly. You are about 85% likely to win this hand.
• If AJ has the same flush draw as before, he has 9 additional outs to go with his 15% for a net coinflip, not bad if you need to double up, Mr. BB Special, to have J9 be a coinflip for a double up with only 2 cards to cringe at...lets face it, your chips got in before you saw those soots anyway...if you can control the next bet to see a neutral turn card, you have 75% to win and AJ might call your all in bet anyway
• The over PP remains the same 25% to win, as the 3 fours have replaced the 3 nines to make a better 2 pair.

Interestingly enough, bottom 2 pair is as good as top 2 pair:

• your 9-4 in the J - 9 -4 flop vs AJ now offers your opponent 3 Aces, 2 Jacks, and any turn card pair for 3 more outs, or 8 outs rebustable with a 9 or 4. He is now 25%, making bottom 2 here as good as top 2.
• The AA has 2 aces, 3 Jacks, and runner runner turn card for 8 outs for basically the same 25%.

I'm doing the rough math, not the complex math, but you get the picture. Your 2 pair is a big fave unless your opponent has the flush draw.

While I used AA as an example, remember my story about 88 and the 733 flop. A limped in small PP will adore a small flop, and will tend to bet larger than AA or KK here to protect it from being dead to the next card. There may be more overcard runner runner pair potentials, but the prospect of a larger pot far outweighs the few additional outs this may represent to beat you.
While these BB specials have strength, a 25% suckout rate is enough, in my opinion, to protect them, and even more so when there is drawing potential from the flop for straights or flushes. I will usually bet here and judge my next move from the opponent's reaction to the bet. The bet will usually attract top pr A's attention and lead to a raise, while the drawer will be more likely to call.

There are other BB specials out there, and I especially like connectors and even more one off and 2 off (10 -8 or 10-7, for example) in the blinds than played in a late position, because the drawing hand played cheap in late position will be expected and bet out by a player holding top pair or an over pair hand, while the hand is disguised in the blinds, and often players will make a lazy/weak bet after check-check from the blinds to steal the pot. If you have a good draw from these hands here, you might consider betting to keep the limper honest, make him fold, out him on a hand, or make him fear the BB special, making your bet an effective blocking bet at worst, a value bet should you make it, which will earn you more money (especially if you slow down like you didn't like the card that actually gave you the nuts).

If your hand made a nut straight,or you flopped straight AND the board would make it very unlikely your opponent's expected cards have a piece of the straight, such as a very low straight, like the straight I caught playing 66 in an earlier blog, play this hand in whatever manner you think might get some payment back. I might check and wait for the turn to offer a card he either caught or can represent, for example, and maybe just call a turn bet and value bet the river, but if I think the fella is trapping with KK, a value bet will encourage to play back (I believe I introduced my first blog with a comment about beating KK with 56.....now you know)

I have already discussed in prior blogs the danger of 2 pr with a straight draw on the board. Raise big unless the straight draw is unlikely, or slow play and hope the turn is incapable of improving the draw.

Enough for now. PokerMonster's fingers are tired.