Winning the Battle of Mistakes
You make money when you win big pots and lose small ones. You also make money when your opponents make big and frequent mistakes especially in relation to what you hold , and you make small and infrequent ones. If your opponents made no mistakes, there'd be no money for you to win. Your opponents' mistakes are your opportunities for profit. Everyone makes mistakes. The goal isn't to play mistake-free. Good no limit players try to win the battle of mistakes. Winning the battle of mistakes means...
Calling Preflop Allin Raises
While no limit hold 'em can be a complex game requiring sensitivity to a dozen or more factors in each decision, it can also be a frighteningly simple game. When the stacks are small compared to the big blind, the game often devolves into a preflop all-in and call game, where one player moves all-in, and one other player calls. These situations are most common in tournaments where the stacks are often small compared to the size of the blinds. They can also occur in cash games, particularly for...
No Limit Hand Values
In deep stack no limit, preflop hands have value based mostly on how well they extract money after the flop from your opponents. They don't have value based on how likely they are to win a showdown. That is, T494 is a far better no limit hand than We use a few abbreviations. The first three have become relatively standard in the poker literature. LP means late position, and it indicates two seats the button and one off the button. MP means middle position, and it indicates two seats two and...
Some Notes About the Examples
Throughout this book, we'll introduce examples in this format You're playing a 5- 10 game with 1,000 stacks By that, we mean that there are two blinds a 5 blind to the left of the button and a 10 blind two to the left of the button. Also, every participating player has at least 1,000 in front of them. You might have 1,000, and everyone might have you covered. Or you might have 3,000, and your opponent or opponents have around 1,000. In this scenario, 1,000 would be the effective stack size. One...
Quantifying the Value of Information
Sometimes you can put a specific price tag on what information is worth. For instance, say, instead of pocket aces in the big blind, you have pocket kings. Now it's worth something if your opponent shows before you call, as you can fold if you see aces. Say your opponent has raised 100 all-in, and you think correctly that she would do this with pocket aces through nines, ace-king, and ace-queen. With kings, you're calling against every hand except aces. When she has aces, you're roughly a...
Use the SklanskyChubukov Rankings
In the last section, we explained what Sklansky-Chubukov S-C numbers are, and we gave you a basic idea of how you might use them to make decisions. But we gave you only a basic idea, and we would be remiss if we left things there, as there are right and wrong ways to interpret the S-C numbers. We offer you extra guidance in this section to help you make the most of this tool. Although the precise S-C numbers apply to a precise situation you have a 1 small blind, and your lone opponent has the 2...
Absolute and Relative Position
Position is undeniably an important factor in every hand. Having position often represents an enormous edge. But many people think that having the button always gives you the ultimate positional advantage. Unfortunately, the position story isn't quite that simple. Sure, there's no better place to start a hand than on the button. And on most hands, the button will be an important asset throughout the hand. We'll call having the button having absolute position. That is, you are last to speak no...