Miller, Ed. Smallll Stakes No-Limit Holdem

Underbetting In Multiway

Pots

Players tend to play more straightforwardly in multiway pots than in shorthanded pots. You can use that fact to your advantage. When you have a medium strength hand, making a smaller than normal sized bet can serve the purposes of getting value from worse hands, gaining information, and controlling the pot to your liking.

Say you are in a 6-handed $1–$2 game with $200 effective stacks. A loose-passive player opens under the gun for $7, a decent player on the button calls, and a tight player in the small blind calls. You are in the big blind with J♠T♠. Against tighter opponents you might consider a reraise squeeze. Against very tough opponents you might consider folding. But here you are comfortable calling even though the preflop pot is a fairly awkward size for a hand that can flop dominated top pairs.

The flop comes J♥8♣3♠. The small blind checks, and the action is on you.

This is a good spot for an underbet. Your hand is too weak to commit to. But at the same time, you are susceptible to overcards, so giving a free card to three opponents is dangerous.

The pot is $28. Betting an amount like $9 or $11 accomplishes the same tasks as betting a two-thirds pot amount like $19. You charge weaker hands to continue (you may get calls from hands like weaker jacks, pocket tens or nines, ace-eight, straight draws, and overcards), and you gain information. Since information tends to be purer in multiway pots, you can get reliable information cheaply.

The smaller bet also benefits you in several ways. You keep the pot small with a hand that prefers to play a small or medium pot. Compare these two lines. If you bet $9 on the flop and get one caller, the pot is $46 on the turn with $184 behind. You can make another bet on the turn and still get away from your hand if raised. Or, you

can call a bet on the turn and fold to a big bet on the river if you think you’re behind. If instead you bet the full pot on the flop and get one caller, the pot is $84 with $165 behind. Your next betting decision is a commitment decision.

Other benefits of the small bet are that you keep initiative and avoid having to call a bigger bet. If you check the flop and the button bets two-thirds pot or full pot, you are back in the commitment predicament, but the situation is even worse because he has initiative, and his range is unknown. He could be betting a strong hand like acejack or a set, he could be semibluffing with a draw that has decent equity, or he could be purely bluffing. You are left playing guessing games on the turn and river.

If your bet is raised on the flop, you can usually fold. You are betting into three players and leading into the preflop raiser on a dry flop. That’s a show of strength, so anyone who raises is probably strong.

To balance your range for making this play, you can also use this line to set up bluffs. For example, if on this same flop you were on the button with a hand like T♣7♣, and three players checked to you, you might make a small bet with the plan of possibly continuing your bluff on later streets. Also, for balance, you can sometimes underbet with monster hands.

Underbetting can be a sneaky weapon in multiway pots.

Balancing Your Lines

Let’s talk defense.

Bill is a semiskilled $1–$2 player. In a 6-max game, he raises to $6, second to act. Only the button calls. The flop comes K75 rainbow. Bill bets $10. The button calls. The turn is a deuce. Bill checks and folds to the button’s $12 bet.

Over the next four hours, this situation comes up many times. Bill raises in early position, gets called by the button, c-bets the flop, and is forced to fold on the turn. It doesn’t happen every time, but overall he is getting killed. Bill has a major playing flaw and needs to figure out what it is. That’s the bad news. The good news is it’s pretty simple to do.

Read your own hands.

Let’s pretend we’re Bill and try reading our hand. Bill’s big problem (our problem now) is the betting line “raise preflop and get called by the button, bet flop, check turn.” So what is our opening range? Second to act in a 6-handed game, Bill raises with

22+, A2s+, KTs+

QJs-65s

ATo+, KJo+, QJo.

Once the next player folds, the button calls about two-thirds of the time. On the flop, Bill bets around 99 percent of the time when he hits top pair or better. He occasionally checks with a set and rarely checks with top pair. When he flops second pair or less, he c-bets about 90 percent of the time. On the turn, he bets again with top pair or a set most of the time. Otherwise he checks.

What about when he checks? On the turn, he checks about 25 percent of his top pair/overpair/set hands, and about 99 percent of his weaker pair and no-pair hands. It breaks down like this:

Preflop Range:

22+, A2s+, KTs+

QJs-65s

ATo+, KJo+, QJo

Line: Raise Preflop, Get Called, C-bet Flop, Check Turn Board: K♠7♣5♦2♥

Bill’s turn check range is heavily skewed toward weak hands. The button has figured this out. He knows Bill’s turn check means weakness, so he bets the turn to steal. Usually, Bill will fold. The button is killing Bill when he checks the turn, because Bill’s betting line narrows his range to over 90 percent weak hands.

This an unbalanced line. A line is unbalanced when the line’s range favors strong hands or weak hands so heavily that it is easy to exploit. Unbalanced lines are common, even for solid $1–$2 players.

You almost certainly have a number of unbalanced lines in your play. Against bad opponents it doesn’t matter, because they won’t take advantage. But against astute opponents, you have a major problem. You need to balance the lines.

Balancing A Line

Bill has already done the hardest step. He realizes he has a problem, and he knows the problem is his unbalanced line “raise preflop, get called, c-bet flop, check turn.” What can Bill do to solve the problem?

282 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD’EM

Whenever you have an unbalanced line, there are two main corrections you can make:

1.Play some of the hands in the unbalanced line’s range differently.

2.Add hands to the unbalanced line’s range.

You can do either or both. Let’s explore these options.

Playing Hands Differently

When Bill checks the turn after c-betting the flop, 91 percent of the time he has a weak pair or nothing. One solution is to play some of those weak hands differently. For example, Bill can bet some of his weak hands on the turn. This has two advantages. Not only does it help balance the “c-bet flop, check turn” line, it also helps balance his “c-bet flop, bet turn” line. Let’s try it out. Suppose Bill bets a third of his underpair or worse hands on the turn. What does that do to his turn-check range?

Preflop Range:

22+, A2s+, KTs+

QJs-65s

ATo+, KJo+, QJo

Line: Raise Preflop, Get Called, C-bet Flop, Check Turn Board: K♠7♣5♦2♥

This is an improvement, but not a big one. The range is still too unbalanced, because an astute opponent can still exploit it easily by betting whenever Bill checks the turn. What else can Bill do?

He could avoid the line. For example, suppose Bill checked the flop more often with his weak hands. Then there would be fewer “c- bet flop, check turn” hands, and the button would have fewer opportunities to exploit this unbalanced line. Avoiding lines can work well, but a word of caution is in order. Those weak hands have to go somewhere. If Bill starts checking weak hands frequently on the flop, he creates a new unbalanced line. Namely, his new “raise preflop, get called, check flop” line would heavily favor weak hands. To compensate, he must also check good hands more often on the flop.

Let’s go back to the turn-check line. Bill can reduce the number of weak hands in this line by playing tighter preflop. Whenever an unbalanced line favors weak hands too strongly, tighter preflop play usually improves the situation. In tough aggressive online games when you are out of position and don’t play as well as your opponents, this is often a decent solution. But in a way, tightening up is a crutch. Once you become more skilled, playing too tight preflop can hurt your bottom line. Don’t get pigheaded about your masterful skills though. If a certain button is killing you, just tighten up until you figure him out.

Overall, among the ways he can play hands in his range differently, Bill’s best choice to balance the line is betting the turn with more weak hands. However, this only reduces the problem. It does not eliminate it.

Playing Other Hands The Same Way

This is the other way to balance a line. In Bill’s case, he has too many weak hands in his “raise preflop, c-bet flop, check turn” line. He needs to add some strong hands to his range. Let’s try it out. Bill has been checking 25 percent of his good hands on the turn. What happens if he instead checks 40 percent of his good hands? He still checks 99 percent of his weak hands. His new range looks like this:

284 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD’EM

Preflop Range:

22+, A2s+, KTs+

QJs-65s

ATo+, KJo+, QJo

Line: Raise Preflop, Get Called, C-bet Flop, Check Turn Board: K♠7♣5♦2♥

This has a similar small effect, because he only adds a few good hands to the range. The line is now more balanced, but not by much.

Putting Them Together

Let’s review. Whenever you have an unbalanced line, there are two main corrections you can make:

1.Play some of the hands in the unbalanced line’s range differently.

2.Add hands to the unbalanced line’s range.

You should do both. Here are the main corrections for you to consider when balancing a line:

Add whatever is missing to the unbalanced range. In Bill’s example, his “bet flop, check turn” range has only 8.7 percent hands that are top pair or better. He needs to add more good hands to the turn-check range.

Play some of the overrepresented hands differently. In Bill’s case, we started betting more of his weak hands on the turn.

Consider avoiding the line. By changing your actions on a prior street, you can reduce the percentage of hands that lead to the bad line. Be careful with this. When you avoid one line, others occur more often. Make sure these other lines are balanced.

Tighten up preflop to avoid lines that heavily favor weak hands. We list this last because it is a bit of a crutch. Crutches work, but they can slow you down. Similarly, tightening up preflop usually works to balance weak lines, but it can hurt your bottom line.

When you find an unbalanced line in your game, try the first two corrections initially. If the unbalanced line favors strong hands, add weak ones, and vice versa. Second, play some of the hands in the unbalanced line differently. Here is what happens when Bill uses both adjustments, checking 40 percent of his top pair or better hands and betting a third of his weaker hands.

This is much better. It’s still over 4–to–1 weak hands, but there’s not much Bill can do about that. Bill only flops top pair or better 24 percent of the time. He then bets the flop with almost all of his hands. His opponent has called the flop bet, so Bill has not folded any hands to get to the turn. Because of this, he cannot have top pair or better much more often than the 24 percent he flopped. Anything close to that 24 percent is reasonable.

Punishing The Exploiter

This is another way to think about line balancing. Someone is exploiting your unbalanced line, so you figure out how to punish him. The biggest problems come in two forms:

1.Your unbalanced line heavily favors weak hands, so your opponent bets or raises.

2.Your unbalanced line heavily favors strong hands, so your opponent folds.