by Andrew Brokos
Originally Published in Two Plus Two Magazine, April 2007 issue
Of the 111 players who entered the 2005 Monte Carlo Millions, only two remain: Phil Ivey and Paul Jackson. Each knows the other to be a smart, successful, and aggressive tournament poker player. Jackson limps from the small blind with 65o. Ivey raises and Jackson calls. With 176,000 chips in the pot, the players see a flop of JhJc7c. Ivey bets 80,000, Jackson raises to 256,000, Ivey raises 240,000 more, Jackson raises 300,000 more, and Ivey five-bets all in for 581,000 more. His only other option to call all in with 6-high, Jackson is forced to fold. Ivey shows him Qh8h, for no pair and no draw.
With much deeper stacks, it’s hard to say how long this bluffing battle would have gone on before someone blinked. But Ivey got the best of Jackson by making the last bet. Jackson folded, not necessarily because he was convinced that Ivey had trips, but because bluffing was no longer an option.
In tournament play, when everyone has so much incentive to steal pots and play marginal hands, these multi-level thinking situations where “he knows that I know that he knows that I know…”occur quite frequently. It’s essentially a game of chicken, but tournaments are also unique in that there’s a guaranteed way to make your opponent blink first: move all in. Even if your opponent suspects that you are bluffing, there may be nothing he can do about it. You’ve deprived him of the opportunity to re-bluff you, so if he can’t even beat a bluff, he’ll have no choice but to fold.
Inducing a Bluff
Putting in the last bet is so important in tournament poker that it should often determine how you choose to play your hands. The quick and dirty principle is that when you have a strong hand and want to get all the money in, you should structure the betting so that your opponent can move all in. If he mistakenly believes that you will sometimes fold, he can raise all in with a wider range of hands than he could call in.
Suppose that with blinds of 400/800, a very aggressive player raises to 2000 from one off the button and you call with 87s on your big blind and about 12,000 chips behind. The flop comes 772. You’re first to act, so it’s time to think about how to maximize value with this monster. Your aggressive opponent will probably continuation bet this flop, so you could check to him with the intention of raising. If he knows that you know he’ll often have nothing on this flop, he may even pay off your check-raise with hands as weak as AQ. However, he’ll still have to fold the majority of his range, because whether or not you check-raise all in, you won’t have enough money behind for him to consider re-bluffing you. You have essentially put in the last bet, and even if your opponent reads you as weak, there will often be nothing he can do about it.
You would prefer to take a line that would allow your opponent to put in the last bet, as that will result in him paying you off with a much wider range. In my March article, I suggested that if the big blind leads into the pre-flop raiser or a dry board like this, it is often a steal, and the pre-flop raiser should consider raising as a re-steal. If you lead out with a probe bet, your opponent will likely call or raise with all of the hands that could call your check-raise, and in addition he will sometimes call or raise with weaker hands that would have fold to a check-raise.
Your objective is to get him to commit all of his chips, so let’s look at the size of the pot. Assuming antes have not begun yet, there is 4400 in the pot, and you have 12,000 in your stack. You should lead out for about 2600, putting 7000 in the pot and leaving 9400 behind. This sets your opponent up perfectly to move all in on a bluff: he’ll put in 2600 to match your bet, at which point the pot will be 9600, meaning that an all-in bet would charge you just about the size of the pot.
Players Still to Act
This principal can be extended to players who have not yet entered the pot as well. Suppose that there is a very aggressive player to your immediate right who will raise about 70% of the time that it’s folded to him in late position. You have re-raised him several times, sometimes winning the pot, once folding to his re-re-raise all in, and never showing down a hand.
With blinds at 400/800, the action folds around to this player, who raises to 2400 with roughly 30,000 behind. You are holding AA on the button and have him covered. When considering what line to take, think not just about the player already in the pot but about the players in the blinds as well. If a smart tournament expert is in one of the blinds with about 15,000 chips, you should consider just calling the raise.
Consider how this will look from the expert’s perspective. A super-aggressive player raises from steal position. Does he need a hand to do this? No, we have already said that he is raising 70% of his hands here, and a smart tournament player will definitely notice this. Now you call on the button. Do you need a hand to do this? Kind of. According to the gap concept, you need a stronger hand to call than to re-raise, so he can assume you have something. However, given how often you have been re-raising the super-aggressive player, the expert would expect you to re-raise a monster hand like AA as well. Thus, he will likely read you for a medium-strength hand like 66 or ATs that figures to be well ahead of the raiser’s opening range but that cannot stand a 4-bet all in.
This is a great situation for the expert to execute a squeeze play by moving all in for 15,000. There are 6,000 chips already in the pot, and with his reads, he can expect to take it down pre-flop quite frequently. Your call will present him with a nearly irresistible situation.
It’s important to note here that both your stack and the raiser’s stack are large enough to make this a plausible call with a medium strength hand. If you were to call off 20% of your stack in this same situation, any perceptive player would recognize that you would have to have a very strong hand and would not attempt a squeeze play.
Bluffing
When you are weak and looking to steal the pot, you will often prefer to be the one moving all in, so that your bluff can fail in only one way rather than in two. In other words, your bluff may fail if your opponent realizes what you are doing and has a sufficiently strong hand to call, but it will not fail because your opponent realizes what you are doing and re-bluffs you with a hand that does not have any showdown value.
For example, if the blinds are 250/500 and a very aggressive player raises to 1500 from the button, you would most likely move all in with a hand like KTo if you had around 8000 chips. However, if you had 24,000 chips and your opponent had you covered, you would most likely have to fold. Since a re-raise no longer allows you to put in the last bet, you risk folding the best hand to a re-re-steal, and even if your opponent just calls, you will be playing a big pot out of position with an easily dominated hand. At the very least, if you do attempt a re-steal, it will be because you believe such a play would be profitable with any two cards, not because your KTo is ahead of your opponent’s button raising range.
Steal Raising
The stack sizes of the players left to act behind you are even more important to consider when you are open raising on a steal or semi-steal. Any time that you open the pre-flop action with a raise, no matter what your position or your hand, you need to look at the stacks of the players behind you, consider how likely each is to call or move all in, and know ahead of time what you will do if that happens.
For example, you may be accustomed to raising any Ace if the action folds to you on the button. However, if two aggressive players are in the blinds with five to six times the size of your raise in their stacks, you may have to open fold. Neither of these players is going to cold call your raise, so unless you are prepared to call an all in (which depending on the player may not be a bad idea even with something as weak as A2), you might as well have 72o. The possible results are the same: you either steal the pot pre-flop, or someone moves all in and you fold.
You can no longer raise just because you have a hand that figures to be ahead of two random holdings. Instead, you must put your hand into one of two categories: hands that can call an all in, and hands that cannot. Of course you will always raise hands in the first category. Which hands belong in the second category, and the frequency with which you should raise those hands, depends on your read on the players in the blinds and the range of hands with which they will re-raise you all in.
On the other hand, if the players to act behind you all have 8-9 times the size of your raise, you should still sort your hands into those that can call a raise and those that cannot, but you can safely open raise a very wide range. This is because your raise puts everyone behind you in an awkward situation. They are a little too short to call your raise cold, but any re-raise will commit all of their chips to the pot, so they will have great difficulty playing marginal hands like 66 or AT, even if they suspect you are stealing.
Conclusion
Just as in any form of poker, higher level thinking in tournament play requires looking at the entire situation rather than just the two cards you hold. With shallow stacks, players often have very limited options of either moving all in or folding. With smart players at the table, this often creates situations where the correct play is to raise with what is likely the worst hand or to fold a hand that figures to be best.