Miller, Ed. Smallll Stakes No-Limit Holdem

26 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD’EM

will take the pot down often on the flop. If he calls, he’ll almost always have top pair or better, so you can shut down and wait for another opportunity.

A more aggressive opponent might reraise out of the blinds preflop with many different hands. Or, he might checkraise you with air on the flop. Both actions normally reduce your earn from stealing.

5. An image conducive to stealing. In a $1–$2 game, you have played few hands in the last two hours, and no one has reason to think you’re on tilt. You raise to $6 first to act from the cutoff with 5♠4♠. Only the button calls. The flop of K♣J♦9♣ misses you completely. You check, the button bets $8, and you checkraise to $24. He thinks about it briefly, then folds.

Now let’s change the backstory. You have played many hands in the last two hours and just took a bad beat for your stack. You raise to $6 with 5♠4♠. The button calls. The flop comes K♣J♦9♣. You check, he bets $8, and you checkraise to $24. He thinks briefly, then calls. Your wild play has made him much more likely to call. Unfortunately, you still have no idea whether he has a big hand or is calling to see what you do. He might even be calling with nothing just to bet big on the turn because he is tired of you pushing him around. Either way, you are less likely to win the hand.

Often a tight image makes it easier to steal. However, other images can also help. For example, say you get all-in several times in a short period. Opponents may tighten up preflop because they don’t want to face your aggressive betting when they hit a pair.

These are basic concepts about stealing. None is absolute. For example, you might find it easier to steal out of position if your opponents may think you have a big hand. Or it might be easier to steal from an aggressive opponent if he folds when you apply pressure. In general, however, stealing is easier when you have position, deeper stacks, fewer potential opponents, nonaggressive opponents, and an image conducive to stealing.

When evaluating steal equity, keep in mind that most successful steals happen when no one flops top pair or better. In these situations, the player who makes the last bet usually wins. If you play chicken well, you gain more value from stealing. That’s one reason a good

loose aggressive player can do so well against weak-tight opponents, particularly in shorthanded games.

With this basic primer on equity and stealing under your belt, you’re now ready to move on.

PART 2: BEATING ONLINE

$1–$2 6-MAX GAMES

Introduction

This next part is focused on a quite specific topic: how to beat an online $1–$2 6-max no-limit game. Why did we choose to focus on this game? In fact, why did we choose to focus so narrowly on any one game? And if you intend to play a game other than online $1–$2 6-max, how relevant will this book be to you?

Here are the short answers to those questions. This game provides an ideal platform to teach the most critical no-limit concepts. If you can learn to crush an online $1–$2 6-max no-limit game, then you can handily beat 99 percent of all no-limit games in the world. So this book is highly relevant to the vast majority of no-limit players, whether you play live games or online, shorthanded games, full-ring, or even heads-up. Learn these ideas, apply them to your game, and you will destroy the competition.

And now for the slightly longer answers.

The Threshold For Professional Play

We want you to play poker at a professional level. That’s our goal. Online $1–$2 6-max represents a critical threshold for professional players. Good $1–$2 pros make a good living—$10,000 per month or more even with a relatively relaxed playing schedule. So when we teach you to beat an online $1–$2 6-max game, we’ve taught you to play at a professional level.

If you prefer playing live, you’re in for a real treat. Taking someone who can beat an online $1–$2 6-max game and putting them in a typical $1–$2 or $2–$5 live game is like taking a professional football player and putting him in a game full of 14-year-olds. The pro will run absolutely rampant.

32 SMALL STAKES NO-LIMIT HOLD’EM

This book teaches an aggressive style. If you play online, you’ll be playing against a fair number of players who have seen this approach before and who can fight back. But if you play live, often none of the players at the table will have any clue how to defend themselves against you. You can pick them all apart. Anyone who can make a living playing online $1–$2 6-max can also make a living playing $2– $5 or $5–$10 live no-limit.

Developing A Robust Strategy

You can beat easy no-limit games with a limited, simple strategy. Nut peddling, for instance, will beat most small stakes live games and some online microlimit games. It’s easy. Just play tight preflop, wait until you hit the flop, and get your money in. Don’t bluff much, and don’t worry too much about what your opponents have. Rely on your hand strength to give you a long term edge.

Limited strategies will succeed at low levels, but not at higher levels. Good players can beat nut peddlers simply by refusing to pay off their good hands and stealing most of the other pots.

Limited strategies like nut peddling don’t work well at online $1– $2 6-max. If you hope to generate a meaningful edge, you have to adopt a more complete strategy. You have to bluff and play hands for value. You have to read hands. You have to adjust to your opponents. You have to exploit others while you avoid getting exploited.

This book teaches a more robust strategy. Current online $1–$2 6- max is arguably the smallest game where most opponents play well enough that you need an advanced strategy to succeed. So that’s the game we chose.

Applying Our Lessons To Your Game

After reading this book, some of you will jump directly into the online $1–$2 6-max game we use in most of our examples. And some of you will choose a different game. You might play a lower limit or a higher

INTRODUCTION 33

one. You might play a 9- or 10-handed game instead. Or you might play in a loose live game where six players limp in every hand.

Many of the ideas from this section will apply to your no-limit game, even if yours appears at first to be a very different type of game from the one we describe. Basic ideas like leveraging position, running bluffs, playing for value, and isolating bad players can be used to good effect in nearly every no-limit game on the planet. Indeed, we chose this particular game because it’s an excellent one for teaching practical no-limit ideas that are useful across a broad spectrum of games.

Get Ready To Rock

This section will teach you how to defeat an online $1–$2 no-limit 6- max game. It may take you a little time to work all of these ideas correctly into your game, but once you do, you will be a force to be reckoned with. Let’s get started.

Stealing Blinds And Playing

Position

Blind stealing is the cornerstone of any successful 6-max strategy. It’s the absolute bedrock of a winning player’s game. We’re not speaking in theoretical terms either. The difference between a break-even player and a modestly successful pro is one blind steal per 100 hands. And you’ll see the results very quickly because it’s a source of consistent profit.

Blind stealing simply means raising preflop in an attempt to win the pot immediately. But what does it mean to blind-steal better than you currently do? There are two basic variables:

1.Stealing range

2.Raise size

You can choose to steal with a hand or you can pass on it. And you can raise to various amounts. You can adjust both of these variables to optimize your blind-stealing strategy.

Stealing Range

For now, let’s talk about stealing from the button, since it’s the canonical stealing situation. We’ll talk about stealing from the cutoff and small blind later in the section.

The top factor for determining your stealing range is how tightly your opponents in the blinds play. If you have two tight opponents in the blinds, often 100 percent of your hands will be profitable to open. You can get a sense of how tight your opponents are by looking at their “Fold To Steal In Big Blind” stat in a tracking program such as PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager.