In this post, we are going to look at some more in-depth tournament tips from the Learn Pro Poker coach and WSOP bracelet winning Ryan Laplante…
Choosing 3-Bet Spots
We will want to pick our 3-Bets out of hands that will work well as calls but will benefit from getting the pot heads up if possible, this way we will have more equity in the pot.
Whilst A9o doesn’t play well multiway but against a late position raise, we will have good equity with the hand so we want to just play against one opponent if possible.
For our sizing, we are going to be able to size down with these 3-Bets. This means we could make this 3-Bet around 2.3x the original raise rather than this sizing of 3x. This is because we can raise smaller when in position, it will allow weaker holdings to stay in the pot and we can still win the pot outright sometimes for a cheaper sizing which will save us money the times we 3-Bet and fold to a 4-Bet.
Continuing when We Get Cold Called
You are going to see this move more often in smaller stakes tournaments, whereas in a bigger buy-in game someone would choose to 4-Bet or fold with their hands in a pot like this, newer players will just look to flat call and decide how to play the hand post-flop.
When players do this however we have a good read on their hands, they probably wouldn’t make this call with low pairs like 22–77. So we are left with a huge part of their range being 88–QQ with some possible KK and AA in there from time to time as traps. Another big part of our opponents range in spots like this is going to be broadway holdings like QJs, KQs, AQs &AQo.
So as we can see from looking at our opponent’s range they hit this board extremely hard, so against this type of hand we have pretty much two options:
- Check behind and look to get to showdown
- Bet very small to keep control of the pot and be able to check back the Turn card and see the River for a cheap price
Realise the Wetness of Boards
We will want to realise how coordinated a board is, otherwise known as how wet it is for a few reasons.
We will want to bet smaller on less coordinated boards but more often with a wider range and then as the board gets wetter we will want to be using a larger bet sizing but betting with a lower frequency.
This is because we are going to be sizing up with our bigger equity hands so for instance, lets look at the wettest board of J T 9 monotone, we will want to bet this with a massive sizing when we bet with our highest equity hands like KQo or JJ, TT, 99 for instance, because we will be charging the max for draws to continue against us as get more value.
Consider this compared to a board of 2 2 2, on this type of board we can bet small with our entire range, this is because we have a wide range that is not really affected by this board, so we can look to keep weaker holdings from our opponent because there are no draws or bad cards to protect against.
Let’s look at this board as a real example:
We open raise UTG+1 with 9♠ 9♥ and we get called from the Big Blind.
The flop comes down 6♥ 2♣ 5♣
How much should we be betting on this board?
We will want to bet this board at a fairly small frequency and when we do we will want to use a large sizing of near pot-sized.
This way we get a lot of value from hands that have pairs, straight or flush draws. We will have hands like Ace-high flush draws and all the overpairs on this board to bet with a large sizing and drive the action with our highest equity holdings, whilst choosing to check back this flop a lot with some of our holdings that don’t hit this board hard, this way we can either catch up on turn cards or look to play small ball and get to showdown.
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