In this post, we look at how we spin up big stacks in the fast and furious 888 Poker Game of SNAP! We show you some thought processes behind some key big hands and how we try and make our opponents make mistakes!
Look to bet small with junk and huge hands
This will help us remain balanced and let us see all five cards for the times we bet the flop and check back turn. It will also let our opponents make mistakes for when they float or check-raise us with their poor hands that would fold to a larger bet.
Luckily this was the case in this pot, maybe because we had made this exact type of 33% pot bet previously when missing boards, but we made our opponent go for a huge re-raise all in on this flop with just bottom pair.
Calling off with decent equity hands in multi-way spots
In this pot we are facing two all-ins and we have an Ace in the Big Blind, now this is not one of the best holdings for this situation as we only have A7o we would prefer to have a hand like A4s or Q9s but this is still going to be a profitable call a lot of the time, being able to win a big pot…
We will need around 31.9% equity here, in the long run, to make this a profitable call as we are calling $31 to win $97. (31/97 = 0.3195)
The other thing about this particular scenario is that there will be a side pot of an extra $22 between us and the small blind, so this makes it an easier call as we only need to beat the Small Blind’s hand to almost break even on this call.
In this exact case we end up having 28.5% equity with our hand 3 ways but a big edge against the Small blind who has just 10 high, so we are in decent shape here even though one of our opponents has us crushed with pocket tens.
We end up getting to realise our equity in this spot, which is why we are going to want to flick in these calls when we can because winning $97 pots is what we want to be doing!
Check back against aggressive opponents to control the pot and keep bluffs in
We will want to look to play some small ball poker in certain spots, some good times to exercise this type of move are:
- When the board is better for our opponents’ range than ours
- Having one pair hands on boards with draws
- When the player has put in check-raises in previous hands or shown a willingness to bluff
In this pot we saw a board where we hit top pair, but our opponent can have a tonne more 2x in their hand as they have defended against a min-raise from the big blind.
We can’t look to get three streets of value in this pot, so we can either bet flop, check turn and decide river or we can choose to mix up our play and check back the flop and look to catch some bluffs by faining some weakness here.
So, we do opt on checking back the flop and our opponent leads out on the turn, so we have a clear call here, there are two flush draws that would bet like this and many bluffs that would just stab at this card including straight draws or worse pairs than our 8.
I see little value in raising we would only get action if we are beaten and we may get pushed off the pot with a big all-in move from a high equity hand semi-bluffing like J♥ T♥ for example.
The River card isn’t great for us, some hands got there so we essentially just have a bluff catcher now with our pair of 8s however this is going to be good enough to call in this spot, the main thinking here is we can’t give our opponent the rope to try and bluff us by checking this flop and then not follow through with calling them down with just one overcard rolling off.
Hero call is good with our opponent having just a six high missed diamond draw.
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