It can be a bit of a minefield for some players on how to play with deep stacks in poker, most players have a comfortable game plan with shorter stacks and know ranges of hands to play with 50bbs however when we are sat on a stack of 100bbs+ how should we be playing?
In this post, we are going to run through some pointers on deep stack play…
Do we change our open raise sizes?
The first thing we are going to look at is how large to make our open raises, these don’t need to be any different as to when we are playing from a shorter stack, so if you normally open to 2.2x this is still fine, this allows us to still have steal raises in our range, if we make all our raises larger because we are deeper we will be getting a worse risk to reward ratio on our steal raises.
3Bets in position
To have a deeper pot to ratio when playing 3Bet pots we want to 3Bet to a small size whilst in position against our opponents, this will allow for more play post flop, whereas if we 3Bet larger we are making the stack to pot ratio smaller and thus could make it easier for our opponent to navigate post flop.
3Bets out of position
On the other side of this coin, we are still going to want to 3Bet on the larger side for when we are the ones out of position. The main reason for this is that the implied odds for our opponents continuing in such deep stacked play is great, so we need to give our opponents a worse price preflop so they can’t profitably continue with a wide range of hands profitably.
Another good reason to 3Bet larger is that we get a better range definition of our opponents, so if we 3Bet from the small blind to 12bbs around 4x our opponents late open than our opponent is not going to continue with hands like 54o 56o 67o 89o, making boards less troublesome and making whoever has the nut advantage on coordinated boards more evenly weighted.
3Bet Steals
We are going to want to have a polarised range of 3Bets whilst out of position too, especially against our weakest and most aggressive opponents. This will allow us to have steals in our range and get value from the bottom of our ranges as well as remaining unpredictable so we aren’t just 3betting the top of our range.
Good hands to work into these steal 3Bets are suited connectors that will play well on connected run outs as well as suited Ace high hands as making nut flushes whilst deep stacked is a very profitable proposition as making a nut flush against our opponents worse flush can allow us to win huge pots.
When should we be 4betting?
Well it is a good idea to protect our range of hands we would play as a 4Bet, so ideally we should be looking to flat 3Bets whether in or out of position with all hands worse than say QQ, this again will allow us to continue against our opponents in a high stack to pot ratio allowing for a great deal of play.
If we are playing very deep stacks, we can construct a 4Betting range with the top 3.5% of hands that includes QQ, KK, AA, AK, and occasionally using some suited Ace high hands like AQs, A4s & A5s. This will allow us to have 4Bet steals against our most aggressive opponents whilst blocking Aces and even when we end up playing pots with the bottom of our ranges in these scenarios we have a hand that can make nut flushes, straights and make a pair of Aces.
Should we be trapping with Aces and Kings?
It can be a good idea to just flat call 3Bets with Aces and Kings for deception against our opponents, especially if they are aggressive enough to pile in chips post flop with lesser holdings. Occasionally working in some slow plays with these hands is another good way to balance our ranges which makes our overall strategy hard to play against.
Post flop play in 3bet pots
So now we have built the pot out of position against our opponent, what now?
Well, we are going to want to play a little slower than we would in short stack to pot ratio situations where we can simply look to bet and get stacks in on later streets. A lot of checking out of position is a good overall strategy, this allows us to protect our ranges if we are doing this with huge hands as well as when we hate the board. It will also allow aggressive opponents the opportunity to bet us off our hands, winning bets that we would not have won if we just keep our foot on the pedal and bet the flop.