Darkened Poker

This post is a continuation of the thought process started in “9 Handed Middle Position starting hand range for Texas Hold’em” , we will finish the topic out and talk about how to bet individual hands from middle position.

Factors that go into making this betting chart:

• Bet more with hands that have good EV heads up since it is later position and less likely to get multiple caller.
• Betting with enough with different hand types that people can not put you on a range of hands within the 20%
• Betting with at least 50% of all the hands we play
• Limping with enough with raising hands that we can use check raises to protect our limping hands.

ie: AA 4 = Bet 4 out of the 6 possible pairs and limp with the other 2

Limping:

• The hands that are only limping hands need volume and I would probably not limp with them unless someone before you also limped.
• 7% of your monster hands ( AA – JJ AK – AQ )  you will be limping with to catch people trying to raise you off your limp
• 8% of your hands ( small pairs ) you will limp with but can stand to call a raise with for set value

Betting:

• Betting with a lot of your Top EV hands but also has it balanced with low pairs and suited connectors so they can not always just call your raises and re-raise your c-bet on low flops.
• Betting with small pairs and suited connectors does mean you have to c-bet a lot flops if you get heads up and count on they only hit the flop 33% of the time to make a profit.

2-Betting:

• Again a good range of Top EV hands that play well heads up but balanced with the low pairs to avoid people putting you on a narrow range of flops.
• Of the big pocket pairs that you limp with I suggest 50% of the time re-raising with them and just flat calling if heads up so your smooth call is not predictable and means you have a small pair.

3-Betting:

• Still trying to keep a range of hands as a lot of people call 3-bets light just to take flops away from people.
• Dropping all hands that can be dominated and just playing hands that flop hard.

4-Betting:

• No longer worried about a range of flops, if they call the 4-bet then we really want to have the best hand, I am only putting in enough hands so they can not always assume we have AA or KK and will consider giving us action.

If you in extremely aggressive game then drop the normal limping hands and start limping with even more of your raising hands so you can go for more check raises.

I would also map these betting percentages on each hand the color of the cards instead of just trying to randomly remember how often your betting each hand.  Humans are really bad at being random.

ie  AA 4 = Bet 4 out of 6 possible pairs, I would bet all pairs that are mixed color and only limp with the ones that are all black or red.

♣♥♦

Darkened Poker

This post is a continuation of the thought process started in “9 Handed Early Position starting hand range for Texas Hold’em“, we will talk about how to bet these early position hands.

Factors that go into making this chart:

• Betting more often with hands that have good EV heads up
• Betting with enough with different hands within the 15% range that people can not put you on a range of cards
• Ensure we are betting with 50% of all the hands we play
• Limping enough with good hands that we can use check raises to protect our normal limping hands.

ie: AA 4 = Bet 4 out of the 6 possible pairs and limp with the other 2

Limping:

• Always limping with the mid range suited connectors that really need volume of people in the pot to make them profitable.
• 7% of your monster hands ( AA – JJ AK – AQ )  you will be limping with to catch people trying to raise you off your limp
• 8% of your hands ( small pairs ) you will limp with but can stand to call a raise with for set value

Betting:

• Betting with a lot of the Top EV hands but also has it balanced with low pairs so they can not always just call your raises and re-raise your c-bet on low flops.
• Betting with small pairs does mean one has to c-bet a lot flops if one get heads up and count on they only hit the flop 33% of the time to make a profit.

2-Betting:

• Again a good range of Top EV hands that play well heads up but balanced with the low pairs to avoid people putting one on a narrow range of flops.
• Of the big pocket pairs that you limp with I suggest 50% of the time re-raising with them and just flat calling if heads up so your smooth call is not predictable and means you have a small pair.

3-Betting:

• Still trying to keep a range of hands as a lot of people call 3-bets light just to take flops away from people.
• Dropping all hands that can be dominated and just playing hands that flop hard.

4-Betting:

• No longer worried about a range of flops, if they call the 4-bet then we really want to have the best hand, I am only putting in enough hands so they can not always assume we have AA or KK and will consider giving us action.

This system works very well for the average game, if you in extremely aggressive game then drop the normal limping hands and start limping with even more of your raising hands so you can go for more check raises.  If you in a extremely passive game ( rare these days ) then start raising with even more of of your limping hands and hope to either get enough callers to get the proper volume on it or get heads up so you can take it down with a c-bet.

I would also map these betting percentages on each hand the color of the cards instead of just trying to randomly remember how often your betting each hand.  Humans are really bad at being random.

ie  AA 4 = Bet 4 out of 6 possible pairs, I would bet all pairs that are mixed color and only limp with the ones that are all black or red.

♣♥♦

Darkened Poker

Lets continue this thread about starting hands and look at building a range that one could play from late position ( UTG 7-9).  A typical TAG would want to play about 30% of of his/her hands from this position.  The top 30% EV hands for 9 handed games are:

Now this hand range does not suffer from the problem before were it is easily exploitable given that is does have coverage of the lower cards.  But it does still suffer from the problem that if you raise and get heads up a lot of these hands do not play well at all.  So we can remove some of the 2-3 gapped suited cards and replace them with the missing small pairs and throw back in some Ace decent kicker.

The EV for the starting range does go down 0.503 to 0.487 which is really nothing at all.

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Darkened Poker

Lets continue this thread about starting hands and look at building a range that one could play from middle position ( UTG 4-6).  A typical TAG would want to play about 20% of of his/her hands from this position.  The top 20% EV hands for 9 handed games are:

Although this is the Max EV it is extremely exploitable:

• Very few cards in it a below 9, it is easy for people to put you on a range of hands
• It is very Ace & King heavy, they will re-raise you a lot if they do not think you hit top pair.
• Also if your raising 50% of the time ( like you should be ) a lot of these hands to do not play well heads up and will leave you with tough decisions most likely out of position.
• To many of these hands only play well with volume and trying to start a limp from mid position is even more likely to get raised or not enough people will call to make it profitable.

To fix this I would put in more hands that play well heads up since your in middle position now it is less likely you will get called in multiple places if you raise.  Do this by removing some Ace Rag and gapped suited connectors; replacing them with suited connector range down to 54s and putting in all the small pairs.

This fixes the above big problem:

• Small pairs can be used to pick off continuation bets if your in position, or re-raise if you hit your set.  Suited connectors will hit lower flops so you can continuation bet a lot more flops that do not contain Ace or King and people will be less like to re-raise.
• Less Ace & King rag hands mean we will not be dominated in heads up situations were both people hit.

The EV for the starting range does go down 0.63 to 0.56 but in my mind that is worth it for the ease of play after the flop.

♣♥♦

Darkened Poker