6-Max NLH Cash -- Betting Tricks

For starters, let me say that I did not play the WWdN last night, the tournament that first got me interested in playing with the bloggers and that eventually led to me starting up this blog itself. And it feels goooood. Too good. Too good not to wake up remembering how someone who can't even spell poker made a horrendous call against me. Too good not having the memory of some rediculous set of cards hitting the board to take my better hand and make mincemeat of it in a key spot. Too good to have no negative feelings at all about what happened to me or how I played in general among the ghey little group of bloggers with whom I spend so much of my time online at the virtual tables. I know it shouldn't feel that good. But it does. All of which is to say that it is clear to me that taking the night off from the blogger tournament circuit was a good thing. No evening blood boiling = no morning mental hangover for Hoyazo.

And don't get me wrong -- I did play a bit of poker last night. After watching a good first-season X-Files episode on dvd with the Hammer Wife, I fired up the new laptop and surveyed the night's mtt scene on full tilt. I eventually settled on the 10:30pm ET FTOPS Main Event satellite for a $26 buyin, which ended up sporting I think 60 players, including fellow bloggers Kajagugu and NumbBono and awarding FTOPS ME seats to the top three finishers. Although I did not win the seat in this thing, for the second straight night I ran deep, only falling in a huge allin preflop pot against the chip leader when my JJ failed to hold up against his AK. Why people with chip leads persist in calling allins from significant stacks with just AK remains a mystery to me, but in this case it worked out for him and IGH in 12th place for the second straight night in an FTOPS satellite. So that brings the total spent on qualifying for FTOPS even up to $52 over two days, but frankly both of those buyins were won with tokens acquired in $13.75 heads-up token sngs, so it's really more like $27.50 spent so far to try to get in to the big-buyin FTOPS events.

OK on to today's poker topic, which is cash games, and some of the tricks I see and like to use myself at the cash tables. As I have alluded to on a few occasions on the blog recently, I've been taking some time almost every night to play some cash games, mostly focusing on $.50-1 6-max nlh as suggested to me by Raveen a few weeks ago. And it's been going well overall, with my only big losses along the way coming from suckouts and from horrible river cards that completely ruin what was otherwise a nice play building up by me. What I'm finding in my own play in these cash games, at least at this level, is that I am making the majority of my profits not from playing super-tight starting cards and by always folding one pair on the flop, but rather by playing my opponents far more than I'm playing my own cards (and also playing good starting cards, don't get me wrong). Today I wanted to show you guys two hands from my cash game play last night, review some of the potentially subtle trickery I see going on, and ask the question of the cash game regulars out there, is this how you guys are making your money playing cash?

Hand #1: We're about 30 minutes in to a session at $.50-1 6-max nlh. I'm in the big blind with A7o, and the action folds around to the small blind, who thinks for a moment before just limping. Now, early on in a tournament I might be tempted to just take a free flop with this hand, planning to outplay my opponent on a later street or hoping to flop an Ace and maybe play it slow enough to get another bet or two out of my opponent. But in cash games I've found it much better business to just play it fast when I have reason to believe I'm ahead on the flop, and when I can lose actual cash money if I get sucked out on later in the hand by just checking along in the earlygoing. So I raise just about the size of the pot, and my opponent calls my raise to see a flop heads-up:



The flop comes Q64 rainbow. So I've missed the flop entirely, but in all likelihood since my opponent called a near-pot raise preflop and thus probably has some kind of high cards, he has likely missed it too, and in my mind my A7 is likely to still be best here. My opponent thinks for a while and leads out a little less than the size of the pot. Now, this guy has watched me c-bet on several occasions when I was the bettor or raiser preflop, so I figure him for a steal here, at most with one of the lower pairs on the board but more likely with just two high cards that are overpairs to the lower two cards on the board. Thus, going with my read, I go with the reraise here:



My opponent then does something that I seem to see all the time at the cash games, at least at this level:



Yep. The dreaded min-reraise. But in my experience, while in tournaments the minraise in a sizeable pot often indicates strength and an attempt to elicit a call or a reraise, in cash games at the level I am playing them, more often than not I have found this to indicate weakness, and probably a steal attempt. If the pot or the raise from my opponent had been a bit bigger I might have felt differently, but in this case, I'm thinking why not raise it up to 45 or 50 bucks if he really has a good hand and wants to get rid of me right now. Raising me just the $15 on top of the $15 I had already put into the pot just smacked of weakness to me, of a guy who was putting me on a steal-raise and who wanted to get me to lay down my garbage and give him a nice sized pot. Think about it -- I raised the pot from the big blind only after he had open-limped from the small blind, and then the flop had come by all rights pretty dam raggy with just the Q64 rainbow. Unless I just happen to have a Queen in my hand here, which is not so likely given my preflop raise, then my opponent, whom I had observed to be a thinking kind of player, is fair to assume I might be bluff-raising him here. It's a bit of an aggressive move for me to be making, but at the same time it's not all that uncommon at a cash game in my experience.

So, still putting my opponent on a bluff-reraise here, I decide I am going to go ahead and re-reraise him to now make him think I obviously must have a hand. There's enough in the pot at this point that it's worth it for me to take down now, and since I don't possibly put him on a pocket pair, AQ or KQ due to his preflop open-limp from the small blind, and I don't put him on Q6, Q4 or 64 either due to his calling my preflop raise, I just don't see what he could have that would justify his calling another re-reraise from me here.

Plus, and you can see the beginning of this in the image above, I also two other semi-tricky moves that I have found very profitable and effective over time, both in cash games and in tournaments, but especially in the cash games (at least at the $100 nl level). I want this guy to think I actually have a good hand here. Unlike his preflop action, I actually did raise it up preflop, and I raised him right away on the flop as well when he led out with a bet, so unlike him, I've actually played this hand all along like I could have QQ, 66, 44, AQ or KQ. So, the first ploy I made use of is I let the timer click all the way down to just one tick left in the timer bar before I raise. As Don was just writing about the other day, the tick-down followed by a big raise almost every single time means the bettor is strong. So, I used this move while running a complete bluff, and I combined that with another form of deception that I also see commonly used in the cash game scenario: I reraised him big, but just barely not quite all of my chips. By leaving just a few chips in my stack -- not enough to seem at all like I'm leaving myself an escape hatch, mind you -- I've given the impression that I'm trying to appear a bit weakish, which along with the timer tick-down move, I am hopeful will give the overall impression that I am actually quite strong. So, I re-re-reraise my opponent with air here to $63, leaving myself just $7 left in my stack, after deliberately letting my time clock tick down to just one second left before acting:



And my opponent insta-folds, indicating to me that I was right all along. This guy had nothing and was just putting a move on me, which I thwarted by sticking with my read and by using some tactics that I often see used -- and more importantly, that I know my opponent often sees used -- by strong players who desperately are trying to elicit calls. That was a fun hand right there.

Hand #2: This hand took place on the same table as the above hand, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, and I am once again in the blinds, this time the small blind, with JTs. UTG limps preflop for $1, and I call the limp myself for just another 50 cents with a great multi-way hand. Then the big blind makes a move that I have personally observed him do at this very table at least three times, which is to pot-raise a bunch of limpers preflop when he acts near the end of the action. Having watched him do this on multiple occasions and take down pots without even having to show anything down, to me this raise meant absolutely nothing about the strength of his hand, and I honestly believed from observing him that he would make this exact same move with 42o (forever called the "Waffles" in my mind) as he would with a nice pocket pair or whatever. So I like my JTs against that hand range, so after UTG folds for the raise, I make the call and see a flop with a little over $10 in the pot:



The flop comes K43 rainbow. Another non-threatening flop, and frankly another one where my read so far in the hand tells me I am likely to be ahead. But rather than get crazy betting out against a big stack at my table with just Jack-high, I opt to go for the check on the flop here, and see what my opponent wants to do with the hand, although I put him on nothing good and don't see it as likely at all that he has a King or any kind of a pocket pair based on my preflop read thus far in the hand:



My opponent on the big stack bets out $7.95 into a $10.45 pot. This bet struck me immediately was another example of a trick which I see used all the time at the cash tables -- again at least at the lower limits where I've been playing, maybe not at the higher limits because it's a recockulously ghey move -- but his bet of $7.95 seems to be sized at a number that happens to look like a ton of chips in the graphics on-screen. I've seen many doofuses online in cash games try to make use of the way certain bets appear, by betting a big-looking amount like something with 95 cents attached to it, so that the bet appears physically more intimidating on-screen and thus is more likely to elicit folds from one's opponents. 95 times out of 100, especially at this level, when such a bet is made it is often done out of weakness, in that if you secretly wanted your opponent to call, then unless you're some crazy level-5-thinking mofo stuck playing $100 nl, you would make a bet that looks smaller, and thus less scary to call, on-screen rather than a scary-appearing amount like $7.95 with its two large stacks of chips. So, I take his particularly-sized flop bet here as weakness, which goes right along with my preflop read of possible weakness with the meaningless, automatic raise-the-limpers move that I'd seen him using all night at this table thus far. Thus, acting on my read, I reraise him big right here, representing a nice hand here with a raise of a little more than the size of the pot. Again, a minraise here I think might be viewed as weakness by many players, especially with the pot small like it is so far at this point in the hand, and I want to clearly portray the opposite, like I have a King or a big pocket pair or something like that. So I reraise him solidly right here on the flop:



My opponent thinks for a few seconds, and then calls. No further reraise, which I definitely would have expected if he was actually strong, given the size of the pot getting up there after my good-sized raise. So at this point I am so totally not putting this guy on a King or any other good medium pair or anything. I'm not sure why he called, but again at this level you run into people all the time who can't lay down for just one bet or one raise when they're caught stealing, even if they have nothing. They just hope they will get one more chance to make a big steal later in the hand, or that they'll maybe hit a miracle card on the turn or river. So he calls, I'm still pretty sure I'm ahead here or at least that I have my six Jacks and Tens as outs, and then turn card brings me a pretty Ten♥.

Now I've got second pair decent kicker in a hand where I never thought my opponent had a good piece of the flop, and now in case he might have been sitting on a draw, or a 3 or 4 in his hand for second or third pair, now I'm fairly sure I've taken the lead here. The pot has $50.35 in it at this point, and I want to bet here and bet enough to get this guy to lay down whatever he has -- be it a draw, a pair and an overcard like A3 or A4, maybe a low King that he might otherwise stick around with to beat me. However, once again I want to use a tactic that I think makes it more likely that my opponent will fold what I believe is a weak hand, and in this case that means betting enough to scare him off, but also betting not-so-much that it looks to my opponent like I may be trying to suck him in to making a call. I thought it over, and here was my decision:



$37 into a $50 pot. It's clearly enough to easily price out any draws, and yet my goal here is to also make it look like to my opponent like I might actually want him to call, maybe because I've got top pair and a nice kicker, maybe I've made two pairs, whatever. But I think the bet sizing is key here, because I can't bet so little that my opponent can profitably draw a card to the river at either a straight or a flush draw (or both) or even at some kind of two pairs given what I'm holding, and I don't want to bet so much that my opponent suddenly thinks his K2 or whatever might be best because I'm clearly just trying to chase him out of the pot here. To me, a bet like $37 screams out that I am strong, and that's exactly the impression I want to leave my opponent with at this point in the hand.

He folded:



and I took down a $50 pot. Not a huge dollar amount in absolute terms, but a half a buyin is half a buyin, and I'm not complaining.

So what is my point of all this post today? Number one, I thought it might be interesting to show some of the betting tricks that I see other players using with some regularity at the $100 nl cash tables, and to show how I use some of those common bet-sizing and bet-making tricks against thinking players to my own advantage, be it whether I have a strong hand and want a call, or a very weak hand and desperately want my opponent to fold.

Number two, I would really like to get the opinions of the cash game regulars out there about these betting tricks. Although I've played a bit at $200 nl (mostly to little success, as I am forever The Man Formerly Known as Cash Game Donkey), in general I do not play at the higher limits in cash games. And, my strong assumption is that this kind of bullshit, while very profitable at the lower levels, is going to be absurdly useless and ineffective as the betting limits progress above the $100 nl level. Frankly I cannot even imagine someone sitting down with $400 at a no-limit holdem cash table online, and proceeding to make scary-looking bets like $9.99 in an attempt to freak opponents out into folding. Similarly, I assume that using bet sizes like I outline above, or even more, allowing the timer to click down right near the end before making a bet, will be picked off much more frequently at the higher limits than they seem to work fairly regularly at $100nl. Among the readers who play at these higher levels, is this your experience as well? Do you guys use your own little betting tricks like these, or do you see them with any regularity at above the $100 nl level? I would love to know your thoughts on this point. In fact, generally speaking, do you higher-limit cash guys find that you're making a lot of your profits on plays like the ones I've described above? Or, rather, are the majority of your profits coming from hands like the ones profiled often on Lucko's blog, where you've actually made very strong hands and are finding ways to get opponents to pay you off? Again, this is something I would love to know, as I've had a lot of success against $100 nl 6-max over the past month or so, and may contemplate moving up levels in the near future if I continued to experience the success I've seen so far in my cash game play.

Tonight is the next Mookie tournament at 10pm ET on full tilt (password is vegas1 as always), also the latest BBT tournament where the points leaderboard is really starting to take shape. Come by and try to knock down current BBT leader Miami Don, and try to take out current "undefeated" 7-for-7 BBT points-makers BuddyDank and jeciimd before they hit the point. And while I'm on the topic, make sure to check out Iakaris's blog and jeciimd's blog, as the two invisible writers have actually returned with some actual blog posts over the past few days, much to my enjoyment and probably to yours as well. If nothing else we want to send some traffic these donkeys' way to help encourage them to keep up the posting, for however long the recent trend can last. Anyways, so make sure to show up for the Mookie tonight and get your game on in the biggest blogger tournament week in and week out. Normally I would attack your manhood here and make some veiled threats as far as what you all are if you don't play the Mook tonight, but to be honest I don't think I will be able to make it tonight due to some other plans I already have going on for this evening. If I can get in there I surely will, but don't count on me for some easy dead money in the first few minutes of the tournament tonight because I doubt I will be back and online in time for the tournament start. But I should be there for the Dookie and maybe for some more FTOPS satellite action as well later in the evening if all goes as expected this evening. Best of luck to everyone in the BBT points chase tonight, and I should see you later at the virtual tables.