Using the Call as a Weapon

During the spring, I was struggling with my game. I felt like I was generally swimming upstream – lost, confused, and hopeless. I got a lot of great feedback on my Monday Night posts, which helped me think about some different concepts and strategies. The most influential comment posted was by someone named John. He questioned how I was going to pick up enough chips to compete in the tournament playing tight, waiting for the nuts, and rarely bluffing. John went on to write “The problem is you're obviously skilled enough to get involved in so many more pots and outplay people post flop; but you never get involved in anything when you have a decent sized stack. Then you find spots to make moves but it would cost you 25% of your stack to do it. You could make those moves and still survive if you were wrong if you hadn't folded every marginal hand for the first hour and a half.”

During one of those Monday Nights, I wrote about how it was important to find your own style, a default methodology that fit you. It’s critical to be able to change gears, to shift your level of aggression, of course, but it does help to find a customary groove you can settle into. In cash games I have generally used a pretty unique style, rather passive. I am not a big believer in “find out where you’re at” tactics which involve a lot of betting, raising, and reraising. Instead I have generally called with marginal hands to test people, relying on player tendencies and board texture rather than my own representation to make borderline calls or folds. While this style has generally been very effective for me in cash games, I have never really felt like it translated all that well to tournament play.

Most of the better online tournament players (and cash gamers as well, for that matter) use a style predominated by three-betting. I have spent some time experimenting with this style in both tournaments and cash games. It has never really worked out for me. I cannot match the better players in preflop play. My timing is poor. When I get into preflop battles against good players, I often lose. I seem to get four-bet a lot when I three-bet light, regardless of my image.

I spent a lot of time talking poker with Adam Friedman during this period. Adam plays a ton of hands and almost never reraises. Adam does not play as much online as he does live, where three-bets are less frequent and more commonly called. Talking to Adam while struggling to figure out the preflop games of chicken encouraged me to move towards that style of flatcalling a lot of hands. A couple famous players who use this style are Daniel Negreanu and Gavin Smith. The key here is that if you play this passively, you have to play a lot of hands so that your opponents know you could have anything and so you will have a lot of opportunities to get chips. In the past when I used this style I didn’t usually play enough hands, which meant my opponents put me on a slim range of hands and then used that range to outplay me.

Two other things I was doing wrong were folding too often to continuation bets, and folding too often to three-bets. Maybe I’ll discuss those concepts on here another time.

I don’t play nearly as many hands as Negreanu, Friedman, or Smith and probably never will. Those guys also have a rowdier table image than me, and are more likely to get paid off by nonbelievers when they make hands. So with a more solid image, I should have the opportunity to bluff a little more. Bluffing is still the biggest weakness in my game, something I need to get much better at in order to graduate to a real world-class player. In lieu of bluffing, however, there is trapping and bluff-catching, which are a conservative player’s two best friends.

One of the most important hands I played in the FTOPS $2500 illustrated some of these concepts – how a conservative player can get chips by calling.

It was about halfway through day one, and I had a decent stack. I was pretty new to my current table, so I didn’t know much about the players. Someone raised in early position, and I called from middle position with my favorite hand, king-ten suited (diamonds this time). Everyone else folded. The flop came king of clubs – rag of diamonds – rag of diamonds, obviously one of the best flops I could get. The preflop raiser bet some standard amount – which to me, in a tournament, is between half and three quarters of the pot. It seems sensible to raise here, as I have flopped such a big hand. But really, I think calling is the better play. Calling gives me these advantages:

He doesn’t get much information on what I have – I could have a king, a flush draw, middle pair, a pair below kings, ace high, or a total float.

He may put me on a weak hand and continue to bluff.

He may pay me off later on if the flush hits or if it misses.

If he has a huge hand like aces, ace-king, or a set, I won’t go broke.

This last point is the most important. A huge aspect of the Negreanu/Friedman smallball game is avoiding going broke if at all possible. I am a huge believer in trying to avoid death at all costs, particularly early in a tournament. Adam is borderline obsessive on this point, as is my idol Nam Le.

There are advantages to raising this flop of course – preventing your opponent from catching up (though if he is behind he will usually have only two outs), and getting him put more chips in either as a bluff or a bluff-catcher. But he probably won’t be putting any more chips in unless I have a crazy image, which I rarely do.

So I just called and the turn came ace of clubs, the worst card in the deck. My opponent now made another “standard” bet, and I had an easy call. While calling, I knew there was a pretty decent chance a pair of kings was still the best hand. I would expect a typical player in this event to try to bluff that card very often. If I was in his shoes and I had nothing, I would probably bluff myself. He knows I could have any sort of middle pair, so it makes a lot of sense to keep the pressure on.

At the same time, many players would check an ace if they just hit one. They check for pot control and to “disguise” their hand – while in truth checking provides no disguise against to a knowledgeable player.

Most players would also bet if they had two pair or a set, so that is always a concern.

The river was an “inconsequential” low card, neither a diamond nor a club. My opponent once again made a “standard” bet, putting me to the test. It wasn’t too long before I called. I am really only worried about two pair or a set in this situation, though an excellent player could conceivably take this line with ace-queen or ace-jack. Though it is totally reasonable for my opponent to have two pair or a set on the river, it is also reasonable for him to have nothing.

It is very important to pay close attention to the players at the table, trying to ascertain if they are capable of triple-barrel bluffing and the other assorted moves. Although observation did not affect this decision as I was new to the table, it is essential in determining the right choice in these sort of hands. Many of my friends play a lot of online MTTs, often six or more at a time. I think this is generally ill-advised, as so much of the difference between good players and mediocre ones is observing and understanding opponents. Even with the math software, studying opponents is paramount. So many critical decisions are made based on the tendencies you observe, and six-tabling makes scrupulous observation next to impossible. I have never done well in a tournament while multi-tabling. I usually lose on Sundays, when it is so tempting to multi-table. There are players who can profitably play six or more tournaments at a time, but I am certainly not one of them, and believe most of the players who are using this approach are doing damage to their winrate.

This time my opponent had jack-ten of clubs, and I took down a hefty pot.