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The Preflop Betting Quiz
When published in InsidePoker magazine, these quizzes are often edited or presented in a slightly different format. I am uploading them here as sent to the editor.
In today’s world of ultra-aggressive poker, you’d be forgiven for thinking that preflop play isn’t important. After all, when you watch poker on TV, you frequently see professional players dragging enormous pots with marginal hands.
Real poker isn’t like that, and what you don’t see on TV are the hours of hands in which ‘loose’ players fold their cards, waiting for the right opportunity. Preflop play is all about looking for a profitable situation, and then taking advantage of it to the maximum – and vice versa, losing the minimum when the situation is unfavourable.
Some players believe that preflop betting is all about waiting for a good hand to play, then raising three times the big blind or calling your opponent’s raise. If you’re one of those people, this quiz is for you!
In tournaments, you’re required to constantly adapt as you encounter new opponents, your stack size changes relative to the blinds, and the opposition changes tactics. Here we’ll examine three hypothetical preflop situations from a tournament setting, and decide what to do.
Scenario 1 – A loose call?
It’s the second hand of a $10 online multi-table tournament, and you’re on the button. You have 2985 chips and the blinds are 15/30. Your table is eight-handed, as somebody was eliminated on the first hand when two players flopped an overpair. You have 8h-6h, and the player in first position raises to 90, getting two callers, including the chip leader (who has 6030). What should you do?
- Fold
- Call
- Raise to 180
- Raise to 400
Answer
Here’s how some intermediate players think: The player under the gun raised, so he probably has a something good. 8-6s is trash. There’s no reason to get involved this early with such a weak hand. I should fold. However, these players are not considering the full picture. In reality, this is a potentially profitable situation and although folding isn’t terrible, you could be giving up an opportunity if you did so.
Raising to 180 is rather pointless. It’s too small a raise to actually accomplish anything, and allows the original raiser to blast you out of the pot with a reraise which is too large to call. If they don’t reraise, they’ll certainly call and so will the players behind them – so you’ll only have succeeded in building a large pot with the worst hand.
The bigger reraise, to 400, is a little more adventurous. Later in a tournament, when you have a stronger read on your opponents, you could argue that this is the correct play if the original raiser was opening too loosely or was quite likely to fold for any other reason. You’re utilising a manoeuvre called the ‘squeeze play’, which we discussed in InsidePoker a few issues ago. Here however, you don’t have any information about your opponents, so the squeeze play is too much of a risk relative to the possible reward.
8-6 suited is an easy hand to play after the flop. If the flop comes A-K-8, you’re not going to lose a lot of money to a player who has you beat. Even if you flop top pair on a non-threatening board, you probably play well enough to not lose it all when your opponent has an overpair or has you outkicked. But if you flop a straight, or the flop comes A-8-6 or J-8-8, you might easily double up through one of the other players if they have top pair or an overpair (particularly the chip leader, who has already shown a willingness to play for his entire stack when he flops such a hand).
You should call. You have position on the other players, a hand that has the potential to flop something big (and which won’t often get you into trouble when you don’t), and you’re being asked to invest 90 chips for a potential reward of 3000 chips or more. This is an opportunity worth taking, so go for it!
Scenario 2 – A tight fold?
120 players remain in the tournament, and 36 places are paid. You have 9275 in chips, which is slightly above average, and the blinds are 200/400. You’ve been playing at this table for a while, and have a loose aggressive image (you are playing hands like 8-6s, after all). In early position, you look down at two black tens, and raise to 1200. It’s folded to the button, an extremely loose player with 16000 chips who has played terribly and got very lucky, who makes the minimum raise, to 2000. The small blind folds, and the big blind, a very tight player and the table short stack, instantly pushes all-in for a total of 2875. It’s up to you – what should you do?
- Fold
- Call
- Raise to 3750
- Raise all-in
Answer
If you had just been up against the loose player on the button, this would have been a much more difficult decision. The tight big blind putting in the third raise has made this a lot easier, and you should fold. Right?
Let’s look at the alternatives before we rush to a decision. What about calling? After all, you’re getting good pot odds. Well, the problem with that is that you’ve now invested 31% of your chips with a fairly marginal hand, and there is a player still to act behind you. In general, you should rarely put in such a large portion of your stack unless you’re prepared to shove in the rest later in the hand. So are you prepared to do that? No – there are a lot of flops that you won’t like. What’s more, you won’t be happy if the button calls (because you could then be faced with a difficult flop decision) or reraises (because you’ll then have to either fold or commit all of your chips, neither of which is an attractive proposition).
Raising to 3750 gives the button a chance to fold, but given that he is so loose, it’s unlikely that after putting in 2000 chips he’s going to fold for 1750 more.
Raising all-in makes it a bit more likely that the button will fold, and you’ll ‘isolate’ on the big blind. However, it’s quite likely that you’re isolating with the worst hand, and there isn’t enough dead money in the pot to compensate for that. Think about it – the big blind is a very tight player, and as a short stack is probably waiting for a big hand to put her chips in – but she’s put in the third raise against two players who she perceives as loose and likely to call. She has a big hand alright, and her range consists mainly of pairs better than yours. Against such a range, you have probably 20% equity at best, and you shouldn’t get involved.
It’s never nice to fold a good hand after putting in the first raise, but in this particular situation, the alternatives are all even more unpleasant. The lesser of the evils is folding, and that’s what you should do.
Scenario 3 – Wait out the short stack?
You just made the final table of the tournament, with the chip lead – 255,475 chips. All that slick preflop play has helped! First prize is $1200, but ninth place gets just $100. The short stack has about 30,000 chips and will be in the blind next hand. The blinds are 5,000/10,000 and you’re in middle position. The short stack folds, and a player in second position, with about 200,000 in chips, raises to 25,000. He’s been very aggressive recently, and has talked about feeling tired. It’s folded to you, and you make it 65,000 holding As Kh (these raises are smaller, in big blind terms, than you might expect, but that’s common at the end of tournaments).
Everybody folds back to the player in second position, who pushes all-in. What should you do?
- Fold
- Call
Answer
This decision is made more complicated by the fact that there is a very short stack at the table. If you call and lose, you’ll be down to 55,475 chips, making you a short stack too. It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with a situation where you finish ninth, because the current short stack survives his double up attempt but you don’t.
The argument for folding is that you can wait out the short stack and guarantee yourself a higher finishing position. You might have run into a very big hand – one that A-K is in bad shape against, like aces or kings. Or you might be risking all of your chips on a coinflip.
But that’s not the sort of thinking that wins tournaments, and with a top heavy prize structure, you want to win as often as possible. Your opponent’s range here is quite wide – he’s aggressive anyway, but he’s tired too, meaning he will probably be playing more recklessly than usual. He could easily have a hand like A-Q or A-J, which you’re in excellent shape against.
The downside to losing is significant, but so are the benefits to winning. If you win, you’ll have a completely dominating stack and you’ll have an excellent chance to win the tournament – plus, you’ll have eliminated a player and moved up a place.
Given that you’re getting about 2-1 on your money, you should definitely call.
Summary
Preflop play isn’t as simple as ‘I have a good hand so I raise’, or ‘I have a bad hand, so I fold’. In the first scenario, we saw that it can be correct to play a weak hand if the potential for reward on later streets is good. In the second, we saw that folding a strong hand can be the best play in an awkward situation. Then in the third scenario, we saw that sometimes you simply have to take a gamble, even when the stakes are very high.
The next time you play a tournament, think about some of these things. Maybe we’ll meet at the final table!
