Do you have to double the big blind after the turn?

That was the search term in a google search that landed someone on this blog recently. I doubt that they found the answer to the question her, but I'll try to answer it now.

In no limit poker the minimim bet at each betting round is usually the amount of the big blind. It does not increase on the turn.

But --- some online sites do have software that changes the minimum to twice the big blind on the turn. That happens because they based their software design on an initial design for limit games, not because of a general poker rule.

In some poker rooms a straddle might complicate things somewhat. Depending on local rules the minimum bet might be the amount of the straddle at each round, or it might be the amount of the straddle preflop then the amount of the big blind thereafter. But the minimum won't double on the turn.

Reacting to bad luck

My impression of the popular conception of the best way to react to a short run of bad luck at the table is to tighten up and hunker down. The thinking being that other players get used to seeing you lose so they'll both take more shots at you and will call you more often. So you want to make sure you only get involved when you have some extra strength to withstand that.

Random Shuffle has a slightly different take on that popular wisdom.

This advice may seem paradoxical, but when you've been running bad in No-Limit Hold'em, try raising more. And I mean more in both senses: (a) raise more often and call less often; and (b) make your raises (and bets) larger.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't tighten up and play fewer hands, you probably should. But it does mean you shouldn't hunker down.

I think that's closer to a good way to think of things than what popular wisdom seems to be on the subject.

A sample chapter

Here's a chapter from an upcoming book on nolimit holdem poker

The chapter is on twoplustwo magazine, and they only keep their stuff up for about 3 months, so download it or print it now if you think you might want to refer back to it.

I'm not impressed so far. The chapter starts out with

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If we had to summarize no-limit strategy in a single sentence, it would be this:

Plan Your Hands

What the hell does that have to do with no-limit? Are they suggesting you don't need to plan your hands in limit? In limit I think a plan is probably more important. Plans are important in no-limit but they are also much more fluid and really don't need to be that complete, they just need to be re-evaulated at every step.

In The Complete Book Of Hold 'Em Poker: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Winning I pretty much say that the most important concept in no-limit hold'em (actually in no-limit poker) is simply

Don't Call

I still think that's true most of the time. Against some opponents it's not true, against some opponents you're better off check calling than you are betting, but it's still the basic idea.

Then, after talking about planning, they jump right away to the idea of finding a balance between risk and reward, and use a really bad example to do so.

They have two read aces on the big blind, the small blind limps, they raise, he calls, the flop is a 3 card straight in spades, the small blind goes all in, the stacks are very deep.

What do you do?

They talk about risk/reward tradeoff only in terms of the amount of money, they never, not once, bring up the players.

Against some players I'm calling here every damn time. Against some players I know for sure he has a naked flush draw, he doesn't even have as much as a pair and a flush draw. Against some players I know for sure they don't have more than 9 outs because with a hand better than that they're checking to let me bet.

They don't even talk about that. So what the hell do they mean by risk? They mean how much money is involved.

The next example is almost comical. They give a of having KK in mid-position and opening for 15, getting two callers, one behind you, one in the blinds.

Then they go through an analyze a particular flop where you bet and the player behind you calls, and you get in an iffy situation on the turn where you're probably best but don't want to commit all of your deep stack.

Then they re-look it and decided that you made a mistake with the raise to $15, you should have raised to $30 and gotten two callers, then on the turn the pot would have been large enough to be pot committed.

All I can say to that is

What?

Pay attention to stack sizes

Here's a post from rec.gambling.poker.

>
> A curious thing happend the other day while playing at a no-limit hold'em
> game,
> and I'm now seeking some clarification regarding betting rules. Here is what
> happened. Everyone called my raise preflop. Flop comes down. I'm first to
> act
> and I bet $50. Person to the left of me calls $50. Last person to act
> re-raises all-in for $68. At this point I try to reraise all-in for another
> $300 over the top to get rid of the first caller ... club tells me I cannot
> reraise in that situation, I can only fold or call the extra $18. Club tells
> me
> I cannot reraise because the first raise was an incomplete bet, and
> essentially
> I would be raising myself ... anyone have any other (better) explanation ?

Not really.

A term used is "re-opening the betting". The betting is only re-opened if
there's a raise. When you bet 50, it takes a $50 raise to reopen the betting.
No one can raise less than that unless that's all the chips they have, in which
they go allin and you have to match their allin amount to remain active. It's
just the rule. There is no explanation. The "raising yourself" language is
must some mumbling that doesn't really have any meaning.

It's one of the reasons it's important to pay attention to stack sizes. If you
had some reason to think he's likely to raise you might have wanted to have bet
$30 instead of $50, giving him a chance to make a full raise so you can trap
intermediate callers for your re-raise, for example.

Small bets

Random Shuffle has some comments on a post of Brother Ed's about making minimum size raises.

A bet is a bet. Even a mini-bet means something a check doesn't. The fact that the player bet the minimum rather than checking means something. This distinction between checking and mini-betting is more important than Miller seems to be saying here. There's no benefit in deliberately conflating small bets with checks - if anything, this smacks of the sort of mental laziness Miller is railing at.

I often make a min size raise online because I was not paying attention and the time is ticking and I want to make a raise but don't want to fool around and risk a time out.

I agree that any attempt to lump all small raises into some standard category is pretty much just intellectual laziness.

The important thing to keep in mind is that in multi-way games (even if the action has gotten to heads up) you're going to have to do things that are unexpected and contrary to the norm to get the money. That's what strategic thinking is all about. It's important to consider the possible reasons for the min raise, and Random Shuffle is right that there's always a reason and the reason is seldom intellectual laziness. Other than the being in a hurry reason, the two main reasons are as an attempt to seem weak and entice a raise and an attempt to take away the initiative while keeping the pot small.

A player who is making the min raise for the first reason is hoping you'll think it's for the second reason.

One of the holes in Miller's thinking is a common 2+2 shortcoming, a failure to recognize that even when your opponent is making a mistake he often thinks he has a good reason to do what he did.

Top pair revisited

The other day I made a post titled Don't fall in love with top pair. More recently Ed Miller has a post about Going Broke with One Pair. The two ideas are related, although not exactly the same. Falling in love with top pair often leads to going broke needlessly, but the converse is not so often true. There are plenty of circumstances besides inappropriately falling in love with top pair which might lead to going busted with top pair. Ed's post uses one of those other situations as an example to illustrate his thesis.

His thesis appears to be

Going broke with just a pair brings on a bevy of emotions, from guilt (for ignoring such a simple rule), to embarrassment (for losing so much with such a modest hand), to despair (as in, “Why the hell can’t I figure this game out?”).

The thing is, all that angst is often thoroughly misplaced. Sometimes it’s not only ok to go broke with one pair, but it’s the right thing to do.

I'm not sure that I'd say going broke is ever the right thing to do, although it might sometimes be a common result from doing the right thing.

Ed didn't mention my prior post in his, but making a reference to somebody elses blog isn't the sort of thing I expect from Ed anyway. He's just not that kind of guy.

Some of Ed's post is based on some misconceptions he has about poker history and the source of the phrase "Don't go broke with top pair" as an adage that is heavily adopted by many players. He doesn't seem to understand the motivation for the original adage.

I think the main thing that trips people up is a common poker fallacy. It goes like this: “I see bad players do that a lot, so it must be a bad thing to do.”

It’s similar for going broke with one pair. Bad players do it a lot. It’s part of what makes them bad. But that doesn’t mean that’s it’s always a thing to avoid.

That's not really the source of the adage. The source of the adage is that it's a solid truth in the context of the games that gave rise to the adage. Those games tended to be deep money cash games. In deep money games it's important to keep pots small with vulnerable hands. To relate it to some comments I've made on my mathandpoker blog, (I'm having some database errors on that blog, so that link might not work) what becomes important in deep money no limit games isn't EV, it's risk-adjusted EV. Risk-adjusted EV is a concept from mathematical finance that's based on mean/variance efficient frontiers.

The way to control risk in deep money no limit games is to keep the pot small enough so that you can easily get away from vulnerable hands if things go badly for you.

Ed gives an example of a short money game where the hero got all-in on a red flop of 566 with a pair of black queens. Flush draws, straight draws, three sixes, overcards, all kind of draws that put his hand at risk and at best he has a 2-card redraw if he's beat.

As a prelude to the hand history he says,

Sometimes one pair is more than enough to get all-in with, and if you go broke, you go broke. An example of this is today’s Q&A.

That's nuts.

It turns out that the villain had a black AJ and the QQ was far ahead. But with that flop, there's no way to put a typical villian on a black AJ unless you've shown a history of being willing to lay down pairs on drawy looking flops and he's shown an ability to overplay weak draws. Without that information (which I didn't see anywhere) this is not at all an example of when an ovepair is more than enough to get all-in with. Not even close.

While it turns out I actually agree with Ed that in the situation as given it probably is right for the hero to call a check-raise on the flop with all his chips (which is how he got all-in), the reason it's probably the right thing to do isn't because his hand is worth it, it's because he didn't have many chips.

There was $3.30 in the pot preflop, hero bet $2 and the villain goes all-in for $2.50 more. Sure call an extra $2.50 once the pot is over $7. But not because you have a hand to go busted with, becuase the money is short and you're getting a price.

The didn't go busted anyway when the villain rivered an Ace, he had the villain covered.

Ed seems to have completely missed the point. About the only time top pair (or an overpair) is a hand to go busted with is when you're short stacked and the pot has gotten big relative to what chips you have left. Or, as is the actual case in his example, when you're not really going broke.

Flopping a straight

Flopping a straight can sometimes be problematic. It's not always clear how strong that hand is, straights can be pretty iffy hand, vulnerable when they're getting action.

You just never can be sure. If you're getting heavy action it might be from two pair, which tends to happen often when a potential straight is on the board because of players playing suited connectors. If that's the case you're in good shape, they're drawing pretty thin. But flush draws and draws to better straights aren't drawing quite so thin.

There was a hand discussed on rgp a while back that I think illustrates some of the problems that can crop up with flopped straights. Not so much in terms of how the hand actually played out, but in terms of the things you need to think about with such hands.

It was a 2/5 game, with most stacks about $500, one aggresive player had about $1,000. This hand put that big stack in mid position. He opened for $20, one caller, our hero has a T9 of spades and calls from late position. The button and the big blind call after him.

I think the preflop call is pretty automatic. If the stacks had been shorter it's a pretty easy fold. I think a raise is out of the question here.

JD,8C,7H

It's checked to the original raiser, who bets $25 into an $80 pot. What the hell is that all about? Our hero makes a minimum raise, the other two guys fold back to the original raiser who calls.

I don't know what's going on here. I'd have just called the flop or made a more substantial raise. Our hero said he made the small raise as an attempt to fish for a
re-raise. I don't like fishing for a re-raise when it's not clear whether anybody actually has a hand to re-raise with or not. The $25 bet by the aggressor doesn't look like a big hand to me, not with that flop. It looks like AK to me (but things always look like AK to me).

I like calling here. I think you're going to be more likely to get an overcall by a call than a re-raise by a weenie raise. With my hand and this flop I don't really mind continuing on to the turn with players behind me, I don't feel any need to raise to by myself the button or anything.

If the flop had been two-suited I'd be thinking very differently. I don't like just calling unless I'm fishing for an overcall. I also don't like just calling when somebody might be drawing to a flush.

A 10D hit the turn, possibly counterfieting the straight, possibly giving an AK a flush draw, possibly giving the other guy a better straight, although that's somewhat unlikely.

The hands that I might put the original raiser on that are helped by that TD are AKD, 9 9 or 10 10. I think it's real doubtful he has Q 9, so I'll only worry about that hand a little bit. If the turn card had been a 9D I'd worry a little about a Q 10, but I'm just not going to worry about the Q 9.75

The anti-hero checks. At this point our hero bets $75. He commented that his after thought is that $75 is a terrible bet. I'm not so sure it's terrible. I made have bet a little more, but I think I'd want a call here. I like our hero's hand at this point. Although he's a little more vulnarable after that ten fell than he had been on the flop, I don't see any reason to not think he doesn't still have the best. There are some possible scare cards on the river -- cards like a jack, a nine, or a diamond might slow me down quite a bit, but the most likely river card doesn't include any of those cards. He said he made the bet out of fear, but I don't know what he's afraid of. The anti-hero calls quickly.

The river brings 3D, putting three diamonds on the board. The anti-hero moves all in -- our hero has $350 left, getting about 5/2 on a call.

I think he has to call here. The anti-hero can't put him on a backdoor flush draw so has to think the hero will worry about a flush when he goes all-in on that river card. He could very well be overplaying an overpair here, hoping the hero will lay down two pair.

He did call, the anti-hero had 4D 5D for the flush.

I wouldn't have put him on that specific hand.

Should the hero have bet more on the turn? I think a little more, I'd probbably have bet more like $120, maybe even $175. But I don't think it would have changed the outcome. I think he'd have been called unless he made a huge overbet on the turn. And, I don't see any strong reason to do that, he's ahead enough on the turn that I just don't see the problem with betting as much as you think the anti-hero will call.

But, then again, I'm writing for a living, not making TV appearances, so what do I know?

Pot odds in no limit

This blog entry makes a point about pot odds in limit hold'em that I strongly agree with and support.

But part of what he says in that post suggests a common misconception about the importance of pot odds in no limit.

Back before the no limit boom, Mason Malmuth wrote a couple of articles in Card Player pontificating on why so few cardrooms didn't spread no limit games. One of the things he often said about no limit back then was that not much skill was required -- all you had to do was bet enough so that you're opponents didn't have the proper odds to call.

You can take that idea for what it's worth (not much) but just keep in mind that it came from somebody who never played any no limit poker. In any event, like much nonsense about poker, if somebody writes it two or three times it becomes part of the popular knowledge about the game. Truth or relevance doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

Whether you are giving the opponent the right odds to call or not is one of the least important things to consider when bet sizing.

The most important thing to consider is your oppoenents habits in terms of tendency to call. If he tends to call a lot you should bet infrequently but bet big when you bet. If he tends to not call a lot you should bet frequently but bet small when you bet.

update:
My original post pointed to a plagiarized post. I've corrected the URL.

That's a hell of a lot more important than worrying about what odds he'd be getting if he calls.