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Pressing a Small Edge

Friday, July 4th, 2008 by Phil

There are plenty of situations in no-limit hold’em where neither player’s hand will be a large favorite over the other’s. Most of the time a player will not be worse than a 3 to 2 underdog before the flop.

For example, consider a player who is holding A-K while his opponent has a 9-9. If the cards are turned face up before the flop, this is usually a coin-flip situation. It would be fine for either player to put the rest of their chips in because they would be getting the proper pot odds to do so in most cases. However, over the long run the player who is betting the rest of their chips will have a big edge over the player who has to call the bet for the rest of his chips.

The reason for this is that the player who is forced to make the call will occasionally fold their hand. When this happens, the betting player will win the pot uncontested which is always the preferred method in these scenarios. Although I don’t believe it is proper, this is usually referred to as fold equity.

There is nothing wrong with getting called in a situation like this if you are the bettor. Although sometimes when you are deep in a tournament you would much rather not have to gamble, you will do just fine over the long run betting like this in coin-flip situations. This is one of the basic principles that can give an aggressive player an edge over their opponents at the poker table.

When your opponents become aware that you are playing aggressively when you have a small edge, you can then use this information to capitalize on your big hands. Your opponents will always be forced to consider the probability that you are over-representing your hand strength and this can cause them to make mistakes.

For example, it is a pretty common scenario for one opponent to have a pair and the other player will have a flush draw and 2 over-cards. If your opponent knows that you will raise every time you have a strong draw, he will find it difficult to fold against you when the board has any likely draw possibilities. When this is the case, some opponents are willing to call huge bets with bottom pair and sometimes no pair at all. In my opinion, the possibility that your opponent may be drawing is used far too often as the primary reason for calling a large bet.

Because of this, when you can make it appear as though you may be drawing, you can often get your opponent to call large bets with mediocre hands. This will increase your expected profits drastically. You will usually be able to break a player in 1 large hand if you can convince them that you are trying to draw to a flush or straight.