Planning Your Play

Part I: Know which plays to make and why

You probably are very careful when planning your finances. You plan your career, your wedding, your vacations, your kids' education fund, and your retirement. Playing hands is also a case of trying to make prudent investments, but for many players, planning seems to be the furthest thing from their minds.

Planning your play is one of the major themes of my new book, Advanced Limit Hold'em Strategy, available from www.CardPlayer.com. I believe that you must make a plan and keep it clearly in your mind so that you know which plays to make and why you are making them.

Overview: Although you should have some objective in mind while you play preflop, your real planning begins after you see the flop, because you know 71.4 percent of your final hand. Even before anyone bets, think about where you are and how you want to play.

Ask yourself the standard questions:
• Do I have a made hand, a draw, or nothing?
• Based on the betting, what are my opponents likely to have?
• Do I want to build a pot or keep it small?
• Do I want to keep opponents in or eliminate them?

There are also some less standard questions you should ask:
• What sorts of hands can I represent?
• How likely is a bluff to succeed?
• How likely is it that my opponents will bluff at this sort of flop?
• Do I have or can I gain the lead, so that opponents have to react to my plays?
• Shall my overall approach be active or passive?

Detailed analysis: When you are in early position before the flop, you are really in the dark. All you know about the players yet to act after you is that they have two cards.

After the flop, even if you are first to act, you have far more information. You saw the action before the flop and have some idea what it means. The better you know how your opponents play and what they raise or call with, the better judgment you can make. But before you act, you should estimate not only where you stand, but what is likely to happen.

Judge the probabilities that you have the best hand and/or a reasonable draw. Also, estimate how the hand will play out. Using that information, make a plan.

Before you act, decide what you are trying to accomplish with your play. Are you trying to win the pot right away? Protect your hand? Gain information? Bluff? Build a pot? Trap a bad player? Get a cheap draw?

After setting your goal, establish a plan to achieve it. Ask yourself: What is the best way to meet this objective? Consider the alternatives and select what you believe will be the best play. Then, do it!

You always should know why you bet, or checked, or called, or raised: Your plan must be fluid, and may even be way off the mark, but having some idea of where you are and what you are trying to accomplish is critical to making and saving bets.

Here are some factors to consider when planning:
• Number of opponents
• How they play
• Nature of the flop
• Size of the pot
• Opponents' likely hands
• Your position
• Your hand

Number of opponents: If you have multiple opponents, the chances that someone has a small to very large piece of the flop go up considerably. Against one opponent, that chance goes down. Of course, you may not have much, either.

In addition, having more opponents means that the average winning hand goes up, since there are more ways for everyone to make hands.

How they play: To some extent, your plan will depend on how your opponents play. It is easier to play against predictable opponents and passive ones. Predictable ones often will let you know right away if you are ahead or behind. Timid players can be bullied or played for free cards.

If you face predictably aggressive opponents, you can decide to play off them, allowing them to take the lead, or get them to help you by raising to thin the field.

Nature of the flop: Evaluate how many draws appear on the flop and how plausible the draws are. A flop like Q-J-8 is considerably more dangerous than a flop like 6-5-2, even though both have the same gap size. Q-J-8 is much more likely to hit typical players than 6-5-2. If you are holding A-8 in the first case and A-2 in the second case, your A-8 is practically worthless, while your A-2 easily could be the best hand.

Big drawing flops make players want to raise and reraise. You need to anticipate this in order to make sure that you are not caught in the crossfire.

Size of the pot: If I were writing this column for beginners, I would put this topic first. Pot odds and implied odds always should dominate your thinking. I list it here because I assume that you already think about this. If you do not already know how many bets are in the pot when it is your turn, please start counting them immediately. Poker revolves around positive expectation, and if you do not know the reward, you cannot compute the risk-reward ratio.

If the pot is small, you may be able to steal more often, but you also must play fewer draws and long shots. You also may wish to take chances to increase the size of the pot.

When the pot is small, you gain tremendously if you induce your opponent to put money in with terrible odds, even though he sometimes gets there.

Gambling to gain extra bets in small pots when you have the lead often can gain you more bets than the whole pot was worth originally: If the pot is large, stealing becomes harder, though much more profitable. Protecting the pot by eliminating opponents and even distorting your betting to look for chances to limit the field must become part of your plan.

Conclusion: I hope that you see how important planning is, and how setting objectives and making plans to achieve them can improve your play. In the next issue, I will discuss the remaining elements and tie them all together.

Part II: As your plans improve, so will your results

I conclude this two-part series with the remainder of the major factors that you should take into account when planning your play on the flop. To remind you, the factors are:

• Number of opponents
• How they play
• Nature of the flop
• Size of the pot
• Opponents' likely hands
• Your position
• Your hand

In the last issue, I covered the first four factors and some general thoughts on planning your play. That column is available at www.CardPlayer.com. Let's now take a look at the remaining factors.

Opponents' likely hands: You must do some detective work here. Your opponents already have done something to get to the flop: raised, called a raise, limped in (which means they had the opportunity to raise and did not), or reraised.

All of their actions had meanings, and some had more meaning than others. If your very tight opponent limped in from under the gun, you can put him on a narrow range of hands: perhaps 10-10, 9-9, 8-8, A-Q, A-J, or K-Q suited. If a middle-position player open-raised, the range of hands you can assign him depends on how you have seen him play. Some players require a premium hand; some will have any ace, a pocket pair, or any two Broadway cards. Very few will have a hand like 6-5 suited, and eventually you will learn who those few players are.

Your job is to figure out how the flop may or may not fit their likely hands based on their preflop betting. You can make only an approximation, but that is better than just saying to yourself, "Who knows what they have?" Use this estimate as a guideline when planning your play.

How you decide to play will depend on:
• How predictable your opponent is
• How you believe he will play hands when he is ahead
• How he will play when he is behind

You must do something; you can't just check and fold when you are up against a loose opponent. Determine your opponent's likely hands and how they fit with the board before developing your plan.

Your position: Think about your absolute and relative position. Your plan will depend on where you are and what you wish to accomplish. All of your desired actions are easier if you are in position. Whether you want to build a pot, get a free card, protect your hand, or bluff, having the best position makes a big difference.

I already have discussed position quite a bit. In terms of post-flop planning, assess how to use your position to accomplish what you want. Can you improve your absolute position by raising and causing players behind you to fold? Can you gain reliable information by making a play now?

Position is not just something you have; it's something you must exploit.

Even if you are in early position, you still need to assess how to make the most of the position you have. Whatever you do, do not check in the dark. The many reasons are discussed in detail in my book, Advanced Limit Hold'em Strategy, available from www.CardPlayer.com.

Your hand: I list this last, but not because it's unimportant. Most players spend too much time thinking about their hand and too little time thinking about the other factors. You need to think about your hand, of course, but also about what your opponents think your hand may be. Too many players give up excellent bluffing opportunities because they know what they have and forget that their opponents do not know.

Estimate the probability that you have the best hand. If you do, you then must think about the best way to protect it if it is vulnerable, and the best way to maximize your winnings if it is powerful.

If you think you have the best hand but are uncertain, consider how to find out at the lowest cost while still protecting it.

You also must think about the chances that you will have the best hand after two more cards come.

Frequently, the number of opponents will enter into your decision about whether your hand might be the best. If you raise with A-K and just the big blind calls, chances are that a flop of J-8-5 did not hit him. You should proceed as if you hold the best hand. If five players call, the chances that you have the best hand are small, and you should plan to check and fold.

If you do not have the best hand, you need to decide whether you are getting the right price to draw for it. Your assessment needs to account for your implied odds - the extra money that you may make if you do win - but it also needs to include the chances that you will make your hand and still lose.

If you are unlikely to have the best hand and are not getting the right price for your draw, the only thing left before folding is to determine your chances of winning with a bluff. If you decide, based on the number of opponents, their tendencies, their likely holdings, your image, and the texture of the flop, that a bluff has a positive EV (expected value), go ahead and try it.

You don't need to have the best hand if you are not going to have to turn it over.

In fact, one of the reasons players do not bluff enough is that they fail to look at their hidden holding from their opponents' perspective. What you have is far less important than what your opponents think you have (assuming that you have opponents who think). Always think about what they think you might have when making your bluff-or-fold decision.

Conclusion: Many people sort of "play at poker" rather than play poker. When it is their turn to act, they guess at what to do, generally checking and calling. Playing correctly requires thinking about your hand, the board, and what you would do to minimize your losses or maximize your profits.

Certainly, you have to take into account what your opponents are doing, and what you think they are trying to accomplish, as well. Your plans must be dynamic, changing as conditions and your opponents' actions dictate. Even if your plan is sometimes wrong, having one puts you way ahead of the average player, and as your plans improve, so will your results.

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