Playing out of position

(i made this post at my poker forum but decided everyone should look and see what they think, i love you guys still... enjoy)

After giving one of our fellow comrads (lets call him brad) some poker lessons about playing hands out of position and watching him go from a 6th place finish one night to 11th place thanks to me (lol not really he got unlucky). i thought i would share with the world what I had told him privatly.

Let me first set this up by giving you some scenarios that this happend in. I dont remember chip counts or blinds or anything but i can just give you the jist of what happend.

1. Big stack (BS for short... haha) on the cutoff raises 4x bb. Brad would tank for a sec and call with lets say A 10 offsuit. Fair enough call, BS could have almost anything since he is the bigstack and raised in late position. Flop comes K 6 2. Brad then leads out for 1/6th of his stack. BS then tanks for a sec and sets brad all in. brad obv folds but gets frustrated he lost a good portion of his stack.

2. Brad in early position gets dealt KK. he raises the standard 4x bb. He gets four callers. one mp player, button, and both blinds decide to look at the flop. FLOP A 3 7. both blinds check and it gets over to brad who bets about 1/5th of his stack. mp folds and button tanks, then sets him all in. everyone folds and brad tanks and is getting more and more upset at the fact that he got 4 callers and now his KK is obv no good. he folds... disgusted and drunk.

3. Brad is sitting bb with A 9. it gets folded to the button. button raises 4x, brad thinks for a sec and decides to defend. FLOP 10 9 3. Brad leads out for pot size and 1/8th his stack. button insta flat calls. Turn 5. Brad leads out again for 1/3 his stack and button insta pushes for the rest of what brad has. Well brad is late in this tourney... it is about 11 people to go. He also realizes that he can still FT this and possibly win. He goes ahead and uses his time bank and folds. button shows 7 7. Brad is pretty pissed and drunk at this point... when he eventually goes on and finishes 6th place which still isnt bad.


how could these situations have been avoided? well lets examine.




1. When playing a fairly big stack, especially anyone who could potentially bust you late, its always a good idea to be cautious. Also, you kinda wanna make sure that you only put chips into the pot that you have a good chance of getting back. When brad defends with the A 10, this hand should have ended right here. I think that if you think you have the best hand then you should push and make sure you can get your chips in with the best of it. If you think its no good then fold.. and probably the worst choice of all, you can try and see a flop with it. If you do this and miss i would say 99% of the time check/fold. that other one percent is only if you can pull off a bluff and not leave yourself crippled. betting 1/6 of your stack is rough to do, because if it doesnt work you are almost crippled. The big stack doesnt even have to have a hand to put you all in because it wont really effect him and he knows you wont wanna bust before the FT and have a good chance of folding.

2. There is nothing you can do here. Sure you have KK and of course the ace is going to flop with four callers. Dont get mad!! Your hand is 99.9% no good at this point. Just check/fold and hopefully you can see a free turn and river card I hate leading out on that flop with 4 callers. What is the point? The odds of them not having an ace are so so so so slim that you need to just check and see what the bets are. If nothing else... lead out like 1/3 of the pot to see where you stand. make sure you dont cripple yourself here. that is probably common sense. And just let it go... just let it go...

3. This is probably the trickiest. I dont love the defend here, but i dont hate it either. the reason i dont love it is because there is a good chance that the guy could have you dominated with AK - AT or any pocket pair 9s or higher. Plus YOU ARE OUT OF POSITION! So you defend and hit a decent flop with 10 9 3 and you lead out because you figure if he doesnt have a high pp or 10 then your hand is good. nothing wrong with that. The problem here is that if the button flat calls, what are you to do on 4th and 5th street? You do not know where you stand. He could have something like JT, or even something like pocket TT, or the most like scenario is something like KQ. So the turn is an obvious blank and you fire some more chips into the pot. Well the button then pushes you all in. Well you already have 1/3 + 1/8th of your chips into the pot. You almost have committed yourself, but not quite. So you run down the situation in your head...

Brad's Head ---> "Well lets see. he flat call my bet on the flop, and then when a blank hit the turn he re raises me all in. What hands would he do this with. something like TT, 99, 33, AA, KK, AT. He also might be trying to bluff me with something like AK, 88, 77, and so on. But if he was going to bluff me wouldnt he do it on the flop when i have less chips committed?"

So after that thought process he folds. Button shows 77. He kinda gets upset but realizes since he was out of position for the 3rd time that night that that shit was bound to happen. He also wonders how the button was able to pull this off. Well the button knows two things. 1. you arent going to want to go out this deep in a tourney. 2. and again this comes up but unless you have a huge hand then you will most likely fold. He is also able to do this because even if you do call, he wont be AS crippled and still MOST LIKELY has a seat at the FT. and finally he also might think you are on a draw and he actually has the best hand.

All of these examples are some of the reason position matters. Sure if like in situation 1 brad does lead out for 1/6 of his stack and the bb doesnt want to gamble or totally misses the flop he will fold, but i just think the risk/reward factor for that is just not as good as you want it to be.

Anyway thank you guys for your time and please inform me on how you guys do and you can post hand histories of what works and what doesnt work or just chime in your two cents. Would really appreicate it, this took me an hour to do.

Ship =)

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"A Smith and Wesson Beats Four Aces" - Anonymous