When to abuse your position

I recently wrote about playing in a $10-$20 no-limit game during this year’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and encountering a young player who didn’t like that I was writing down hands in my notebook. He proceeded to play in a maniacal manner and bluffed off more than $5,000 to me over the next hour.

The kid was tilted. To be fair, I showed down fairly strong hands, so he probably didn’t think I was outplaying him but rather that I was lucky to make some strong hands. (I was actually lucky that he kept trying to bluff me.)

The following hand came up after a brief lull in the action.

With $10,000 effective stacks, a tight, aggressive player in the cutoff seat raised to $60, and I called with A♦ J♦ from the button.

The player in the cutoff had been completely in line, probably because he had a blatant maniac on his left. I thought he would respond intelligently if I reraised him. This is a spot where I like to call with some of my strong hands to disguise the strength of my calling range. Also, I wouldn’t mind if the maniacal kid in the small blind entered the pot.

The maniac in the small blind reraised to $340. The big blind and the cutoff folded. I called. I thought my hand was too strong to fold, given that the maniac could easily be way out of line with a hand like A-3 or J-7. You must become comfortable with seeing flops in position versus players who have wide ranges when deep stacked.

The flop came 8♥ 7♥ 5♣. The maniac checked, and I bet $400 into a pot of $760.

I was setting up a multistreet bluff with this f lop bet. I wasn’t betting because I thought my A-J was necessarily the best hand; I was betting in hopes that my opponent would fold an overpair before the river. In general, middle-card flops are better for the preflop caller than the preflop raiser because people tend to raise with big cards, meaning their range should contain fewer middle-card hands than the range of callers would have.

While this plan may have been a bit optimistic, I had shown down only strong hands, and my opponent was probably getting a bit gun-shy since I’d beaten him for 250 big blinds in an hour. I wasn’t entirely sure of his flop-checking range but assumed it would primarily be overpairs, ace-highs, middle pairs and total trash.

My opponent quickly called my bet.

The turn was the 2♥ .My opponent checked, and I bet $800 into a pot of $1,560.

Sticking with the plan, the only way to make my opponent fold an overpair was to continue betting with the intention of making a huge pot-sized bet on the river. When the turn card completes an obvious draw, betting is mandatory. Note that any heart or any J through 4 could easily improve hands I would bet on the flop.

This time my opponent folded, probably because he had a decent high-card hand such as A-K.

It’s important that you learn to abuse your position at the poker table. Many players in my situation would have been content to check down with a reasonable ace-high, hoping to win at showdown. By betting instead, I won an additional flop bet and prevented my opponent from easily betting the turn and river, which would have forced me to fold.