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The G-Spot: How Much Should You Buy in for in a No-Limit Game?

By Tony Guerrera

Most online poker rooms give you the option of buying into a new no-limit hold'em game for anywhere from 20 big blinds to 100 big blinds. If you play in brick-and-mortar casinos, you'll encounter games with similar buy-in restrictions, but you'll also encounter games in which you can buy-in for as much as you want.

Poker writers have traditionally advocated having as many chips on the table as possible if you're better than your opponents. In fact, I've been one of those writers (check out my book, Killer Poker By The Numbers for example). I've also been a poker writer with a reputation for preaching flexibility and the willingness to adapt to the perpetually changing poker climate, and staying true to that philosophy, my thoughts regarding buy-ins have evolved.

What's Your Goal When Playing No-Limit Hold'em?

When playing no-limit hold'em poker hands, your goal is to optimize your hourly win rate. Fine, playing should also be fun, but it's definitely more fun when you win. Winning is about making good decisions, and after table selection, your next choice is determining how much you should buy-in for. Having as many chips as possible is never a bad idea if you're a skilled player. However, when buying into a game, think less about your own skill and more about how your opponents play. As the years have passed, people have become better at playing deep-stacked no-limit hold'em.

Primarily, players have become stingier; it's tougher to find players who'll pay off large bets on the turn and the river with top pair and
no kicker. By having less chips in front of you, it may become much easier for you to get value from your made hands on the turn since your opponents will no longer fear the prospect of facing a tricky decision on the river.

Experiment and See What Works Best

Of course, many valid arguments exist for preferring to be deeply stacked. In the end, your preferred buy-in will be situational. Ultimately, you need to experiment and see how your foes respond to you as a function of your stack-size. Since you can't take chips off the table, consider starting off shortly stacked. If the table is more profitable to play shortly stacked, then you're set. If you think that you'll make more by being deeply stacked, you always have the option of adding more chips. Whatever you do, always remember that you have a choice when deciding how many chips you have in front of you, so make it intelligently based on prior experience and information about your opponents.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers.

 

By Tony Guerrera

Whenever you make a decision, you need a clear map of all the possible ways a hand can play out after your decision. Preflop, you need to project how action will traspire across all betting rounds for every type of possible board. You need to take your opponents' playing styles and poker hands into account, and you need to be aware of the type of information you'll need to acquire as the hand progresses.

Ragged aces look deceptively good to many players. In Killer Poker By The Numbers, I talk about hit-to-win poker, a style in which you're looking simply to hit hands and extract maximum value when you do so. It's important to master many styles, but in loose fullhanded games, hit-to-win is typically the winning style. If you're playing hit-to-win poker, ragged aces aren't playable.

What Do You Do When You Hit The Flop?

Suppose you flop a pair with a hand like A5. If you flop a pair of aces, then you have to worry about being outkicked. If you flop a pair of fives, you need to worry about being against a higher pair.Suppose you flop trips with your A5. If you flop trip 5's, you might win a sizeable pot; however, if action gets too heavy, you need to consider the possibility that you're against a full house. If you flop trip aces, heavy action can mean that you're against a full house or trip aces with a better kicker.

Besides the few times in which you flop a monster, the only time you'll be happy with ragged aces postflop are if they're suited and you flop a flush draw in a passive game that'll allow you to draw cheaply.

Ragged Aces Are Generally Bad Unless You're Not Playing Hit-To-Win Poker

Some players call raises with hands like A5 and then fold when they flop an ace. These players correctly identify postflop playability problems, but they do so when it's too late. Preflop raisers almost always bet on the flop, so calling preflop raises in the first place is just a waste of money if you're playing hit-to-win poker.

Does that mean that ragged aces are never playable? No. They become playable hands if you have lines of play outside the realm of hit-to-win poker. Of course, at that point, any two cards become playable. If a lucrative bluffing opportunity will present itself to you, it doesn't matter if you're holding A5 or 23. Avoid abusing such lines of play, but be willing to employ them when profitable opportunities arise. The key to playing ragged aces, and really, the key to playing all hands, is considering all applicable variables before deciding to act.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers.

By Tony Guerrera 06-17-2007

To make good decisions at the table, you need to do good analysis away from the table. If you can't analyze a poker situation in the comfort of your own home, there's no way you can correctly assess a situation when you're in a casino or when you're playing four tables concurrently online.

Recall and Express Situations As Precisely As Possible

Doing poker analysis away from the table begins with stating situations as precisely as possible - you need to be a thorough, accurate storyteller. If you are talking about a hand you played in the casino the other day, how deeply stacked were you and your opponents? What did you know about your opponents? Did anyone give off any tells? What was the precise order of the betting action? What were the sizes of the bets and raises? You can't do any meaningful analysis on hands you've played unless you precisely address these and other questions that help you come as close as possible to conveying 100% of the information you had available to you when you were playing.

Openly Discuss Hands With Friends and On Forums

Learning is seldom a process that happens in a vacuum. Your friends, and people posting in web forums, have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw upon to take advantage! Actively participate in poker discussions and debates. Don't just blindly follow advice you're given, but at the same time, make sure you keep an open-mind and carefully weigh every piece of input thrown your way. Get Your Mind In a Positive Feedback Loop To get your mind to work the way you want it to, you need to condition it properly. Doing precise analysis away from the table is a necessary part of properly conditioning your poker mind. The best way to learn something is to engage your mind actively, and analysis away from the table-on your own and with poker buddies-does exactly that. And if you're going to do something, you might as well do it right. When you hold yourself to a high standard of precision when you think about poker away from the table, an amazing thing will happen...you will begin to think more clearly about your poker when you are at the table. When you think more clearly at the table, you'll take more detailed information with you when you leave the table - information that you can think about and learn from. This positive feedback loop never stops, and it will ultimately make you a beast that no one will want to mess with at the tables!

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com 

06/07/2007 By Tony Guerrera

Playing good poker is all about knowing what your opponents are doing. Knowing your opponents is an exercise in reading betting patterns and tells. To read betting patterns and tells, you generally need a large enough sample set of information to work with. What are you supposed to do when you first sit at a table? Well, for betting patterns, you can draw upon all your past poker playing experience to come up with a default playing profile to assign to your opponents. Regarding tells, there are some classic tells that apply as soon as you sit at a table; tells that will give you a rough idea of the general playing disposition of each of your opponents.
Your Opponents Reveal Everything When It's Not Their Turn To Act

When you first sit at a table, observe how your opponents act when they have cards in front of them and it's not their turn to act. Do they pay close attention to what their opponents are doing, or are they distracted while they wait for action to reach them? Distracted opponents who quickly fold are opponents who you can assume to be playing predictable, tight poker until you get evidence to the contrary. Distracted opponents who put carefree calls in pots are typically loose-passive. These players tend to have a bit of a clueless, blank stare.

Your Opponents Reveal Everything When They Aren't In a Hand

Watch your opponents when they aren't involved in a hand. Are they watching TV, turned around eating, chatting away, text messaging, or distracted in some
other way? Or, are they paying very close attention to the action? Distracted players are playing their cards and nothing else. Attentive players are potentially
dangerous, these are the ones you might want to steer clear of early in your session until you get a good handle on how they play.

Exploitive Play Early In a Session

By observing how your opponents behave at the poker table, you can get quick information about who to bluff, who to value bet, and who to avoid early in your sessions. The easiest time to make big mistakes is early in a session because that's the point at which you have the least information to work with.
The tells we've discussed will turn the informational battle at least slightly in your favor, so focus and pay close attention to everyone at the table, not just the players throwing chips in the pot.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers.