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Can You Win Without Looking? Playing Shorthanded Limit Hold ‘Em Poker

Texas Hold’em is the most popular form of poker played throughout the world today. It is typically played with a maximum of 9 or 10 players. Most players are only comfortable playing at a full or nearly full table. When the game becomes shorter the quality of hands that win pots decreases dramatically and the tight players that normally win become frustrated. It is the author’s hope that over the next few months the reader can better understand what happens at a short handed game and avoid the frustration of losing.

There are many dynamics to any poker game; for the time being we are going to ignore those. In fact we are going to ignore the cards also and explore the question “Can you win without looking?” It would seem your opponents would have to be pretty weak to let you win without looking at your cards, but there are many solid ring game players that allow themselves to be beat without a fight in a short handed situation.

A two player game is known as heads-up and is the shortest game. In the heads-up game the small blind is on the button and the other player is the big blind; that is the small blind is first before the flop and last on the remaining betting rounds. In this article we will look at a $10-$20 with blinds of $5 and $10, but these principles apply in any game where the small blind is half of the big blind. You have posted $5 on the button and you receive your cards. Normally at this point you would look at your cards, but we are going to try to win without looking. There is currently $15 in the pot . You could throw your cards away, call the big blind or raise. Raising is the only choice that give you an immediate chance to win, but how can you know whether to raise without looking?

Whenever you make a bet in poker you are “getting a price” on your money. If there is a $100 pot and you bet $10 you are getting 10:1 on your money. Back to our heads up pot there is $15 in the pot and raising will cost us $15 so we are getting even money on that bet. Ok, but how do we know whether to make an even money wager on our hand without looking? If we know something about our opponent we might be able to assess our chances of winning the pot with a raise. What sorts or hands will our opponent use to call a raise? More precisely how often will our opponent call a raise? Raising in this spot is an even money wager, so if our opponent will fold half the time raising show a profit. Do you know any players that play less than half of their hands? I know quite a few that do.

Some of your opponents may notice they you have been raising without looking at your cards and decide that they should call more often. Has everything been lost when they call your pre-flop raise? After they call your raise there is $40 in the pot (you did remember to ask the floor to eliminate the rake didn’t you?). We are going to examine the case where the big blind “checks to the raiser.” Now we can either check behind the raiser or we can bet. If we bet we are risking $10 to win $40. If our opponent will fold his hand now at least 20% of the time we have an instant profit from betting in this spot. Do players in your games fold when they miss the flop? Do they miss more than 20% of the time?

I do want to make clear that when I play I actually look at my cards. I have tried to lay the ground work for the mathematical principles that guide short handed play. In upcoming articles I plan to discuss what to do after you actually look at your cards and what to do when your opponents don’t play as friendly as our foe that folds too much.

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