Here’s a sample hand that will help illustrate some things you should be thinking about in those spots. This hand is taken from the $20 Rebuy 6-max tournament on Full Tilt Poker. The rebuy period is closed.

You have Jacks. You don’t have any particular history with the players at this table, but the SB has proven to be very stubborn in confrontations with other players.

You certainly aren’t forced to raise here – you can call off and hope to set or catch a safe flop. However, if you choose to raise, which is better – a standard raise or a shove? Let’s consider a couple of questions:

What’s the potential post-flop situation?
If you shove, post-flop is a non issue, so it’s important to consider whether seeing a flop will work in your favor or not. In this spot, let’s say you 3-bet to about 1300 or so. You’ll certainly take the pot fairly often, but your first opponent will be getting nearly 3-1 on the call, and if they call, your second opponent may decide to come along as well. Playing JJ in a built pot, potentially out of position, potentially multi-way with about a pot or less left in your stack can be tricky, as an overcard is going to flop about half the time. When seeing a flop might get you in an awkward spot, consider an all in instead of a standard raise.

Which raise best disguises your hand?
Any raise is designed to get your opponent to hopefully call when you’re stronger and fold when you’re weaker. In this spot you’re not looking to make your hand look stronger than it is, because you’re not going to get a hand stronger than JJ to fold – all you’ll accomplish is making more hands that JJ beats fold. Your goal is to make your hand look as weak as possible. In lower buy in tournaments, all in bets are generally perceived as weaker than standard sized raises – I think your typical player at these levels would be able to talk themselves into putting you on AK or 99 here, which is exactly the sort of thinking you’re hoping for. In higher buy in tournaments you won’t get the same monkey calls, but the question still remains the same – what bet size allows you to misrepresent your hand to your greatest advantage? Whatever bet size allows you to get your opponent to misjudge your range to the greatest degree, that’s the one you should choose. In this case, I think an all in allows your opponent to read you as weaker than you are. If you were a little deeper, I think a standard re-raise would work better, as it might look like a squeeze that you can be four bet off of, but a standard raise with these stacks looks pretty strong and you’re unlikely to get medium pairs – the hands you’re crushing – to make a big mistake.

What bet best plays off your opponents tendencies?
Some opponents thrive on post-flop play. Other opponents dread the thought of calling a big preflop raise with a hand like AQ or 99 and then having to play unfavorable flops. Some opponents have no problem folding to a three bet, while others simply cannot let go of a hand once they have some money in the pot. Those tendencies are often critical tiebreakers when you’re considering what kind of raise to make. You basic goal is to determine how you can force your opponent to make the largest possible mistake, given what you know about your opponent. In our example, the stubborn opponent in the SB gives us some motivation to simply shove, as their initial call might serve to pull them into the pot.

The moral of the story: all raises are not created equal. In this hand, it seems like making an all in move is superior to a standard raise. It avoids some preflop awkwardness, makes your hand look far weaker than it actually is and may possibly exploit a core weakness in your opponent. Of course, each hand is a unique situation, but this analysis should give you a framework for determining the optimal point on the raise slider between minimum and maximum the next time you’re in a similar spot.

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In this article, we’re going to focus on a fairly common BVB spot: playing a marginal hand from the small blind when the table has folded to you. There are four critical variables that impact your decision making in this particular spot: your image, opponent’s image, your stack size and opponent’s stack size. Instead of discussing every possible permutation of those four variables, we’ll take one hand and dissect it, noting in the discussion how your play might change if one of the variables was different.

The Hand

This hand is taken from a $50 one rebuy one addon tournament on Full Tilt Poker. 15 players remain, and you’ve been pretty aggressive. The BB has been pretty tight. You have K4 offsuit and the table folds to you.

Your Options

You have five reasonable options here, more or less. You can fold, you can call, you can raise small and fold, you can raise small and call, or you can push all in. We’ll discuss the EV of your choices in terms of BBs (Big Blinds) to keep things simple. After posting the blinds, you have about 35 BBs and your opponent has about 11 BBs, with about 2.5 BBs in the pot.

Folding is totally reasonable. You have a good stack, you have an aggressive image, and taking a hand off might give your next raises a bit more credibility. However, I think there’s enough money in the middle that you really need to keep the foot on the gas at least some of the time, so let’s admit that folding some of the time is an acceptable play and move on to exploring the active options in more depth.

Let’s start with calling. If you just limp, we’ll assume your tight opponent is raising you only with solid hands, so let’s say 15% of the time. That’s a range that includes all strong aces, most pairs and the stronger broadway combos. When he raises, you have to fold, so 15% of the time you lose 1500 chips. Now let’s discuss the other 85% of the time. What’s your plan if you limp and he checks? A handy line against a tight player out of position is simply to lead every single flop for about 2/3rd pot or thereabouts. Let’s say you lead every single flop for 6000 into 8800. Your opponent will miss the flop and fold to your bet about 65% of the time. The other 35% he’ll hit and you’ll shut down entirely. So, 35% of the time you’ll lose 7500 (the call plus the lead), and 65% of the time you’ll win 8800. That lets us determine the overall EV of calling and leading every flop:

EV = (15% of the time you limp-fold and lose 1500 chips) + (85% * ((35% you lead 6000 (plus your 1500 for the preflop call) and give up when called) + (65% you lead 6000 and win 8800))

Or

EV = (.15 * -1500) + ( .85 * ((.35 * -7500) + (.65 * 8800)) )

EV = -225 + 2779 = 2559

So, the expected value of calling and leading under these conditions is about 2500 chips, or just under 1 BB. Not terrible, given that you only risk 2.5 BBs and well under 10% of your stack.

Let’s go to the other end of the spectrum and discuss raising all in. I think we can assume this tight player has a narrower calling range than re-raising range. Let’s say he’s calling the shove with the top 10% or so of hands – most pairs and AJ+. So, 90% of the time, he folds and you win the 7300 in the middle. The other 10% of the time, your K4 puts up a decent fight, winning 30% and losing 70%. So, the EV looks like:

EV = (.90 * 7300) + (.10 * ( (.30 * 41300) + (.70 * -35500) )

EV = 6570 + -1246 = 5324

… or just a bit under 2BBs. Note, however, that you’re putting much more of your stack at risk to chase this edge – over 35k, which is more than a third of your stack. Also worth noting is the difference in the risk reward ratio between shoving and limp-leading. Shoving risks about 12 BBs to gain 2 BBs, while limp-leading is about 2.5 BBs to 1 BB. The more skewed the risk-reward ratio of a play is, the more variance that play will introduce into your results. That’s not to say a high-risk reward ration automatically makes one play worse than another with a lower ratio, but it’s certainly a factor to consider when weighing your options.

How about the raise-call? This wouldn’t be terrible against a BB who was aggressive and pushing back wide, but against a tight opponent it’s a mistake. Tighter players generally only play back with about the top 15% or so, and K8 isn’t doing too well against that range. If you raise to 10k and BB shoves, you’re getting about 2-1, and you need to assume he’s shoving down to A2+, 22+ and JT+ to make the call correct with K8.

Next up, raising and folding. This is usually a poor choice against observant, aggressive, opponents who will re-raise you with a very wide range, but our scenario is a little different. You can assume a tighter player will probably only play back at you with the top 15% or so of hands. He’ll also call every once in awhile, but that’s fairly rare, so we won’t worry about it for now. So, 85% of the time you win 7300 and 15% of the time you lose 10k. The math is pretty simple:

EV = (.85 * 7300) + (.15 * -10000) = ~4700

That’s about 1.5 BBs. Not a bad pick up, and you risk 2.5 BBs. That’s a great ratio, and it puts very little of your stack in play. It is less of a pure gain than the shove, but the trade off is you really reduce your variance.

So what should we do?

It seems like the options come down to raise-fold and shove. Shoving has the highest pure return (2 BBs versus 1.5 BBs), but raise-fold has an awesome risk-reward ratio. Remember, raise-fold risks 2.5 to win 1.5, while shoving risks 12 to win 2. At this point in the tournament, a half of a BB just isn’t worth all that much to your stack – it won’t give you any additional options or really advance your chances of winning the tournament in any significant way. When that’s the case and you’re against a fairly predictable opponent, I’m always going to error on the side of reducing variance.

There’s a lot that goes on in blind versus blind play, and this hand is just one example of dozens of possible scenarios. Taking some time to break down a couple of those situations like we did in this article is a great exercise that can teach you some excellent lessons about the competing factors that play in to making the complex decision about what the optimal play actually is.