The Beginners Nightmare
I have always maintained that no-limit hold'em has certain design flaws in how it is played. At this form of poker, a good solid player who was utilising a big stack strategy could be seriously impeded by a player with little money on the table who had substantially less skill.
If you are sitting in a NL600 game with $600 on the table and you get into a pot against a player who only has $100 then your extra $500 does you no good in this situation. The effective stacks are only $100 and not $600. This means that your overall poker strategy is blunted as you cannot play multi-street poker against these players.
So beginners are better off learning small stack strategies before they learn a big stack strategy. However if you desire to progress to making a lot of money playing poker then you are going to have to master the nuances of the big stack strategy. One of the key factors in playing with a lot of chips on the table relative to the blinds is in how hand values change.
If you took a hand like As-Ah and pitched it against something like 8c-6c then the aces would be an overwhelming favourite in a pre-flop all-in situation. But let us say that two players were playing very deep in a $200 no-limit game and they both had $400 on the table which is 200 big blinds.
If the player with the aces is a novice player and the other player with the 8c-6c is a skilled deep stacked player then the effect of the aces is almost totally eliminated in this situation. Correct poker strategy is dictated not just by card strength because card strength is related to so many different factors. If the novice player with the aces plays this hand badly and gets married to the hand post flop then they could be in an awful lot of trouble.
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Let us look at a big stack strategy in action in this hand example. Our novice raises to $7 in this $1-$2 game with him having $400 on the table at the start of the hand. As we have seen he has aces and his raise gets called by a strong player on the button with the 8c-6c. Both blinds fold and the pot is $17 and the flop comes 7c-4s-2d giving the novice a big over pair and the strong player a gutshot draw.
The novice player does not want to have his aces outdrawn and so bets $17 which is the pot and the strong player calls making the pot $51. What we have to remember here is that the strong player does not know that the other player has aces. He is calling in the belief that they have nothing but overcards or a hand like 10-10 or 9-9 and they can be scared off the hand on the turn or river.
This is a viable tactic in big stack strategy when the stacks are deep like they are here as this player can win by hitting their hand and also by forcing a fold. Quite often correct poker strategy here against weaker players is to call the flop and then look for a show of weakness on the turn.
In this example the turn card is the 5d which completes a very nasty concealed straight for the strong player. The novice with the aces makes another pot sized bet to protect his hand and bets $51. This bet tells the strong player all he needs to know and this bet is indicative of a big pair.
If all this player had was high cards then the chances are that they would have bet less. Plus if they do have high cards only then another call on the turn will more than likely force them to check the river. So the strong player decides to escalate the pot now and if the player with the big pair cannot get away from their hand then they are going to lose a big pot.
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The strong player raises to $144, this makes the pot $246 and it is only $93 more for the aces to call. Suddenly this raise looks ominous to the player with the aces but it feels wrong to fold at this stage and he rationalises it by thinking that his opponent may be bluffing.
So he calls the $93 which does not seem much but that $93 is not only keeping him in the pot but it also escalating the pot from $246 to $339. The river card is another deuce giving the player with the aces two pair. Now it is clear to the player with the straight that there is no way that overcards could make that call and the only way that he can be behind is if his opponent had raised with a pocket pair like 7-7 or 4-4 and hit a set that just filled up.
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But from a purely combination perspective, this is unlikely. Why would a player bet the pot on the flop with the nuts when the chances are that his opponent will just fold? Big stack strategy depends on figuring out the range of your opponent and what possible hands they may hold. The novice has so far committed $168 out of his $400 stack to this pot thus leaving him $232.
The problem now is that the pot has escalated to $339 so what he has left is substantially less than the pot. He checks his aces on the river which has now turned into two pair. His opponent sets him all-in and bets $232 making the pot $571. The player with the aces is getting around 2.5-1 on his money.
He fears the worst but the pot odds, the strength of his own hand and the fact that his opponent could be bluffing sways him into making the call. The lesson here is clear, big stack strategy indicates that you only play big pots with big hands and two pair has never been a big hand in no-
This article was written by Carl "The Dean" Sampson who has been a professional online poker player, poker theorist and writer for eight years. Prior to that he was a blackjack player and has written three books on poker and casino games
