The Grinder's Manual: A Complete Course in Online No Limit Holdem 6-Max Cash Games PDF

© 2016 Peter Clarke (Carroters) Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 About The Manual 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success 2 Opening the Pot 2.1 The 6 Handed Table 2.2 Rating...

© 2016 Peter Clarke (Carroters) Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 About The Manual 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success 2 Opening the Pot 2.1 The 6 Handed Table 2.2 Rating Starting Hands 2.3 UTG 2.4 HJ 2.5 CO 2.6 BU 2.7 SB 3 When Someone Limps 3.1 The ISO Triangle 3.2 Frequent Strength 3.3 Fold Equity 3.4 Position 3.5 Limping Behind 3.6 Sizing An ISO 3.7 Example Hands 4 C-Betting 4.1 Light C-Bet Factors 4.2 C-Bet Sizing 4.3 More C-Bet Spots 5 Value Betting 5.1 Introducing the Value Bet 5.2 Relative Hand Strength (Question 1) 5.3 Building the Pot (Question 2) 5.4 Slowplaying (Question 3) 5.5 Thick and Thin Value 5.6 Sizing and Elasticity 6 Calling Opens 6.1 Reasons to Call an Open 6.2 Cold Calling In Position 6.3 Calling Out of Position 6.4 Calling Blind vs Blind 7 Facing Bets - End of Action Spots 7.1 The Two-Part Thought Process 7.2 Stats and Examples 8 Facing Bets - Open Action Spots  8.1 Defending the Flop with Made-Hands 8.2 Defending the Flop with Non-Made-Hands 8.3 Defending the Turn 8.4 Dealing with Donk Bets 9 Combos and Blockers 9.1 Using Combos Pre-Flop 9.2 Using Combos Post-Flop 9.3 Blockers 10 3-Betting 10.1 Polar 3-Betting 10.2 Linear 3-Betting 10.3 Practical Examples 10.4 Squeezing 10.5 3-Bet Sizing 11 Facing 3-Bets 11.1 Flatting 3-Bets 11.2 Complete Defence Ranges 11.3 Preemptive Adjustments 11.4 Example Hands 11.5 Facing Squeezes 11.6 Facing a 3-Bet Cold 12 Bluffing the Turn and River 12.1 Double Barrel Bluffing 12.2 Triple Barrel Bluffing 12.3 Delaying The C-Bet 12.4 Probing The Turn 12.5 Bluff Raising the Turn and River 13 3-Bet Pots And Balance 13.1 C-Betting 3-Bet Pots 13.2 3-Bet Pots As The Aggressor 13.3 Strategy As the Defender 14 Stack Depth 14.1 Playing Deep Pre-Flop 14.2 Playing Shallow Pre-Flop 14.3 Playing Deep Post-Flop 14.4 Dealing with Donk Bets 15 Appendices Appendix 1 - More About The Author Appendix 2 - Jargon Handbook (Glossary of Terms) Appendix 3 - List Of Figures 1. Introduction 1.1 About The Manual Welcome to The Grinder's Manual. This book is a comprehensive mega-course in No Limit Holdem cash games with specific focus on the online 6-max variation. It spans 532 pages and contains 152 hand examples and 80 instructive figures. This book is for the beginning player, the aspiring novice, the intermediate player, and the seasoned player who wants to improve his or her core understanding of the game. All but perhaps the very strongest players in the world will learn something from reading this book. This is a serious textbook that treats poker like an academic subject. Though online 6-max cash games are the book's focus, the material covered will be very useful for building a better understanding of the game in general for anyone with an interest in some form of No Limit Holdem. Players who are more interested in full ring cash games or tournament poker will still benefit greatly from working their way through the manual. Naturally, however, the aspiring 6-max cash player will benefit most. I have created what is, in my opinion, the first poker text ever to include all and only those technical poker topics mandatory for a complete game strong enough for the reader to crush his way through the microstakes, establish himself as a winning player at 100NL (50c/$1 blinds) and set up a solid basis for going further. After reading this book and appropriately applying the material, the reader will be strategically equipped to succeed at these stakes as the games are on the toughest sites on the internet as I write this in early 2016. This condensing process was by far the biggest challenge I encountered in writing the manual. My mission was for the aspiring online poker player to finally be dealt a complete syllabus that is both sufficient in detail and simple enough to digest without getting lost in the sea of 'too much information'. I know that I never came across anything close when I was learning the game. And so, finally, here it all is in one place! That said, if you were to quickly read this book only once cover to cover, picking up where you left off each sitting, the sea of too much information is exactly where you'd end up. Each chapter within the manual demands detailed study. The reader should try to read when fully alert, participating in the exercises with motivation to learn. Chapters are presented in a logical order. I take care to introduce new ideas as and when they become relevant. The reader's understanding of the necessary core technical skills is built gradually one step at a time. It is therefore advised that the reader avoids jumping between chapters, and follows this procession of complexity. If, for example, he were to leap straight from the 2nd chapter to the 11th, he'd quickly find himself confused by an array of material that was first introduced somewhere in between. The starting level of the manual is aimed at fairly new, but not completely clueless players. I assume that the reader has played poker before, is completely aware of the rules of the game and doesn't need to be told that a flush beats a straight. However, this book is written in such a way that more experienced players will also begin learning from the very start. I expect that even the simpler topics have mostly taught in a worse way before in other places and so I aim to clarify how to correctly think about basic areas of the game from the beginning. Even the more elementary topics, like opening the pot, are covered in an extremely high level of detail, building mathematical and logical foundations for what's to come. Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from years of coaching the game is that there is a very large gap in between theoretical understanding of concepts and the application of said concepts at the tables. In order to bridge the gap between concepts understood theoretically and concepts actually applicable in-game, it is strongly advised that the reader tries as fully as possible to solve hand examples and other exercises on his own before reading on. The manual is laid out in such a way as to put the reader in the driver's seat. I use the terms: 'Hero' and 'Villain' throughout this text. 'Hero' will always refer to the active player whose shoes we are in as we face each hypothetical poker situation. We shall assess every spot through the eyes of Hero. 'Villain' will always stand for his opponent. Essentially, we're the goody and he's the baddy. I shall be using the terms 'Hero' and 'we' interchangeably throughout the book to describe how the reader should play and think. I shall always use the male pronoun simply as a matter of consistency. The number of hand examples may at times seem excessive. As poker is such a complicated field, I actually consider the 152 hands covered here a bare minimum. I should also add that simply reading one book (even this one) should be far from the full scope of the aspiring player's study time. The reader is also advised to review his own sessions, regularly tagging hands in his database to match the topics covered here. It is possible to greatly solidify your understanding of the material in a practical way by reviewing real life examples that actually occurred in a session in which the reader's own money was at stake. Community is also highly important for learning in this game and I recommend that the reader discusses the themes and examples of this book with his poker peers. I deal with the mathematics of poker in this manual to exactly the extent that I think is appropriate for the aims of the book. The manual does not scrimp on any necessary math, but avoids overly complicated in depth mathematical material that has very restricted practical application. The rule for poker math is exactly the same as that for the rest of the book: lots of detail, but not a drop more than is necessary to become a very strong player. Poker is a massive subject containing an overwhelming amount of terminology. For the newer player or anyone not versed in speaking the lingo of poker, this can be daunting. Consequently, every new chunk of poker jargon you'll meet throughout this book is defined clearly and fully the first time it's introduced. Should you forget the exact meaning of a term somewhere along the way and want instant clarification, you can also consult the Jargon Handbook at the end of the manual for a quicker definition, where all of these terms are listed alphabetically. Before we jump into the real meat of the manual and get acquainted with the first technical topic, there are three short but necessary sections to read in this chapter. First we'll meet the concept of EV - a fundamental poker notion Secondly, I'll briefly describe the teaching strategy used throughout the book and why I've chosen it. Thirdly, while this book is almost exclusively a technical manual focusing on strategy and not psychological improvement, I would like to quickly outline what else needs to be done concerning the mental game of poker and the reader's professional approach to the game. 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker Contrary to what you might think, the currency of poker decision-making is not money, at least not as we know it. In the real world, money is a stable currency that reliably represents the worth of what we buy and sell. If I sell my car for $5000, I'll get $5000 for the car. I make a transaction for X dollars and so I gain or lose exactly X dollars. In poker, things don't work like this, not in the short- term. You might make a raise that on average earns you $15, but end up losing $100 because of bad luck on that one occasion. You lost $100 in money, but you gained $15 in EV. So what exactly is EV? 'EV' stands for 'expected value' and is the real currency of poker decision-making. As we cannot control the monetary result of our poker transactions in the individual instances in which we make them, we need a stable currency that does not fluctuate with short-term luck. EV is simply the amount of money we gain or lose on average in the long-term due to our poker actions. Some plays are described as '+EV' meaning that they make us money in the long run, while others we call '-EV' because they'll costs us money over a large sample. EV is what we're trying to maximise each and every time we have a choice to make in a hand. For this reason, every range of hands I recommend playing in a certain way, every adjustment I advise against each type of opponent in every situation, and basically every piece of advice in the whole manual is geared only towards maximising our overall EV. So luck is entirely irrelevant. I don't care whether you gain or lose money over one hand, or 10,000 hands for that matter, just that you gain EV over that sample. The upshot is that in 100,000 hands of playing in a +EV way, there's a very good chance you'll have gained money. This is what beating poker is - a long term grind, churning out EV knowing that sooner or later it will become real money. Now look at Figure 1:  Figure 1 - The EV Cycle Let's imagine that I played a 500 hand microstakes poker session one afternoon where the sum of every choice that I made earned me +$8 in EV. In the short-term, there exists a myriad of possible monetary outcomes for that session. In fact, this figure grossly underrepresents just how many different possibilities there are. Some days I'll win more than $8; other days I'll win less than $8. On more rare occasions, where the natural variance in poker has been against me over this small sample, I'll even lose money. My EV is still +$8, the actual results are just down to luck. Fortunately for us poker players, over an infinite sample of hands, we know this EV will translate exactly into money won and we'll get our $8 and not a penny more or less. Over large but not infinite samples, like a million hands, we can expect to come somewhere very near to making the same amount in money as we have in EV. It might be a little less or a little more, but the chances are it won't differ hugely like it does in the short term. So EV is king. From now on, make those little turquoise beads of EV your goal. Money is not important in poker over small samples, but EV is. As someone once told me when I was first learning the poker ropes: "EVs are not monies yet, they are baby monies that will grow up one day." With that clarified, the rest of this book is fully devoted to equipping you to fill your poker pockets with as much EV as you're humanly capable of. When that EV grows up into money, you'll have paid off the cost of this manual and much more. Unfortunately, that process can take time and a frustratingly long time when we're running bad. There's a point in every winning poker player's life where he wishes real world vendors accepted EV as a form of payment; when it seems like he just can't catch a break from relentless bad variance (luck). I can't teach you how to win money over a thousand, ten thousand or even one hundred thousand hands. Variance decides that (to a lesser and lesser extent as the sample gets larger). What I can teach you to do is to be positive EV over that sample. Before we move on, I'll quickly alert the reader to one common misconception in terminology. EV is not the same as All in EV. The former is what you're expected to gain or lose from any decision you ever make in poker whether the hand goes to showdown or not. The latter refers only to your expected earnings when a hand goes to showdown and is a measure of your EV from that type of situation alone. All in EV is often compared to monetary earnings as a measure of how lucky or unlucky a player has been. What we must remember is that it only paints a picture about variance in one kind of situation. It does not account for the player's luck in the many spots that do not go to showdown and is therefore far from the full picture of how well a player is running and I'd advise you not to get too fixated on this stat. 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model We're almost ready to launch into the heart of poker's technical game where we'll learn how to assess the many situations the game can throw at us. Before we get our teeth into the first chapter of rigorous poker study, I'd like to explain the teaching method I'll be using throughout the book and why I've settled on it after five years of coaching poker. As I mentioned before, the motivation behind creating this manual was to put an end to 95% of aspiring poker players getting hopelessly lost along their journey. Bottom up learning is all about starting with the most basic individual concepts and working your way up; identifying the critical elements that make each of the situations ahead unique and knowing which factors to consider in each one. My aim is to turn the reader's brain into a poker computer that efficiently considers only those factors most relevant to the EV of his decision. As we just saw, EV is the thing that really matters in this game. Many aspiring players go wrong because their thought process is jumbled in a way that actually neglects EV - in making their decisions, they tend to consider things that don't matter and ignore things that do. See the model below for an illustration of how we'll be learning to make logical and profitable decisions in the various poker situations we'll encounter. Figure 2 - A Bottom Up Decision Model This approach is a foundational one in that knowledge is built up from a solid base that grows stronger and stronger with each chapter. Learning starts by considering some of the most common poker situations and considering what's relevant. Factors that are introduced in the early chapters, crop up time and time again later and so the reader solidifies his grasp of them as he goes. By the time he is able to solve the examples for every chapter, he'll possess the computational poker thinking power necessary to succeed in the aim of this book. This will stand him in good stead to become a successful player, especially if he can piece it together with the other two aspects of poker success which I touch on in the next section. 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success Undoubtedly, the largest component to success in poker is having a superior technical grasp of the game than your opponents. The following chapters of this book are all geared towards assisting the reader in this pursuit. This is a manual about what I call the 'technical game' of poker - how to actually play the cards in relation to the strategic needs of each poker situation. That said, there are two other areas in which the aspiring player needs to develop competency: I refer to these as the 'mental game' and the 'practical game'. The mental game of poker concerns having the mental constitution to succeed even through the more difficult times when variance is against us. The practical game concerns the player's poker habits outside of the playing of the cards. Practical game topics cover session length, game selection, bankroll management and much more. I'll briefly touch on the importance of these two aspects before we go any further. I don't want the reader to imagine for a second that just reading this technical manual is enough to succeed in poker. The Mental Game Poker is tough. Most of the students I take on have severe mental game problems that have massively impaired their ability to make money so far in their poker careers. In a nutshell, they allow bad short- term results to affect their composure. This leads to worse decisions which harm the amount of EV they make, which in turn leads to a dwindling bankroll over time. In poker speak this effect is known as 'tilt'. Tilt is entirely natural. It's a normal human response to negative variance, which can feel unfair and at times, brutal. Do, however, take your mental game very seriously. Work hard at it and spend separate study time learning how to control tilt and reduce its impact on your winrate. A good place to start is reading Jared Tendler's The Mental Game Of Poker. This book is, in my opinion, the leading work for aiding the aspiring player in gradually strengthening his mental game over time. The Practical Game To set out on the path of being a professional golfer with no idea how often to practice, who to get coached by, which competitions to enter, and which clubs to purchase would be ludicrous. Nevertheless, new students who come to me for poker coaching often arrive on my doorstep with some very bad practical game habits. Some are as unprepared that, in golfing terms, they're hitting a lemon around a car park with rake for practice. A healthy practical game involves healthy study habits. The reader should look to do plenty of hand history analysis, have dedicated focused study time, consider the worth of coaching and explore many forms of active poker learning to find out what works best (all students are different.) At the same time, he must also investigate which games on the internet best fulfill his current poker goals. Is he trying to improve his game and wishes to play on a tougher site with nicer software, or is it more prudent to play on a softer site to build a bankroll as fast as possible. Moreover, within his chosen site, Hero should attempt to table select properly, avoiding games full of competent Regulars and favouring tables with weaker players. The practical game of poker also demands that Hero puts in enough hands to make some progress over a meaningful timeframe, while at the same time not neglecting his study time. Getting this study:play ratio right is very important and for the beginner I recommend around 50% study, 50% play. A whole book could be written on the practical game of poker. It's not impossible that I'll take up the challenge some time in the future and make a sequel to this manual with a practical game focus. Until then, coaching, training sites, forums, peers and many other places on the internet can help in this respect. The reader should not neglect either the mental or practical game, lest all of his hard technical work amounts to no monetary reward. It sounds extreme, but I can tell you from years of working with aspiring poker players that it's entirely true for at least 95% of students. 2. Opening The Pot Let's start at the beginning and look at building some default ranges to open with in each position on the table. In this chapter, we'll be introducing each position on the table individually and talking about what changes as we move from first to act (UTG) through to the small blind (SB) in a 6 handed game. The opening ranges that I recommend can and should be modified frequently due to the player types ahead and their effective stack sizes and tendencies. Selecting opening ranges in any given spot is a dynamic process. We need to both know the starting point and be aware of certain criteria that cause us to make modifications to our default settings. As we go through each position, I'll be listing some factors that make Hero inclined to deviate from his usual approach to opening the pot. Before we get stuck into some range building, it's essential that we're totally clear about what we mean by 'opening the pot'. Spots where someone else has called the one big blind before Hero acts will be dealt with in the next chapter. Spots where another player has raised before Hero acts will be covered in detail later on in the manual. For now, we are only concerned with choosing the hands we think are +EV to raise with as the first player not to fold. For newer players more accustomed to thinking about hands in isolation, thinking in terms of ranges is going to be a new challenge and one that is totally essential to embrace from this chapter onwards. Why consider each hand in isolation time after time when you can solve the whole situation by first knowing what range of hands you should be opening? Getting familiar with default ranges is the way to learn this topic. Only once we're confortable with our rough strategy will we start to look at whether or not to open two specific hole cards. The hand range diagrams in this chapter may be useful to recreate and have on screen as you learn them, even during your poker playing sessions. Printing them out onto flash cards and having them on hand is a great way to first ingrain the default ranges in your mind. Having this starting point is essential and is the basis for developing an appropriate opening strategy for all of the dynamic situations we'll face. It's easier to navigate pre-flop opening ranges when Hero knows what he'd 'normally do' and then as he improves, can begin to appreciate how to vary this to adapt to the real poker situation in front of him. Although some of the most common and important standard adjustments from the default ranges are covered here, there will no doubt arise new types we haven't covered. Thinking for yourself is the most important habit of the aspiring poker player. Finally, the more skilled a player is pre-flop and post-flop relative to his opponents, the higher the EV of opening certain hands. This can result in borderline hands being +EV opens for stronger players but not for weaker ones. The ranges I recommend here are fairly conservative in this respect. They should equate to +EV opens in standard low and micro-stakes games for all but the newest and weakest of players who will be losers in the games any way. If you think that this could be you, don't worry! Read this manual, work hard and embrace the fact that you'll be losing a little bit of money at the smallest stakes as you learn the ropes - it's like a tuition fee and a very reasonable one at that. After working through this manual, skill to open these ranges will definitely not be an issue if the student applies himself. 2.1 The 6 Handed Table Figure 3 - The 6-Max Table Like I said before, poker has a language of its own. I've clarified the expression above that goes with each of these terms. If you want to sound like a Fish in a live game though for deceptive purposes, feel free to say: "I was in under the gun!" These names are pretty much universal for 6-max formats. You'll sometimes hear the HJ called 'MP' (Middle Position) Other than that though, there aren't really any variations. One common mistake the novice player can make on occasion is to refer to his position as UTG in a less than 6-handed game and then play as if he were in a 6-handed game. Always think about these positions in relation to the button and you won't go wrong. If you're playing at a 4-handed table, you're never UTG. The first seat to act is the CO due to being before the BU and so on. It's much easier to standardise the positions in this way in order to eliminate any confusion if the table drops below 6 players. When Hero is playing at a shorthanded table, he simply looks at his seat in relation to the BU and plays accordingly. Heads-up play (where there are just two players) is the lone exception to this rule. From this point onwards, when I refer to a position, it will always be in this short hand form. Each position name will always refer to the same point relative to the BU. 2.2 Rating Starting Hands Before we lay out the foundations of our opening strategy by position, it's a good idea to run through the different types of starting hands that can be dealt in No Limit Holdem and see what general reasons we might have for opening each. I recommend that Hero always tops up his stack to the typical cash game table maximum of 100BB in order to maximise his edge over his competition and so this is the stack-size that his default strategies will be catered to. In every hand example in this book we'll assume Hero is 100BB deep with all players unless stated otherwise. Examples where stack sizes are non-standard are covered in depth in Chapter 14. There are three primary attributes that entice us to open a hand in NLHE cash games at 100BB stack depth. The better the hand scores in the three areas below, the earlier the position on the table we can open it from. These characteristics are listed in order of importance. Good Pair Potential (GPP) is the most important attribute because strong one pair hands are the only hands that both occur significantly frequently and win a large percentage of the time. As stacks become deeper (larger), it becomes slightly less important as stronger hands are needed to win huge pots. As stacks become shallower (smaller), it becomes a totally dominating factor since good pairs are then often more than a sufficient requirement for getting the money in. Versatility (V) is important at any stack depth but matters more with deeper stacks. Nut Potential (NP) is a very useful quality, but we have to accept that we just don't flop hands of this strength frequently with any starting hand, though ones that score better in NP do so more often than others. This attribute catapults into greater significance the deeper the stacks become and matters less with short stacks as hand strength requirements for getting all the money are relaxed. We'll now score some groups of starting hands using these attributes as a warm up to building some actual opening ranges. It's important to know why a hand is a profitable open in terms of EV instead of blindly following charts as so many inexperienced players end up doing. The fourth score in the table below is a general measure of how suitable the hand is to open. It is not identical to the mean score of the hand as some factors are more important than others.  Figure 4 - Hand Ratings for Top 20% of Hands This table is merely the best 20% of hands Hero can be dealt in NLHE cash with 100BB stacks. The list could go on all the way down to 72o and a suitability score of 0. It's not my purpose here to provide an exhaustive ranking of hands, but the general picture should now be clear. These are the qualities we value in a starting hand. As the hand scores less in these fields, it becomes a less desirable open and requires more favourable position and table conditions. We'll now focus on the six positions on the 6-max table and discuss what ranges we should open under different circumstances from each. When learning the proposed ranges, I suggest you connect each choice with these three attributes and remember what makes the hand good to open in the first place. 2.3 UTG The term 'UTG' in full-ring poker (9 or 10 handed) carries with it some ideas about being incredibly tight indeed and not having very much fun at all. Fortunately, UTG in 6-max is not such a bleak land of endless folding. That said, it certainly is the position on the 6-max table from which we need to enter the pot with the tightest range of hands. There are five opponents to act after us so at the risk of stating the obvious: someone has a strong hand more often than when we open from the later spots on the table. Reasons to Open UTG UTG is not typically a 'steal' spot, meaning that getting EV from other players folding is not our primary purpose. Here are the main reasons that Hero opens hands from UTG. 1. For value: To build a pot with a strong hand which figures to do well vs the ranges our opponents are calling with. We mainly favour hands with a lot of the good pair flopping quality for this purpose as these hands can be flopped regularly. 2. To thin the field: Most of the hands Hero plays UTG are strong enough that their primary aim post- flop is to win a sizeable pot with hands such as top pair and over-pairs. Hero is not opening KK or AQ to try to flop a set or straight, but to use the brute force power of the pairs these hands flop most often to make money. A slightly less primary aim is to take down the pot with a continuation bet in favourable situations should Hero not flop a hand he can value bet. Both of these aims require that we aren't commonly going four or five way to the flop. Top pair with a good kicker (TPGK) is a lot weaker vs three opponents than it is vs one, and taking down the pot with two bare overcards is less achievable against multiple opponents. Raising before the flop cuts down on the average number of players seeing the flop and helps us achieve these aims. 3. To sometimes win the blinds: Just because Hero's raise from this seat doesn't take down the pot as often as a button raise might, doesn't mean he never succeeds to this end. There will be times when everyone folds. Let's have our first taste of poker math to calculate how often we expect to win the blinds pre-flop on a tight table where each opponent plays 12% of all possible hands against our UTG open. 12% is a tight range, but not unrealistic for the average novice but serious player at the lower stakes. The following mathematical technique is not too daunting and will come in handy time and time again throughout your poker journey. This is reasonable, but not a huge percentage and so Hero must avoid the temptation to get too out of line from this seat. 4. To target weaker players: Sometimes Hero will expand his UTG opening range to target weaker players, particularly ones in the blinds who he'll have position on post-flop, who are playing too many hands pre-flop. When Hero's competition is weaker he expects to profit by getting into more post-flop scenarios than usual. Hands that struggled to turn a profit at an ordinary table from UTG can quickly become lucrative opens when there are bad players to exploit. So now that we know why we're opening from this seat, let's go ahead and look at our default opening range from UTG. The following range assumes that there are no very aggressive Regulars attacking our opens from this spot by frequently re-raising and no Fish that we're targeting in the blinds. Every default range in this chapter is intended for an average low/microstakes game without conditions of this sort. As mentioned earlier, these ranges are beginner friendly and more competent players can get away with opening wider than advised here. Figure 5 - UTG Default Opening This range equates to a conservative 11% of all the hands we can be dealt. There is some difference between this 11% and what your poker program might advise you are the 'top' 11% of hands theoretically. This is due to the fact that with 100BB stacks, it becomes more important to have hands that can both flop good draws frequently and make the nuts a reasonable amount of the time. In a tournament with 15BB stacks this is much less important than just being able to flop a good pair. EG. When matched against each other before the flop, ATo is a 67% favorite over T9s, but the latter will make a more profitable open from this position due to its much higher nut potential and versatility. Moreover, when we do get called after opening UTG, the pairs that we flop with ATo are more frequently in bad shape against hands like JJ, AJ and AQ than those that T9s flops which will tend to be more unique pairs. The opening ranges in this book will always be constructed by picking every hand that will normally be +EV to open with 100 big blind stacks, and not by which hands would perform best if they were all in pre-flop. Sizing (3x) Recall that one of our fundamental purposes behind opening UTG was to prevent too many players from seeing the flop. Remember that if too many players come along, our strong range struggles more to: Have the best hand with good pairs. With multiple opponents it's much more likely someone has flopped a better hand. Pick up the pot with a continuation bet when we miss the flop. Thus, we need a default open-size big enough to thin the field. At standard tables (again with no big Fish) 3x is appropriate for this aim. Going into the realms of 4x and even 5x is very justifiable in loose/passive games where there are one or more Fish calling more than they should pre-flop. A larger size makes the pot bigger and punishes Fish for this common mistake by making it costlier for these players to either see flops and play fit-or-fold or refuse to fold post-flop with marginal hands. I therefore recommend deviating to 4x on Fishy tables and 5x on highly Fishy tables where multiway pots are very common. At rarer very aggressive tables where Regs are actively 3-betting against UTG opens it might be prudent to open 2.5x from UTG as an adjustment, making it less costly to fold to 3-bets and hurting the risk/reward ratio of the light 3-bettors somewhat. I do not recommend using different sizes with different parts of the opening range. This can work well if you're facing one terrible player who will never fold pre-flop, however, as you'll normally be opening into at least a couple of aware Regs, you'll essentially make yourself extremely exploitable in an obvious way by 3xing every time you have AJo and 4xing with KK. Dynamic Adjustments Choosing an opening range is one of the simplest decisions we make as NLHE cash players. That said, it's still an extremely dynamic area. Different player types and tendencies can greatly affect the opening range Hero wishes to deploy. As online players, our primary tool for quickly figuring out who's who is the HUD. Throughout this book I will be providing the Poker Tracker 4 (PT4) wording of each stat, as this is in my opinion the most powerful and user-friendly program for tracking online poker. Depending on who is at the table, Hero may well want to add or subtract hands from his default opening range. It's time to introduce the most essential HUD stats in NLHE that allow us to understand what kinds of players we're up against: VPIP and PFR. These stand for 'Voluntarily Put Money in Pot %' and 'Pre-flop Raise %' respectively. Let's have a look at what they mean. Fish Hunting Hero is UTG. The table consists of some tight Regs who aren't getting out of line vs earlier position opens, but in the BB there is a very weak player running a VPIP/PFR of 56/12, who has trouble finding the fold button. Here, Hero has incentive to think that many hands that would be negative EV opens at tighter tables are now profitable due to the high frequency with which he gets to play a pot heads-up (just two players involved) with the Fish, in position. So Hero adds some extra hands with both good pair potential and nut potential to his range. Figure 6 - UTG Fish Hunting In Figure 6 above, the light blue hands represent these new additions that are only +EV opens due to the presence of this target Fish. The additions of ATo and KJo are due to the fact that the Fish will defend many hands from the big blind (BB) that actually flop worse pairs than these hands do. Hero can extract far more value with mediocre top pair hands vs the Fish than he would be able to vs stronger competition. 22-66 have been added because should Hero flop a set, the Fish is likely to pay him off far more often and to a greater extent than the average opponent will. In other words these hands have bolstered implied odds. 98s and 87s possess a mixture of these two strengths. They have both good implied odds and can frequently flop pairs that Hero can actually value bet against the Fish's weak calling range post-flop. A2s-A9s fall into the same category as above and can make nut flushes, which is always nice for extra nut potential. 2.4 HJ From the HJ life gets a little more flexible. There are now just 4 opponents left to act, which means that Hero's success rate for taking down the blinds unopposed increases. It's worth stressing at this point that stealing blinds without resistance is one of the surest and most stable ways to print EV in NLHE cash. In the HJ then, we can drop our standards a little due to this extra profit. We're still too far away from the button (BU) to adopt an immensely wide stealing range though. Jumping back to our 12% average calling range model (0.88 x 0.88 x 0.88 x 0.88 = 59.9%). That's a lot more folds than we were expecting when we opened from UTG. On tight tables then, we can start to add some hands that fall more into the category of semi-steals than value raises. These are hands that we open partially due one of the most central concepts in successful poker: fold equity (often shortened to FE.) There are a few subtle differences between this spot and UTG. Don't fall into the trap of lumping the first two positions on a 6-max table together as I've seen some poker coaches do in years gone by. There's a considerable difference. Let's begin with some reasons to open from the HJ. Reasons to Open HJ 1. For Value: Same as from UTG. We don't stop getting dealt AA just because we're a bit closer to the BU. 2. To thin the field: Same as from UTG. There are still four players to get through and our range, though wider, still prefers that we do not see lots of three and four-way flops. 3. As a Semi-Steal: Now that our open gets through the whole field more often, we can introduce some hands that, while they aren't playing horribly when called, are far from in great shape and do need this added fold equity to be profitable opens. The tighter the table, the more we can relax our requirements as to how wide we can semi-steal. Now let's look at a default opening range:  Figure 7 - HJ Default Opening The new additions here from the UTG default range can be classed as semi-steals. We have just enough playability + fold equity to expect to gain EV by playing them on an average table. We have moved up to a 15.5% range, which is still on the conservative side for this position. Sizing (3x) From the HJ, our incentives for opening don't change dramatically enough for altering our sizing to be necessary. We're still concerned with reducing the number of players involved and building a pot with a fairly strong range. I recommend starting out with 3x sizing in this seat. Again, the usual adjustments of 4xing are suitable for loose/passive tables or for when Fish suffering from foldaphobia lurk in the blinds. Dynamic Adjustments There are two important reasons for opening up this HJ range and including the next most suitable batches of starting hands. There is also one good reason for tightening this model a little. Let's start with the reasons for loosening up: 1. Fish Hunting/Nit Hunting For two entirely opposite reasons, the presence of either a Fish or a Nit in the blinds should cause Hero to widen his HJ range provided there aren't too many aware aggressive Regs who might notice this tactic and strike in position by 3-betting Hero lightly. Against the Fish in the blinds, Hero's implied odds shoot up with many weaker hands than advised by the default model. He also gets heads-up with the Fish here a bit more frequently than he does opening from UTG, which translates to even more hands becoming +EV. Against the Nit in the blinds, (in particular the BB) Hero bags himself a higher degree of fold equity, which more than compensates for the lower strength of some of the dynamic additions to his opening range. As long as the rest of the table is fairly straightforward with regards to its 3-bet tendencies, Hero should open up a bit more. The upshot is the same in both of these cases. We add more hands against nitty players as our fold equity justifies the adjustment. We add more hands on Fishy tables as our implied odds and heightened ability to get value post-flop justify it. The exact hands we add are shown in the figure below.  Figure 8 - Hunting from the HJ 2. Facing Light 3-Bettors Unfortunately, as well as times when we get to loosen up and enjoy the fruits of playing a wider range in a +EV way, there are times when the tendencies of the players behind us actually render the weakest parts of our default range -EV to open. The most prevalent example that you'll encounter these days, even from the lowest stakes, is of light 3-bettors especially in position. If one or more of these more aggressive Regs is causing us to fold pre-flop having invested 3BBs on a Regular basis, then a strategy of opening wide is just not going to be feasible. We'll be exploring these spots fully later on in the manual and will delve deeper into the theory of constructing ranges to better deal with facing 3-betting. For now though, I'll say in more general terms that the less hands we open in the first place, the easier it is to defend and prevent these player types from exploiting us when we're out of position. If opening and then folding to 3-bets is -EV, let's not do it so much when we're expecting to get 3-bet often. There are of course other options available for adjusting to avid 3-bettors including getting up and finding a better table to play on, but for now we're concerned with how we should adapt our opening range in light of this problem. See the model below for a more conservative 12.5% HJ range that will be able to stand more heat and bleed less money vs frequent 3-betting. Figure 9 - A Defensive HJ Range There will undoubtedly arise situations where there are both Nits and Fish in the blinds and aggressive Regs in position to us. In these spots, we need to find some compromise between the two dynamic ranges as we have both an extra incentive and a deterrent to opening a wide range. Reverting to our default range here might not be a bad choice, but as always in poker we need to assess the entire situation and the magnitude of the positive and negative factors in play. 2.5 CO The CO is where Hero starts to have some serious fun. It's also the second most profitable position on the table in the long-term. With three tight players behind us, we get the luxury of picking up the blinds uncontested 0.88 x 0.88 x 0.88 = 68% of the time. Although many tables will not be folding anywhere near this often, especially as most players adjust by 3-betting and flatting wider vs CO opens than vs earlier position raises; but even if the competition now defends an average of 15%, this still yields us a 61% success rate on a steal. The CO is the first of the official 'steal spots' as opening ranges generally widen considerably, and quite rightly too. For now, let's stick to our organised range construction routine and first consider the purpose of a CO open. Reasons to Open CO 1. For Value: From the CO, clear value opens are a smaller part of Hero's range than before, but they still exist. Hero can in fact open extra hands for this reason than he could UTG as he is now more likely to be called by weaker hands, but these value hands are now dwarfed by the weaker hands that Hero opens for the purpose of fold equity. 2. As a Semi-Steal: The additions made in the HJ range of course remain. These hands are to recap, ones that play pretty well but do require some fold equity pre-flop or post-flop to be profitable opens. 3. As a Steal: Opening as a steal does not necessarily justify opening hands as bad as 72o or J4o despite the fact that the primary purpose of the open is to grab fold equity. We don't want to become maniacs who very obviously open any two cards from the CO as such a strategy would soon get us killed in the long run even if it were profitable the first couple of times we used it. Steals are just weaker additions to our range than semi-steals were. In the CO we still have the BU to act in position to us as well as the two blinds and so we must keep some semblance of strength to our stealing hands. See Figure 10 for a recommended default opening range.  Figure 10 - CO Default Opening Clearly hands like A9o and 97s are not going to frequently flop the world, but due to our increased fold equity, this is fine. Sizing (2.5x) The CO is the first position where I'll be recommending a change in sizing from what we've been using so far. Given that our purpose has shifted away from field-thinning and pure value and into the realms of grabbing fold equity, a smaller open-size of 2.5x is going to be more appropriate on standard tables where we're not doing any Fish hunting. This might sound strange at face value. You might wonder: why if our primary aim is for the opposition to fold, do we give them a better price to do the opposite? Well, in making it less to go pre-flop, we're also giving ourselves a better price on a steal. There is a certain minimum success rate that each 'steal' hand in our range needs in order to open profitably. The more money we invest on this steal attempt, the higher that number gets. If I invest 25BB to win the 1.5BB in the middle, I need a very high success rate indeed (94% to be precise, assuming Villains either shove or fold, and that when they shove, we fold.) Opening to 25BB then, is mathematically awful. Our assumption is that although people may play a few more hands vs a 2.5x open than vs a 3x, we will gain more EV from our steal being smaller due to this lower required success rate outweighing the slight drop in fold equity we'll experience. We might not be jumping so high but we've lowered the bar by an even greater margin. There are two main cases where we're going to make dynamic adjustments to our sizing as well as to our range. I'll kill two birds with one stone here and deal with these sizing adjustments as I introduce the situations and ranges that accompany them. Dynamic Adjustments 1. Fish/Nit Hunting This theme should be extremely familiar by now. We open up our range from every spot when we are expecting an increase in either value or fold equity depending on which type of players wait ahead. Again, having the Fish in the blinds is far more precious than on the BU as having position on this weaker player post-flop is what really entitles us to go a bit wild against him pre-flop. Again we widen our range vs. either player, it's only our motivation to do so that differs.  Figure 11 - Hunting in the CO Dynamic Sizing Nits 2.5x: On the tight table, Hero's main aim is still to sieze all the fold equity he can. Therefore, giving himself a better price on his steal and leaving his sizing at 2.5x is recommended. Fish 3x: The great thing about Fish is that they call too much pre-flop to do either one of two things post-flop. They will normally either play fit-or-fold and allow Hero to print money with his continuation bets or they'll put far too much money into the pot with marginal holdings and give Hero a license to value bet to his heart's content. For both of these purposes having a bigger pot is ideal. I recommend going back up to 3x when a fish is your prey. 2. When the BU is a Nit So far, we've mainly been hunting the players in the blinds and adapting our hunting style for each type. Having a Nit on the BU is probably one of my favorite dynamic adjustments concerning opening ranges. As we'll soon see, on the BU, Hero gets the opportunity to steal extremely wide. When Hero is in the CO, he usually has to show some restraint and doesn't come anywhere near the range he'd open from the BU precisely because the BU is an extra player behind and one who has position on him. However, if the BU is very tight and is 3-betting and flatting very rarely, then Hero has been granted a license to treat the CO like a pseudo BU. Hero then goes wild given he effectively has the BU 90% of the time. He shouldn't really be allowed this luxury, but thanks to the Nit to his left, he's getting to play 1.9 BUs per orbit instead of 1!  Figure 12 - When the BU's a Nit For this dynamic adjustment we are going to revert to exactly the same sizing strategy we'll be using on the BU itself. As explained in the next section, we'll be opening for 2x where the blinds are Regs or Nits and for 3x when there's a Fish in the SB or BB. Where there is a mixture of these conditions in place, or if the degree of Fishiness is less, we'll settle on a 2.5x open. See this section for a full explanation. With 3-Bettors Ahead Just as in the HJ, we're forced to tighten up here and reduce the amount of steals in our range when faced with this threat. The situation is more severe when the light 3-bettor is on the BU as defending out of position is generally pretty difficult to do with any kind of wide range in a +EV manner - even with a reasonable skill edge post-flop. Figure 13 - A Defensive CO Range 2.6 BU Now we reach the position from which Hero should be generating by far the most EV. Over a large sample, your profits from the BU should go way above and beyond those from other spots. Given the pattern in the chapter thus far, the reader should have a very good idea about why we open from the BU. This time we're not going to start with a list of reasons to open this seat, but instead focus on the factors that make playing a wide range extremely profitable. One of the biggest leaks I find myself plugging in new students is their not opening wide enough (stealing enough) in this spot. I want to stress from the beginning that this can be an enormous mistake that actually turns potential winning players into losers. Here's are some reasons as to why it's so crucial to steal rampantly on the BU. With just two players to act, fold equity is now huge. This means that sizing can be reduced to 2x to enhance the steal price further, especially vs Villain's who aren't flatting very much out of the blinds. Hero will have an easy time reaching his required folds target with many hands on many tables, for this enhanced price. To fold these hands is to toss away free EV. Hero is always in position post-flop, which immediately increases EV in many subtle ways, as we'll see in the next chapter. At the lower stakes, Regulars in general tend to be overly tight and fold too much from the blinds. Some adopt strategies of rarely flatting out of position even vs minimum open sizing, which, as we'll learn, is happily punished by a wide stealing strategy. On the BU, ranges are wider and so it takes less strength to flop a strong hand relative to the average opponent's range. Hands like KJs, which flopped dangerous marginal pairs when they opened from UTG are now frequently flopping hands capable of getting two or even three streets of value post-flop. Although Hero's range is weaker on the whole, and contains many steals, the part of that can be considered 'value' widens. There are, therefore, more straight up value hands available for opening. I'll recommend one default BU hand chart for use only when Hero has no information at all. The BU is such a dynamic spot that it will be more useful to learn how to evaluate whether a hand will be a profitable steal and how wide of a range to use based on key factors rather than rigid memorisation of a set range. In these next two sections, you'll find a detailed explanation of how to assess the EV of making a steal both from the BU and from the SB. It's time to start moving away from pre-constructed ranges and to start thinking for ourselves. Risk and Reward It's time to introduce our next mathematical concept, but don't worry: it's an easy one and one that I've been subtly touching on throughout the chapter so far. Recall that how often we need our steal to work depends on what price we give ourselves on that steal; that's to say, how much we're risking compared to our potential gain should the steal be a success. See... I said the math would be easy in this manual. We'll soon look at some examples relating to stealing wide from the BU, but first a word on sensible sizing. I'm going to recommend that vs Regs, Nits, semi-Nits, and anyone in between, Hero uses a 2x opening strategy unless he gains the read that one of the Regs in the blinds flats a lot (Nits won't do this by definition). Against Fish in the blinds or the more flat-happy type of Reg, Hero can revert to 2.5x, 3x or even more, depending on the severity of the caller and their post-flop tendencies. I won't be providing exact rules to blindly follow in this manual. I'm teaching how to play poker, not how to follow instructions. By now you should be skilled enough to make a good estimation as to when to up your sizing and by how much depending on the situation. There are plenty of hand examples in later chapters that also happen to provide models for assessing pre-flop sizing. Use these to solidify your skill in this respect as we move forward. Let's take our first example spot and have a go at applying our newly learned math skills. One more thing before we do though: there is an important HUD stat that can give Hero a lot of information about how often the opposition fold to steals. The third (green) number on the HUD in Hand 1 below stands for the stat: Fold vs BTN Open in Poker Tracker 4. A quick note on these stat definition boxes as we'll be meeting many of them throughout this book: It might seem logically contradictory to include a range of 0-30 and then 30-50 as the number 30 is included twice for two different definitions. The reader should use some common sense here. Stat values are a gradual sliding scale. The ranges given under 'interpretation' are not intended to be taken completely literally. It is obviously not the case that this stat is low at 59 and suddenly average at 60. I have intentionally created these stat ranges so that the highest number of a lower group is always repeated as the lowest number of the next group to show that these ranges are just a rough guide. There is of course no sudden 1% increase that causes a dramatic shift in how wide a player's range is for the given action. A good option over larger samples, especially for those of you who prefer 100% statistical accuracy is to filter in your tracking software for this stat distinctly by either 'SB' or 'BB' and use a separate version of this stat for each position. The idea is to multiply the SB's Fold vs BTN Open in the SB by the BB's Fold vs BTN Open in the BB. I'll assume in the following examples that Hero has a large sample of hands on his opponents and that this stat refers to the specific blind in which the player is situated for higher accuracy. Let's start by finding RFE assuming that we min-open to 2x. RFE = R / (R + PG) R = 2 - the amount of BBs we are putting into the pot from this point of decision. PG = 1.5 - the sum of the dead money we are trying to win, in this case the SB + the BB. RFE = 2 / (2 + 1.5) RFE = 57% Now we've found our required fold equity to break even on this steal attempt we should calculate whether or not we have this much fold equity in reality. The combined FE here is found by multiplying the two Fold vs BTN Open stats together: 0.76 x 0.83 = 63% (combined probability again.) So Hero has more fold equity than he needs and a very clearly +EV open vs these two players. Hero raises to 2BB. Math Meets Reality Wouldn't it be lovely if it were really this simple to work out whether or not we should open a hand? I'm afraid there's a little more to this procedure than I've let on so far, as many of you may have realised. RFE would only be the true required fold equity to open if Hero was planning to fold every single flop when called, regardless of his hand strength or fold equity post-flop; or if Villain was going to 3- bet, not call, every time he defended his blind and Hero was going to fold to that 3-bet. In a nutshell, RFE ignores all of the post-flop eventualities that affect the profitability of a steal attempt. Thankfully, in reality, Hero is in a far better position than the math tells us. He'll never require more fold equity than RFE suggests and will usually need at least a little less. In reality, Villains will usually be calling a significant amount of the time they defend their blinds and Hero will have the option, with any hand, to: flop equity, make a strong hand, value bet, continuation- bet with good selectivity, bluff profitably on later streets, take free cards, take advantage of Villain's mistakes, and much more. The list of all the things that can happen post-flop is endless and not something we can calculate mathematically (trying to do so would be a headache we really don't need at this point) Instead, let's suffice to say that Hero needs less fold equity to open a steal hand than the % our RFE number tells us. How much less depends on the strength of the hand and various other factors listed below. Figure 14 below shows the positive and negative steal factors that we should consider. The more positive the factors, the further we can be below RFE and still want to open. The more negative the factors, the less we can move away from it. In most cases, we'll be able to reduce RFE a little bit, even when we have 72o.  Figure 14 - Good and Bad Steal Factors Factor 1: Refers to the Starting Hand Attributes we considered at the start of this chapter. See Figure 4 for a reminder. The better the hand performs post-flop the less FE it needs to steal pre-flop. Factor 2: Light 3-bettors are much worse for us than Villains who just call. We might know how often the blinds fold, but we need to consider what form their non-folding normally takes. If they 3-bet us, the bottom of our range goes straight into the muck and we realise no EV from trying to connect with the flop or being able to c-bet selectively. Factor 3: If Villains play fit-or-fold post-flop, we need less fold equity and can open wider. This is due to our continuation bets working more and not needing to hit the flop as often as a result. Factor 4: Aware Villains are ones who are prone to adjust well to our strategy in the long term. It may be that for now we can get away with opening 72o, but if we open 100% of hands continuously against these players then we can expect them to stop folding enough for those weaker steals to remain profitable. Thus, when Villains are aware, we'll need to make sure our stealing range doesn't get too out of line as a solid long-term strategy. Vacuum EV is a more blinkered view that neglects the possible ebb and flow of the game based on what players observe about each other's strategies. Long Term EV acknowledges this and takes into account predicted EV in future hands as a result of the changes players make to their game in order to adjust to their opponents. Factor 5: As I mentioned at the very start of this chapter, the EV of opening is intrinsically linked to the relative skill levels of the players at the table. If there are players in the blinds who make severe and frequent mistakes, then Hero will again need far less fold equity due to the profit he can make by exploiting these mistakes post-flop. NB. It can be a big mistake to open too tightly against bad players simply because they don't fold a lot. A skill edge, positional advantage and initiative advantage can go a long way to creating EV. Now you may be thinking: "okay I understand the factors but how do we combine this with the RFE math stuff?" Here's a rule that is merely a starting point. You will have to assess the above table to know when to veer off in one direction or the other. Of course when Hero has a hand as good as say AJs, he'll need no fold equity at all as factor one in the above table is so far in his favour. When he has 86s and the blinds are both horrible players, again fold equity won't be a requirement. With 75o against more competent opposition, higher fold equity will be a requirement. The real skill here comes mainly with experience and rests in knowing when, and how far, to lessen or tighten the requirements of how much fold equity is needed to open the BU. Getting familiar with the factors in Figure 14 is the best way to get started. As always though, HH review in your own time from your own sessions is strongly encouraged. I'm showing you what to think about, it's your job to become skilled at it. Some Examples Before we move on to a default BU range, strictly for when information is limited, let's do a couple of examples and try to decide if some dynamic spots are opens or not from the BU. The fourth (red) number in Hand 2 refers to the Villain's 3Bet Preflop stat. As we've just learnt, this frequency becomes important when we're deciding how wide to steal. First thing first: Hero's RFE for a min open = 57% as in Hand 1. The blinds are folding an average of 0.80 x 0.64 = 51.2%. So on paper, Hero lacks the required fold equity to open and automatically make EV, if that is, his strategy is to fold every flop when called. Hero's true strategy will be much better than this hopeless one. Recall that our rule that states that as long as we're less than a 5-10% margin away from RFE, then an open is likely to be +EV. We're 6% short here so we should look to assess our steal factors. It won't take much at all for this to become a +EV open. What other information do we have available here? Crucially, neither player is 3-betting very much. This means that Hero will very often realise his equity by seeing the flop when at least one of the blinds elects not to fold. Add this to the fact that we're only working with a 6% deficit in RFE and we can confirm that this spot is a profitable open. Hero raises to 2BB. In this example, both blinds are folding a mere 0.82 x 0.32 = 26% Clearly we are nowhere near RFE, thus, if pre-flop fold equity is the be all and end all, then we should definitely pass this spot. Fortunately for Hero, the weak player in the BB is going to be very easy to outplay post-flop and will be calling and then most likely making mistakes with a very weak range of his own. Consequently, even with minimal fold equity pre-flop, Hero will have an easy open. Thus hand illustrates that if the other factors are good enough, we may need very little to no pre-flop fold equity at all! It's only with neutral factors that we're bound to our 5-10% margin. The more this Fish folds to c-bets, the better for us, but we don't need this number to be high in order to open a hand this playable. The combination of position, a hand with some flexibility and nut potential, and a large skill edge make this open not just profitable, but mandatory. I warned you you'd have to get used to playing a wide range from the BU! Now concerning sizing, our usual adjustment vs Fish is to make our open bigger. Again, this is to capitalize on our opponent's two most likely leaks, making big mistakes with marginal hands post- flop and playing fit-or-fold vs continuation-bets. Of course opening bigger hurts our RFE, but since pre-flop fold equity isn't really our main aim here, we don't mind that RFE goes up when we make it 3x instead of 2x. We're opening to realise our post-flop skill advantage in position and utilising the reasonable playability of our hand vs. the Fish's likely calling range. Hero raises to 3BB. In this hand we can expect to get two folds 0.77 x 0.7 = 53% of the time so we aren't far from RFE. In fact, we comfortably meet our criteria for opening under neutral conditions since we're only 4% off the RFE for a 2x open. The problem is, however, that these are far from neutral conditions. These players have a very high combined 3-bet percentage and so we should err on the side of being stricter with how close to RFE we need to be. Moreover, both of these players are likely to give us a much tougher time post-flop than the Fish in Hand 3. This means that our c-bets might not have so much fold equity and our hand doesn't really connect with flops well enough to compensate for this. This spot is marginal and it's very close to being an open. I'd say that for newer players with lower skill levels post-flop, this should be a fold. For players with sound post-flop strategies who are more comfortable playing vs Regs where ranges are wide, a 2x open might be the higher EV play. Many situations in poker are very close and this is one where it probably doesn't matter too much to our EV whether we open or not. Hero raises to 2BB or folds depending on his post-flop ability. The fifth (purple) number on the HUD in Hand 5 below is the stat: Fold to F C-bet (fold to flop c-bet) Let's see how to use this stat. Now look at Hand 5. Hopefully, you recognized this example as another where fold equity pre-flop is not our primary concern. It's true that our success rate here is estimated at a meager 50%, but there are two important reasons why this is a mandatory open. The Fish in the BB folds to a large number of c-bets meaning that Hero doesn't need much in the way of hand strength or pre-flop fold equity. BB is also likely to be a weaker player meaning that if Hero does connect well, Villain will often make mistakes with marginal hands, increasing Hero's value betting prospects those times when Villain has flopped a second best hand. The Nit in the SB is rarely getting in Hero's way. He gets to play in position vs the Fish, or else win the blinds, a huge majority of the time. Again, sizing needs to shoot up to take advantage of the Fish folding a lot post-flop. The bigger the pot you build, the bigger the pot you win, but of course you still want the Villain in the BB to call pre- flop if he's going to play so meekly post-flop. Hero opens to 3BB. Just to recap, the RFE of a 2x open is 57%.Here we face two Regs in the blinds with a combined fold % of exactly 57% (well, 56.98 if you want to be precise.) Using our 5-10% rule, the blinds are tight enough that this is going to be a profitable steal in a vacuum. Even a hand as bad as 82o is going to make up the 0.02% deficit in RFE by flopping enough Trips, Quads, two pair or by c-betting in good situations. Nevertheless, this spot is a relatively easy fold. The reason for this is the fourth factor in Figure 14. Our opponents seem good enough to be aware of what's happening around them. They're 3-betting light, fighting back reasonably often post-flop vs c- bets, and in general, seem like thinking players. The upshot is that if we open 82o we're opening pretty much 100% of hands. This is a blindingly obvious strategy to counter even for the dimmest of aware Regs. We should expect that if we continue this strategy in the long-term, we're likely to lose future fold equity as they make the proper adjustments of calling and 3-betting more against us. By opening this hand, we're actually making future opens with better hands -EV by causing our opponents to adapt well to our play. We can easily pass up vacuum +EV spots in favor of long-term EV gains, particularly where those spots are only marginally +EV in a vacuum in the first place. Hero folds. A Default BU Range As we've just seen, there are many things to consider and almost any piece of information can cause us to deviate from a default BU opening strategy. Nevertheless, I suspect that the reader might still desire a hand chart for the BU to add to his collection and so, finally, here it is. The reason that I waited until now to provide this is that I wanted the reader to fully appreciate how dynamic the BU is as a steal position and how important it is to understand when and why we make adjustments to our default opening range. We need to see BU spots as, firstly, factor based decision-making exercises and only if we draw a blank due to a complete lack of information on the blinds should we resort to the range below. Take a quick look and print it out for reference, then read the above six examples again; they're much more important! Figure 15 - Default BU Opening 2.7 SB The SB is different from the BU in two fundamental ways. On the plus side there is now only one opponent that Hero's steal needs to work against. But unfortunately, that opponent has position on Hero and can in theory 3-bet and call very wide, making Hero's life miserable pre-flop and post-flop should he choose to open too wide of a range. This is the basic crux of the SB. Against people who aren't going to punish us for opening lots, we should steal very wide indeed. Since there is only one opponent to get through, a steal will have a very high success rate where the BB is too tight. However, vs an active opponent, we'll need to tighten up considerably and ensure that our range is able to both defend frequently enough to 3-bets and hold it's own out of position post-flop when our open gets called. Again I'll be recommending a default range for cases where information is extremely limited. Just like in the last section though, opening from the SB is a situation that is incredibly dynamic and our requirements for opening a hand are very opponent dependent. Hero's HUD and his judgment are his two best friends here. RFE from the SB As always, RFE will depend on the size of our open and I'm going to recommend a default opening size of 2.5x for use against most Regs, Semi-Nits, Nits and anything in-between. By now you won't need me to tell you that vs Fish we'll be increasing our open to 3x or possibly even larger depending on how much they fold post-flop. To recap, RFE = R / (R + PG). When we raise to 2.5x we see that: R = 2 - the amount we risk from our point of decision. Our dead SB of 0.5 is already part of the pot before our decision and so is not part of our risk. PG = 1.5 - we stand to win our dead SB + the BB. RFE = 2 / (2 + 1.5) = 57% Isn't that handy? Our RFE using a different default steal size from the SB is exactly the same as it was from the BU. Numerically, nothing has changed. It's just that now the dead SB has come from our stack and not a second opponent's. In the previous section we used our HUD to estimate our fold equity. This is also the case here when we have a large enough sample to work with; we just need to use a different stat. In PT4, it's known as BB vs SB Open - Fold. With only one opponent, there's no multiplication necessary, this is on average how often Villain will fold as long as the stat has an accurate sample. The third (green) number on the HUD will represent this stat throughout the examples to come. Given that we are now out of position, we should err on the stricter side and look to be a little closer to RFE in order to open a hand than we were on the BU. I'm recommend shrinking the margin that we can be out by and replacing the 5-10% with a guideline of 3-7%, depending on the other factors. Beyond RFE Once again, the math is a guide and far from the full story. Hero must again make use of Figure 14 in order to determine if factors are positive or negative and therefore whether to open a hand or not. If there's any doubt as to what any of those factors are, please go back and review them. We'll now take a look at a few examples. Only after we've developed a feel for the dynamism of this spot will I be providing the final default opening range to complete our set. Hero is 5% short of RFE here and there are some noticeably bad factors in play. The BB seems to be active, aware and is 3-betting fairly frequently; Hero doesn't have heaps of post-flop fold equity as Villain seems to continue relatively often vs continuation bets, and Hero is out of position. The saving grace here is that Hero's hand simply has enough brute strength to compensate for these negatives and push us into opening territory. Given that Villain's flatting range is fairly wide, having a hand that can flop good pairs quite often is even more useful than normal. Recall that we'd fold such a hand UTG through fear of being crushed on too many flops where we hit a pair. Against the BB's wide flatting range, we can expect to be ahead very frequently with top pair and even extract a fair bit of value. This hand has enough fold equity + good pair potential to open despite the less than ideal situation. What we can learn here though is that with weaker hand strength, we'd have to be very careful about opening given these conditions. KTo is not too far from the bottom of our opening range in this spot. Hero raises to 2.5BB. Here we're way over RFE, but as we saw in Hand 6, that doesn't automatically guarantee that we should open. It does mean that opening is likely to be clearly +EV in a vacuum, but recall in Hand 6 that our opponents were aware Regs who we anticipated would soon adjust to any outrageously wide opening strategy by folding less and punishing a hyper active stealing game. Sometimes we have to consider future fold equity too. If we're too out of line with marginally +EV vacuum opens, we could lose a lot of EV from future fold equity being diminished. Fortunately, in this hand, we can classify Villain as the opposite of aware. A Nit playing this tight and folding such a huge amount in BB vs SB situations is not likely to adjust very well, if at all. The idea is that if Villain were capable of adapting and punishing light stealing, then his stats would not be so tight in the first place. Furthermore, this open is far from marginally +EV since Hero has nearly 20% more FE than RFE suggests he needs. This open will simply print EV even in the long term. In situations where Villain is clearly folding too much and is unlikely to change his ways (even vs the most extreme strategies), long term EV and vacuum EV merge together. In this type of situation, whatever is most +EV in a vacuum is also going to be most +EV in the long run. Hero opens to 2.5BB. You may wonder here if a 2x open is actually more profitable since it reduces RFE even further. This could well be the case. There do exist Nits that can't even bring themselves to defend wider in position getting such a phenomenal price. I've found, however, that many very tight players take the min open SB vs BB as an insult too far and start to call, or even 3-bet a good bit more. Against the tightest of the tight however, a 2x open could well be better. In general, we want to play lots of pots against Fish, especially in position and when they fold too much post-flop. Sadly in this hand, the opposite is true. Here we encounter the kind of Fish that grants us very little fold equity both pre-flop and post-flop. This is fine as it means that with a stronger range we'll be able to extract lots of value and generate our EV that way. It does mean, however, that we'll struggle to turn hands that connect poorly post-flop into +EV opens. This hand has poor top pair potential, little versatility and even less nut potential. The less fold equity we have, the more of these attributes we'll need. Factors are very negative here and we can't come close to compensating for being 22% away from RFE with a hand this bad. Hero folds. A Default Range We've finally reached the end of the first theory chapter in the manual. By now you should have a good feel for default pre-flop opening ranges and why we've chosen them, open sizing, and how and when to deviate from the norm. In the next chapter, we'll be delving into isolation decisions where someone has limped before we get the chance to open. For now, I'll leave you with our final default range (SB vs BB). This range is the most subject to dynamic alteration thus far, so again, please make sure that the factors and example hands in this chapter are clear. Assess your own steal spots in a similar way and see how you fare without the analysis of this book. Sometimes it's easy to follow what you're reading, but there's a big leap between that and being able to apply it independently. Practice helps a lot and so a lot of homework is required to solidify the concepts taught in this chapter as well as the many more to come. Like in the earlier positions, if your standard games are especially tight or passive, you should consider opening wider than this range as a default approach. If instead, your population is very aggressive and fond of 3-betting then tightening up will be in order. Figure 16 - Default SB Range 3. When Someone Limps One thing that we almost never do, but that some of our weaker opponents might commonly do, is limp as the first player to enter the pot. One thing that we will consider on some occasions is limping after someone else has limped. At first sight this distinction could seem arbitrary, but as we'll see throughout this chapter, there are very good reasons for it. In order to understand how we should react to players who open limp, let's first investigate why it's an inferior strategy to the more aggressive raise or fold strategy we learned in the last chapter. What's Wrong With Open Limping? Open limping gives up any possibility of pre-flop fold equity, which as we know, constitutes one of our most stable and essential flows of EV in 6-max cash games. Open limping seizes no initiative and allows players behind us to raise and gain the initiative instead. This puts them in a situation where they can c-bet post-flop and apply pressure to win more than their fair share of pots should we both miss the flop. We'd rather be the ones achieving this. Open limping fails to thin the field and invites multiway pots, devaluing our post-flop holdings and making it more difficult to take down pots. Open limping fails to build a pot for value when we have a strong hand or favorable situation of some sort. Exploiting Open Limping Now that we know what's wrong with this common Fish strategy we can look at how to take advantage of it. The bulk of this chapter will feature a decision-making model for how to best exploit these deficiencies in our weaker opponents' strategies. First though, here are some initial guidelines: Where Hero has pre-flop or post-flop fold equity (or both) he should look to raise a wide range  and c-bet frequently post-flop to pick up this extra dead money. Hero should look to raise quite a wide range in order to isolate the weaker player(s) who limped and ensure he is the beneficiary of any mistakes made post-flop. Hero should occasionally look to limp behind with hands that want to realise implied odds and see a cheap flop where fold equity is limited. Hero wants to play in a fit-or-fold manner in these cases. With these general ideas in mind it's time for me to introduce my pet invention used to help decide whether to raise, limp behind, or fold facing one or more limps. 3.1 The ISO Triangle Over the last few years of coaching new and improving players, one of the concepts I've found myself having to explain most frequently is how wide to raise versus limpers. I've found there to be three key factors that pretty much exhaustively govern whether or not to raise. Consequently, I created Figure 17 on the next page to serve as a quick comprehensive guide. With the help of this model, the problem of playing against limpers has been simplified dramatically and I urge the reader, as I do all of my private students, to rely on it fully when making a decision in these very profitable pre-flop spots. Before we take a look at the ISO Triangle, you may be wondering what 'ISO' actually means. There are no hand range charts in this chapter because these spots are extremely dynamic and depend on three very important factors, each containing its own bunch of sub-factors. Let's meet the triangle:  Figure 17 - The ISO Triangle As you can see, there are three points to consider in these spots just as there are three points in a triangle. The larger the area surrounding each point, the more influence that point has over our decision of whether or not to ISO. Moreover, the three points are inversely proportionate to each other in that the more of one Hero has, the less of the others he'll need. In this metaphor, for ISOing to be better than not ISOing, the triangle should be more full than empty. Let's go through the three points one by one and find out what each entails. 3.2 Frequent Strength The most foundational factor in determining whether or not to ISO a limper is how often our hand flops well. The frequent strength of a hand can be divided into two potential qualities: ability to flop good pairs and ability to flop good draws. The former is more important as Hero can expect to flop considerably more good pairs than good draws mathematically, and, in general, pairs are preferable hands to flop in these situations. To put it another way, Hero should prefer to isolate with hands that score reasonably well in Good Pair Potential (GPP) and Versatility (V) from chapter two. The idea is that provided Hero's hole cards regularly give him strong holdings on the flop, fold equity and good position are less crucial, where as, if Hero's hole cards usually flop poor hands then, for his ISO to be +EV, he'll need the fold equity to frequently win the pot unimproved and will have more need for the benefits of being in position. Excellent frequent strength is an absolute factor that can justify an ISO without any help from the others at all and this is represented in the triangle by it being the only rectangular shape. The other two factors might make the situation even better, but they do not need to be scrutinised where Hero has very good frequent strength. AA has the most frequent strength possible as it will flop, at the minimum, an overpair on every texture. This hand is so good that it will simply never require any help from the other points of the triangle. In this case, we can consider the triangle automatically full, solely of red frequent strength. Let's compare the frequent strength of some less obviously amazing pre-flop holdings. This hand has excellent frequent strength and will rarely need any help from the other factors to make an ISO the best play. Even where pre-flop and post-flop fold equity is limited and Hero is out of position, this hand's brute force ability to flop dominating top pair hands will render it a fine ISO. We want to build a pot and get the hand HU where possible where its top pair great kicker hands will be even stronger. Another fine candidate for ISOing. Even with poor position and limited fold equity, Hero can consider his triangle more full than empty due to frequent strength alone. This hand has two high cards that flop high caliber pair hands (otherwise known as TPGK - top pair good kicker) and can make very strong draws like powerful flush and straight draws. This is another hand that will very rarely need any help from the other factors. This hand flops either overpairs or a frequently best underpair a lot, and thus can make it to showdown as the best hand quite often. It also has the latent potential to flop a set approximately 1/9 times when a third T comes down. This hand is considerably weaker. While it frequently makes decent top pair hands, the kickers are more easily dominated and it lacks any good draw flopping potential. This hand is nevertheless a clear ISO in favorable situations but will require the other factors not to be too negative. A hand of similar frequent strength to the last. While it lacks the second big card to boost its top pair flopping ability, it makes up for this deficit in its ability to flop draws to the nuts. Also note that any hand containing an ace grants more showdown value when it misses the board and provides an overcard to any non A top pair that Villain can flop. This hand has similar frequent strength to the two above. It can, on occasion, flop an over-pair or a decent pair depending on the texture, and has the latent set flopping potential of any pocket pair. There are, however, many flops where it flops poorly and it therefore requires some help from the other points of the triangle to be a good ISO. This hand makes up for its lack of high card value with its ability to flop equity in the form of draws. In fact, it's not even horrible at making top pair with two medium cards. It has decent frequent strength, but like the hands above will need a favorable situation in order to ISO. Now we're into the realms of fairly poor frequent strength. These hands will require a substantially more favorable situation in terms of fold equity and position to qualify as +EV ISOs. And now our frequent strength fills so little of the triangle that the vast majority of the work will need to come from the other two points. And finally we reach the bottom of the pile. Frequent strength is the only factor of the three that can render a hand ISOable on its own. This means that a hand like this one is almost never going to be good enough to isolate with either poor fold equity or bad position, but could qualify if both of these other factors are exceptional. For example, Hero has a +EV ISO with this holding where he is in position against one limper who has a propensity to limp and then fold to raises pre-flop or play very fit-or-fold post-flop and where there are no other active or aware players left to act behind. 3.3 Fold Equity The more fold equity we have pre-flop and post-flop, the more inclined we should be to ISO provided that our other two factors aren't both horrible. Fold equity in these situations depends on the sub-factors listed below: 1. Amount of Limpers Facing just one limper, Hero should fancy his chances of being able to isolate this weaker player, ensuring that he will be the one to gain EV from any mistakes his opponent makes post-flop. Moreover, playing in a heads-up pot will increase the success rate of Hero's c-bets post-flop with just one player to fold out. If three players limp, Hero can expect to endure a multiway pot post-flop which will make it more difficult to win the pot on the flop if he ISOs and so should tighten his criteria for how much frequent strength + position he requires. The less limpers there are, the more fold equity Hero has. The more limpers there are, the less fold equity Hero has. 2. Loose Players Behind. The number of players liable to call or 3-bet a wide range behind us should we ISO also affects the likelihood that we get a multiway pot. If there are two loose Fish still to act in the blinds, Hero can expect to have relatively little fold equity post-flop due to the amount of three or even four handed flops that will ensue in this situation. Similarly, if there is a crazily aggressive 3-bettor lurking in the blinds, Hero will have to tighten his ISO range and favor hands with more frequent strength since he doesn't want to fold too often to the rampant 3-betting. If Hero opens a stronger range in the first place, it's naturally easier to defend more of that range to a 3-bet. 3. Types of Fish There are four broad types of Fish that Hero will encounter on his poker journey. There are, of course, sub-types of each of these and every individual player has some subtle differences from the next, but with the limited information available to us at the virtual felt, it's necessary to group these weaker opponents into four main categories. Our fold equity greatly depends upon which type of Fish has limped or is left to act behind us in these situations and this categorisation should come in handy throughout the rest of the manual in a variety of other situations. Type A - The Fit-or-fold Fish: This is the bread and butter target of our ISO raises. Identification: This type of Villain will play anything from a medium to wide range of hands pre-flop usually entering the pot by limping. Sometimes he'll limp and fold to an ISO pre-flop or other times limp/call and then fold frequently to a flop c-bet. Type A Fish have VPIP/PFR ratios like 40/6 and 34/11 - generally there is a large gap between the two stats. These stats don't take very long to tell the true story and so Hero can identify this player quickly. This player will also have a fairly high fold to c-bet stat of somewhere between 55% and 75%. Exploitation: Hero can print money vs this player's limps by raising a wide range of hands, especially in position, and then c-betting most flops expecting to have a lot of fold equity. The mantra when playing against this type of player is simple: build it up, take it down! Hero inflates the pot to then pick it up when his opponent plays too wide of a range pre-flop and subsequently gives up the pot when he doesn't flop well, which will be most of the time. Type B - The Station Fish: 'Station' is short for 'calling station', a common expression to describe players who generally hate hitting the fold button. This is another loose passive player, but one against whom Hero can't expect to generate too much fold equity. He calls much more than the fit-or- fold Fish on all streets. Identification: Pre-flop, the station Fish is relatively similar to the fit-or-fold Fish. Both players will limp anything from a medium to a wide range, though the station Fish is more likely to have ridiculous stats such as 90/15 or 65/3. While the fit-or-fold Fish will sometimes limp/fold before the flop, the station Fish will almost never do this. Instead he'll call ISOs with close to his whole limping range and then become very attached to any remote piece of the board he hits post-flop. Station Fish will have much lower fold to c-bet stats, usually of 45% or less. Exploitation: Hero no longer has the luxury of ISOing an extremely wide range. As his primary aim has shifted from getting post-flop fold equity to simply value betting against a player who doesn't want to fold. Hero should therefore adapt his pre-flop ISO range accordingly and seek to isolate this player with higher frequent strength. As fold equity decreases, required frequent strength increases; this relationship is the heart of the ISO triangle. Hero's plan is to isolate a stronger range and then value bet like crazy when he connects well with the flop. Type C - The Aggro Fish: 'Aggro' is online poker player slang for 'aggressive'. Thankfully for Hero, the aggression is normally ill selected, over the top and easy to deal with, especially where Hero has position. Identification: This type of opponent opens the pot far more frequently than the previous two do. His stats will normally converge at something like 57/38 or 44/23. When this player limps, his range will normally be extra-weak as he would raise with many of the hands the last two Fish types limped. He will basically never limp/fold and may even have the play of limp/raising in his arsenal. Post-flop this player will have a very low fold to c-bet and will very often take lines like min-raising against c- bets and frequently bluffing with zero to little equity post-flop. Exploitation: Hero is even less able to realise fold equity against this player than he is against the Station Fish as this player will call with just as many hands and also raise complete air when he feels like it. As a result, Hero again needs to make sure that he has enough frequent strength in his ISO range to carry out his plan of getting value post-flop from Villain's inability to fold any piece of the board. Hero requires more regular showdown value to punish this type of Fish for his ill-timed bluffs. Type D - The Whale: A Whale is more of a magnitude of Fish than a type, but one against whom Hero's plan shifts somewhat. Identification: In the animal kingdom, a whale is mammal, not a giant Fish; but for our poker purposes, a giant fish is exactly what this player is. A whale tends to play an absurd amount of hands pre-flop and make frequent serious errors. He might do things that appear financially suicidal like shove for 100BB pre-flop with ATo or call down with king-high for three streets. His stats will usually be miles out of line, for example, 95/80 or 71/4. He will fold very rarely and refuse to fold in spots where anything else is ridiculous. Other players will share the hands they've played against him with each other purely for amusement purposes. In reality, a Whale is just a player with a very poor understanding of the game, who plays purely for fun and tends not to think very much if at all about how to play well. Exploitation: Now we reach an exception to our usual ISO strategy. Normally, we tighten our range in the face of low fold equity as per the teachings of the ISO triangle. This player however, is so abysmal and makes such gargantuan errors, that Hero needs to simply take every opportunity to isolate him where his frequent strength is anywhere close to reasonable. The value of being the player at the table to capitalise on these huge errors first is so immense, that having to bloat a few pots to miss and give up post-flop is a small price for Hero to pay. Against whales, Hero should look to ISO a very wide range indeed, especially in position, and have a very straightforward value orientated game post-flop. The money will then cascade in his direction. 3.4 Position Position is a concept that Hero will encounter time and time again in his poker journey and throughout this manual. Being the last player to act post-flop carries with it several large advantages. Let's look at what these are specifically in the realm of ISOing. Although position is the least influential of our three factors to the decision of whether or not to ISO, it can frequently be a deal breaker. But why should being in position make an ISO +EV that would be -EV out of position? There are three very good reasons: Being in position adds fold equity to c-bets post-flop. It's harder for our opponents to continue when they have to act first on every subsequent street. They'll have more difficulty getting to showdown and so many Villains, even some weaker ones, will instinctively fold more out of position on the flop. Being in position gives Hero more control over the pot size. He can ensure that a bet either does or doesn't go in on any street where he's checked to depending on what suits him better in the situation. Hero picks up more information by seeing what his opponent does on each street before he has to act himself. This allows him to put Villain on a range of hands with more accuracy and make higher EV decisions as a result. So when we consider our position when assessing the ISO triangle, we're not just concerned with our pre-flop position, rather we know that being in position will grant us an advantage which spans for the entire duration of the hand, rendering each future street higher EV. This is the sense in which good or bad position can swing our choice in one direction or another. Let's have a look at an example where this is indeed the case. The third stat on our HUD in the following examples is the most important one for determining how much fold equity we have. It's also one that Hero should be familiar with from Chapter 2: Fold to F Cbet. See here for a recap. Let's assess the ISO triangle. First of all our frequent strength is not great here, but the hand is far from useless. Two medium sized connected cards will allow us to flop top pair and some decent draws a far from negligible amount of the time. Our fold equity should be rated as very good indeed. Not only does this Passive Fish seem fairly straightforward folding to 64% of c-bets, but also the Nit in the BB will very rarely be interfering with our plan. Our position is the icing on the cake. This hand is a clear ISO. Hero raises to 4BBs. You might notice that this sizing is much larger than any size we might choose when opening from the BU. The reasons for this are covered in Section 3.5 on sizing an ISO. The important point for now is that good position here paired with good fold equity has made even this fairly poor hand an easily +EV ISO. This situation is a different story altogether and demonstrates the importance of position. While we still have favorable fold equity here against the original limper, and the same frequent strength, there is now a Reg who has position on us lurking in the BB. This will make it harder to get heads-up with the Fish as this player can look to call our ISO or even 3-bet us fairly often here with his positional advantage. Furthermore, when Hero does manage to get the Fish to himself post-flop, he'll have to deal with being first to act on every street and forgo the advantages described earlier that he had in Hand 10. Consequently, our triangle is more empty than full here due to no factor being all that great. Hero calls 0.5BBs. So wait, it's okay for Hero to limp in the SB here? Absolutely! Limping should easily be higher EV than folding. Let's see why. 3.5 Limping Behind I started this chapter off by warning you about the dangers of open limping. I then discriminated this from limping behind. The call you see Hero make in Hand 11 above is a type of limping behind that can only be done from the SB. This call is called a 'complete.' Note that Hero should generally only complete the SB where there have been one or more limpers in earlier position. Where the action folds to Hero in the SB, he should follow the opening strategy covered in Section 2.7. In Hand 11 we concluded that Hero's poor position tipped the scales away from ISOing. It's unlikely to be profitable to raise such a mediocre hand out of position where fold equity was compromised by the Reg in the BB. This didn't mean, however that Hero was forced to fold. When we've decided that ISOing is out of the question Hero is left with another choice: whether to limp beh