Sticky Fingers

   The basic principal that is at the heart of poker theory, the point at which all poker primers start, is the two types of poker hands: made hands and drawing hands. Pre-flop, any big pair is a made hand and I would also include any two big cards, although some might argue that these are only drawing hands. I include them because hands like AQ and AK are probably the best hand pre-flop and have the potential to make top pair on the flop. You should always raise hands like these for two reasons: for value and to isolate your opponents. So you are raising to get more chips in the pot while you are ahead and also to reduce the number of callers.
   The reason you want to reduce the number of callers is because these sorts of big pair hands are vulnerable to being drawn out on by players holding drawing hands. For example, if you have pocket aces and are up against one other player, the probability of having the winning hand on the river (against any random hand) is 85%. But against 8 other players, your aces have only a 35% chance of winning at showdown. This principal applies to any big hand and that is why it is vitally important to protect your big hands by raising pre-flop.
   Conversely, if you have a drawing hand (suited connectors, medium connectors, small pairs, small suited aces), you want to play in a  multi-way pot. This is because most of the time you are going to miss your straight, flush or 3 of a kind and end up folding. So when you do hit your monster hand you want a big pot with plenty of players involved so you can extract maximum value and recoup all those previous losses and then some. This is the basic strategy that is at the heart of every poker game. Players with big starting hands are trying to make it too expensive for others to chase their draws. And players with drawing hands are trying to get in as cheaply as possible so they can hit their monster hands.
     The live games that I play in are typically very very loose. Most players will call a pre-flop raise with a ridiculously wide range of hands and if they hit any kind of draw, or any part of the flop they will hang on like grim death and call all the way to the river. This makes it extremely difficult to protect big pair type hands, as many of these players will only be deterred from calling by an enormous raise. I'm now used to this kind of play and have resigned myself to the fact that I'll be sucked out on a lot. The thing is, the play at my Friday game seems to be getting even looser than usual. Maybe it's because some of the tighter players are no longer coming to the game, or maybe it's just my perception of the games, but those calling hands just seem to be getting more and more absurd. This has led me to take another look at my basic strategy to see if I can find a better way.
   I don't play ring games much these days but I have a basic pre-flop strategy for these games that is based on principals taught by Poker School Online. If I have a hand that's playable from early position I open raise to five times the big blind (5x BB). If I have a hand that I think is playable from middle position I raise 3x BB plus 1 BB for every player who has limped in to the pot. If I have a playable hand in late position I raise 2x BB plus 1 BB for every limper. This is a simple enough system that seems to work well enough in most situations, although it can always be modified to suit particular circumstances.
   In a ring game, if I was faced with a table full of  'no-foldem' players, I would adjust by increasing the size of my raises for premium hands. And in a situation like this, if I had top pair or an over-pair on the flop, I would bet half the pot or more to ensure that anyone with a draw didn't have the correct odds to call, even if that meant pushing most of my stack into the middle. The way I see it, in a cash game you make what you think is the correct move, even if it involves risking most or all of your stack. If you get drawn out on, then so be it; you either reload or go home in the knowledge that in the long term that was a profitable move and the next time, or the time after that, you will drag in all of some-ones chips. As long as you play the odds you will win in the long run, regardless of the results in one particular game.
   Maybe it's a mistake on my part, but I think of tournaments differently. To me, tournaments are all about survival. My strategy is to try and pick up enough chips in the early stages to keep ahead of the increasing blinds and then get more active and aggressive in the later stages to put myself in a position to make the money. Maybe this is the wrong approach, but it seems to work reasonably well so I'm sticking to it for now. The only time I'm willing to risk most or all of my chips is where I know I have a significant edge (for example pocket aces or kings pre-flop). I don't usually want to risk my tournament life on a move that has a  small positive expected value long term. In short, I'm much less inclined to risk my chips in a tournament than I would be in a ring game.
   In the early stages of a tournament, when the stacks are reasonably deep, I play a basic ring game strategy but with one exception; I don't  increase my bet sizing to compensate for the super-loose calling crew. So if I raise 5x BB in early position with KK and get 5 callers, then so be it. Or if 6 players limp in when I have AJ on the button, I raise to 8x BB and usually end up watching 3 or 4 people call. As a result, it's not unusual to see me raising pre-flop them checking or folding on the flop if my Ax misses or my medium pair is facing a flop full of big cards. And a continuation bet in a no-foldem game like this is just pointless; you're always going to get called, usually by multiple players.
   In the middle stages when the blinds are getting bigger I reduce the size of my pre-flop raises. I usually just bet a standard 3x BB regardless of position. As the blinds increase further I'll drop down to 2.5x BB raises or less. Even although this size raise is likely to be a significant proportion of a caller's stack at this point, I still find that there are multiple players who are apparently unable to let go of their hands. It's not until the final stages of the tournament when the blinds are really big and most of the players with sticky fingers have been eliminated that I start seeing folds to raises. However, there are usually a couple of 'loosies' who have amassed huge stacks and are happy to keep on calling with rags.

   The thing about playing in these super-loose tournaments is that one of the essential elements of the no limit game is diminished. The power of the pre-flop raise is severely compromised and post-flop play becomes much more important. The way that these games end up being played remind me of fixed limit games. I played in fixed limit ring games a few years back and found that I wasn't very good at them. It was virtually impossible to protect a big starting hand as it was so cheap to call a raise. These games were very much about what came on the flop and it took considerable skill to negotiate the intricacies of post-flop play where pushing an opponent off a hand was not an option.
   So why bother with pre-flop raises at all? There are a couple of players in the Friday game who are incredibly passive pre-flop and yet they have both done very well over-all, coming first and second on the yearly points table. In a game where pre-flop raises do not achieve the aim of isolating opponents, why bother with them? Well, the thing is, pre-flop raises still achieve the aim of getting chips in the middle. The way I see it, although all those callers greatly reduce my chances of winning the pot, big pairs still sometimes hold up against multiple callers, and they sometimes improve. And when they do, they win monster pots. So I still figure that all those times I end up raising pre-flop and then folding the flop are compensated for by the times when I rake in a huge pot that sets me up for the rest of the tournament.
   I guess you could say that the live tournaments I play in are hybrid games. Pre-flop play is much more like fixed limit than it is no limit; you just have to accept that you're going to have a lot of callers no matter what you do. However, you still have the ability to bet enough post-flop  to ensure that at least the first couple of players won't have the correct odds to call with their drawing cards. And when you reach the turn? Well, the pot will be so big that you'll probably end up all-in just to protect your hand. Then again, play is usually so passive that you could probably just check to the river and hope that no-one hits. But of course the problem with this is that you're probably already pot committed. At this point you have to just play the hand correctly and take your chances.
   One of the great things about poker is that there are so many different types of game and so many different playing styles within each game type. The most important thing is being able to adjust to these different styles. No-foldem games are no different. On balance, I think my strategy for these super-loose games makes some sort of sense.
   Playing no limit no-foldem is kind of like dancing your way through a minefield. On a roller coaster. Blindfolded. What fun.