Poker player, writer, and coach. Co-host of the Thinking Poker Podcast. He/him. thinkingpoker.bsky.social
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Articles by Andrew Brokos
Tournament Poker’s Hidden Stakes
In this era of game theory and solvers and poker games running at a huge variety of stakes at venues all around the world, as well as on dozens of apps and online poker sites, it’s easy to forget that, for the majority of its existence, poker has been a game of hustlers. In the saloons of the Wild West, the backrooms of Texas roadhouses, and even the casinos of 1970s Las Vegas, winning money at poker was not primarily about hand reading or bluffing frequencies or balancing ranges.
Confronting Monsters Under the Bed in Poker
Do you hide from things that go bump in the night? Does the sight of a monotone flop or board-pairing river card send shivers down your spine? You are not alone. Many deep-stacked cash game players—indeed, many poker players across all formats—do not put their stacks to full use because they are afraid of what could go wrong.
Exploiting Cold Callers Who Stab Too Much
In single-raised pots (SRPs) between an in position (IP) raiser and an out of position (OOP) caller, there is usually a clear relationship between one player’s aggression and the other’s passivity. Typically, the OOP caller checks most or all of their range to the IP raiser, who then bets most of their range. The rare cases where the IP player is not incentivized to bet so often are also the cases where their opponent bets most frequently.
Barreling as IP Cold-Caller
You cold-calledCold call To call a bet/raise when you have not invested any money in the pot yet. a preflop raise. That’s scary. You bet into a check from the preflop raiser, which is doubly scary because you know a check from an out of position (OOP) raiser should be uncapped and can possibly be followed up by a raise. The good news is they didn’t raise your bet. The bad news is they didn’t fold either, which is probably what you were hoping for, even if you had a pair.
Pushing Equity With Small Bets
One of the most memorable pieces of poker wisdom I ever received came from my long-time podcast co-host Nate Meyvis, who told me: “The freedom to bet any amount is the defining feature of no-limit hold ‘em. If you only ever bet between 50%–100% of the pot, you’re really handcuffing yourself.” This was in a long-ago era of poker strategy, before the advent of game theory solvers. At that time, few players used very large or very small bets, and even fewer understood when and why to use them.
Limp-Called Pot as BB
My favorite way to study with GTO Wizard is to approach it experimentally, using the scientific method as a guide. That means I start with formulating a hypothesis and then dig into the data or otherwise run experiments to test that hypothesis. When I set out to study scenarios where the SB limped and called a raise from the BB, my hypothesis was that they would resemble BTN vs BB confrontations.
Why Not Shove?
You’re in the money in an MTT but still a long way from the final table. The average stack is about 30bb, which is roughly what both you and the players behind you have. You open 9♠9♣ from the CO for a min-raise, and the BB calls. The flop comes 7♠4♥2♦. The BB checks, and you bet 60% pot (the solver recommends a slightly larger continuation bet here, but this is based on a hand I actually played, so you’re going to make a few mistakes along with me and hopefully learn from them). The BB calls.
Navigating Nasty Rivers Out of Position
Playing out of position (OOP) is hard. It’s fundamentally disadvantageous to act on each street without knowing your opponent’s action while they get to act with knowledge of yours. This disadvantage is especially acute on dynamic rivers. When the final community card makes new monster hands possible, it also devalues previously strong holdings. Hands with which you were happily growing the pot on the flop and turn may suddenly prefer a cheap showdown.
Crack the Shell of Nut Draw Strategy
Nut draws hold obvious appeal as betting and raising candidates. They benefit from fold equity, sometimes even making better hands fold, while also having the potential to win big pots when opponents do not fold immediately. Yet solvers do not consistently play nut draws aggressively.
Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors
It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I still haven’t mastered the most fundamental spots. I’ve made millions of preflop decisions about whether to contest the pot, whether to do so by raising, and how much to raise. I had reasonably good approximations but was constantly adjusting them based on experience and solver work.
How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers
Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance for responding to limpers. This is because players are generally not incentivized to limp from any position save the SB, and even when they are, the ranges with which a solver would limp are quite different from those employed by recreational players and sometimes even professionals who didn’t study these spots.
Relationships and Poker
In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve their check-raising, bluffing, value betting, and decision-making ability in general. More surprisingly, I’ve also helped many of them improve their relationships with people who aren’t that familiar with poker. At some point, I realized that a non-trivial amount of what I was doing as a poker coach felt more like marriage counseling.
Do Multiple Sizes Matter?
Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results can appear daunting when they employ many different bet sizes at a single node, especially if most hands mix across all sizes with no clear heuristic for choosing between them. There are methods for making sense of the apparent madness, but it also helps to understand what this mixing is worth and when you might be better off with a simpler strategy.
Check-Raising a Single Pair
In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who asks, “In what scenarios is it ok to check-raise one pair in cash games (100 bb deep)?” I believe the answer contains important insights into game theory and incentives that will be of interest to many others besides Matt. Thanks for sending in the question! And to any of our readers, if you or anybody you know has a burning poker strategy question that you want our authors to look into.
Protect Equity and Prosper
When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend to consider how well various candidates will perform when called: Will they be ahead? Will they have good prospects for improving? Will they be good candidates for betting later streets, whether for value or as a bluff? Or alternatively, will they gain so much from fold equity that the hand doesn’t need (m)any of the above points to be positive? But all this taken together is still only half the equation.
Do Solvers Have Targets?
Targeting has long been a staple of exploitativeExploitative Strategy A strategy designed around exploiting the mistakes of your opponents. Often used in contrast to GTO, which is designed to decrease the exploitability of your own strategy. See: MES/Nemesis. poker thinking. When you’re value betting against a predictable opponent, it pays to think about what the likely second-best hands are that could pay you off and how much they’re likely willing to call with those hands.
Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots
When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should resemble that of a single-raised pot (SRP). That is, the BB, having taken no preflop risk, arrives at the flop with a weaker range and so should mostly check. Then the BTN, with the stronger range, should most commonly bet small, just as if they were continuation betting in an SRP. Not all players occupying the BB understand these concepts, however.
The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons
Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players who just wanted to see more flops. And to be fair, that’s mostly what it was and still is. Raising when first into the pot offers enormous benefits. At best, you can win the blinds and antes uncontested. Even when you don’t, you deny equity to players behind you, most notably the blinds, who would otherwise get a cheap or free look at the flop.
Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets
Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of big blinds, are more forgiving of slight variations in preflop raise sizing or calling ranges. There’s room to make up the difference later. In tournaments, savvy adversaries will size their 3-bets precisely, adapting to the positions and stack sizes to give you the most challenging possible decisions.
Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings
Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixingMixed strategy To mix between different actions with the same hand. For example, if AK always bets 1/3 pot on K♦9♥6♠ in a BTN vs BB SRP scenario, this would be considered a pure action. If that same hand sometimes bets 1/3, sometimes bets 2/3 and sometimes checks, that would be a mixed strategy.. See indifference. between those sizes, thereby blurring the heuristics underlying sizing decisions.
River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won't Check-Raise
One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting frequency and sizing on the river. Solver strategies for the OOP player, when they involve betting at all, often bet tiny—as small as 10% of the pot—with a wide range. For the IP player, seeing a mix of large bets and checks is much more common, with solvers showing little interest in small bets. This is because betting in position reopens the action, giving opponents the opportunity to check-raise.
Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots
There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this piece: Principles of Turn Strategy and How to Analyze Turn Textures in Poker. If you’ve already read them and just need a quick refresher, here are the key concepts to keep in mind: Hand values are more clearly defined on the turn than on the flop, they have clearer incentives, and they pursue those incentives more explicitly. The more equity a player has, the more likely they are to bet.
Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop
The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to how often you can get away with something before your opponents catch on and adjust back—that’s an important consideration, but a separate one. Rather, I mean understanding that your assumptions and adjustments on earlier streets will have implications on your later street play. For example, suppose you suspect an opponent folds too often, so you bluff the flop with a hand you ordinarily would not.
C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players
A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to continuation bet most flops at a high frequency, usually for a small size, without fear of exploitation. There are exceptions, however. In some scenarios, the preflop raiser’s equilibrium strategy involves checking more than half their range on the flop. This is the case even on some flops where they have significantly more equity than the BB.
The Art of Bluff Catching
Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if your opponent is bluffing—is not a significant source of profit in most situations. It is often a roughly breakeven proposition against a well-constructed betting range, and even when it is profitable, it tends to be only by a slim margin. Bluff catching is not a significant source of profit.
Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP
On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet too often. The unexploitable, solver-approved strategy is already to bet their entire range. In other cases, it is close enough that simplifying to betting their entire range does not open them up to significant exploitability (though it does make it all the more important for the blinds to respond with appropriate aggression). However, the raiser is not supposed to bet even half their range on less favorable flops.
Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP
A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation, but the best opportunities to profit from their mistakes emerge when they are out of position (OOP). From out of position, it is both easier to overdo and more expensive to bet the flop too often into a preflop cold caller. If you are the in position (IP) caller, understanding how to take maximum advantage of this mistake will serve you greatly. There are some competing heuristics at play here.
Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs
Playing in position against a three-bettor is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As the defending player, you will not have the equity advantage or the nuts advantage. What you will have is the positional advantage.
Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs
Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve got many a poker player’s nightmare. As always, the best way to combat that anxiety is to arm yourself with information. Once you understand the principles that guide your play in these tricky situations, you’ll make better decisions in these big, important pots. You’ll still lose them often – that’s baked into the situation, as we’ll see—but you can rest easy knowing your play was sound.
Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots
Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you should consider bluffing—requires synthesizing information from two sources: the face-up community cards and the actions of the other players, which provide clues about the strength of their hands. Most players are more comfortable with the former than the latter, which results in significant mistakes in pots where there was no betting on the flop and turn.
Maximizing Monotone Flops
MonotoneMonotone flop All of the first 3 community cards are of the same suit. flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that your opponent may have flopped a monsterMonster A slang term to describe a very strong hand.. And if you have flopped a flush, it’s easy to imagine a fourth heart killing your action and devaluing your hand. Such fears, though understandable, will prevent you from playing these boards optimally if you do not learn how to conquer them.
How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets
Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky; there’s no getting around that. It’s one of the reasons why learning to use such bets yourself is so valuable. It requires an awareness of your own range and tests your opponent’s willingness to make stubborn, counterintuitive calls and raises. To combat donk bets, you must first understand them.
How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets
Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely correct and easy to misapply. On the turn and river, however, donk betting strategies are both easier to implement and more strategically relevant. To understand why, you must understand how donk betting relates to the distribution of equity and of nutty hands between the ranges of the previous street’s aggressor and their opponent.
OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers
In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller from the blinds. You should not expect to enjoy the sort of range advantage you would against a caller from the blinds.
Short-Stacked Play in MTTs
Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to win a tournament by going wire-to-wire as one of the chip leaders. Indeed, if you late register the tournament, as is often advisable due to the ICM benefits, you will come out of the gate short-stacked. No matter how well you play, no matter how well you ultimately do in the tournament, it is likely you will play a significant portion of it as a short stack, under some degree of ICM pressure.
C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots
Having invested a considerable number of chips in your three-bet and faded several worst-case scenarios, you can expect to enjoy both an equity advantage and a positional advantage post-flop. As a result, you will get to play aggressively and over-realize your equity on most flops. When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position, you have already enjoyed some good luck. True, much of your three-betting range would have preferred to take it down immediately.
KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event
Payne took his time making the call and seemed to genuinely agonize over the decision, which is understandable, given the stakes. It’s a clearly correct call, however. In our model, hands as weak as TT could call, and the top-heavy payout structure only makes calling more appealing: Despite the unfortunate outcome, getting all in against QQ and JJ is a fantastic spot for Payne. Even a slightly riskier match up, such as AK and QQ, is still quite good for him.
Responding to BB Squeezes
Original Raise in Late Position The CO opens, BTN and SB calls, BB squeezes. This chart shows their response to the squeeze: First, note that four-betting less than all-in is a rarely used option by any player, at any stack depth. By the time the BB squeezes, there are more than 20bb in the pot, with no one holding an especially strong range.
Overcalling From the BB
There are fewer “light” three-bets, hands weaker than some of BB’s pure calls, compared to their strategy in a heads up pot. There are two major differences from the response to an UTG raise and BTN call: Expansion of the value range. Hands like 99 and ATs, which were too weak to raise into an UTG open, will perform better when contesting a three-bet pot against the CO wider range. More shoving.
Episode 411: Glo and Lo
Let’s Drone Out is a light-hearted and chatty drone focused podcast. Recorded live and interactively every Thursday 8-9 pm UK time on YouTube, come join the interactive chat. Jack and his wife Tony, as well as the rest of the LDO crew are here to bring noobs and pros together. Tune in every Thursday at 8:00PM UK time for the latest on tech, events, news, interviews and a behind the scenes look into the hobby. LEGAL NOTICE: Any views expressed by any guests on this show are personal and may ...
Using New Skills at the Poker Table
How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to realize immediately – perhaps even while you’re putting the chips into the pot – that you should have known better? How many times has your performance at the table failed to live up to the knowledge you know you possess, based on all your off-the-felt study? Away from the table, it’s easy to nod along and convince yourself everything makes sense when you read articles as beautifully written and explained as this one.
Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked
The problem with offsuit Ace-X is that, although they have good equity against a wide opening range, that equity is difficult to realize. A fair amount of that equity comes from boards where they do not flop a pair but are nevertheless ahead or drawing to six outs. The BTN often denies this equity with a small continuation bet. While it’s lovely to flush-over-flush your opponent, that is not where suited Ace-X find most of their extra value, especially not with shallow stacks.
Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs
With such wide ranges, responding to a small bet is tricky (which is why SB uses it). Here is BB’s response to 33% pot on AJ6r with 60bb stacks. It’s easier to focus on what does fold: only the weakest hands with exceptionally poor one pair outs and no backdoor flush draw. They never fold a pair, not even 22. They never fold two cards bigger than a 6 – it helps that even the weakest of these has some backdoor straight potential.
Joel Porter-Dias on Apple Podcasts
Joel Dias-Porter is a true renaissance man, capable of mastering a metaphor, programming a computer, hedging a parlay, spinning a record, and bluffing your face off. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss pre-Boom Atlantic City poker, whether poker is a ... Read more...
The Art of Learning Poker
Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. And even here, we’re most concerned with broad strokes: which hands or hand classes show a clear preference for betting or checking? Don’t get bogged down in the details of why A6 bets 62% but A7 only 21%. All you need to know is that they are both close decisions. This step is considerably more complex than the previous ones, so consider using only a subset of the flops you’ve been working with, ideally those with a robust mix of bets and checks.
Is Donk Betting for Donkeys?
These charts and graphs are from ChipEV simulations; ICM A commonly used acronym for the term independent chip model. ICM is a model that translates the value of a tournament chip to actual cash value, better known as tournament equity. ICM calculations are based on the stacks and payouts of all players remaining in the tournament. can dramatically change players’ incentives. Broadly speaking, both players have less incentive to grow the pot.
Delayed C-Betting
Essentially, all this checking serves to “promote” hands, making them more valuable than they were on the previous street, even when they have not improved in rank. When LJ checks the flop, BB can reasonably conclude they are unlikely to hold AK, AQ, KK, 88, and other very strong hands. This incentivizes them to call bets lighter on later streets, which in turn incentivizes LJ to value bet more thinly than they did on the flop.
Probe Betting
Flops that do not favor the preflop raiser are uncommon, but they are also the flops the raiser checks most often. On 6♥ 5♦ 4♦, for example, equity is split almost exactly 50-50 between the LJ and BB, with the BB enjoying the nuts advantage. Consequently, the LJ rarely continuation bets, and their checking range contains more weak hands simply because they have more weak hands on flops that do not connect well with their Broadway-heavy range.
ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind
This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs blind play under ICM pressure. In that piece, we saw that, though ICM incentivizes both players to avoid big confrontations, the BB has more leeway to grow the pot on early streets. Their position enables them to bluff, control the size of the pot, and realize equity more effectively than the SB, making it less dangerous for them to start growing the pot pre-flop.
ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind
ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where are highest, action is more likely to fold around to the blindsBlind bet To bet pre-flop without looking at your cards, or to bet postflop before the next street has been dealt. Typically, not allowed in online poker.. Consequently, it is especially important to learn how to navigate blind versus blind confrontations under ICM pressure.
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