This is great when stacks are shallow and becomes less and less good when stacks are deep. On a flop like 976 you will realize 0 equity five ways.

Aces is a hand whose equity is almost entirely distributed as being the best one pair. In your napkin analysis you totally ignore Equity Realization - the fact that only one of the four streets have been played and zero of the five community cards have been dealt. For the latter, the better they get and the more good players they surpass, the worse they will beat bad players. The point is that as we point out in the book, a small stakes poker hustler is not like a pool or golf hustler. Not until they have seen you make this big raise a few times. That is easily exploitable by folding queens or worse. So even if conditions are right it can't be done a lot.Īnother play that works against some bad players is a monster size reraise preflop with aces or kings. Of course, they will start doing it more often if you do this pot sweetener routinely. But in most small games the reraise is extremely rare. (It may not be bad because you find out early about his strong hand when he is slowplaying). Obviously, the play is probably bad if one of the limpers reraises either because he was slowplaying or realizes he has a profitable bluff. We say that if stacks are largish and there are several limpers for 3 in front of you, then making it six with hands that you would normally call with, basically doubles the positive EV that you presumably think you have if you just call. So let's leave it there for now rather than continuing to talk about a book where we posted the two most controversial plays and none of the chapters that contain logical counter strategies and thought processes that take best advantage of bad players while fully admitting that they would be poor strategies against good ones.Īs a third example of an unusual play that we have a short chapter about despite the fact that it is clearly exploitable, is 'pot sweeteners' pre flop. If you play online (I'm pretty sure neither you or Mason have played any meaningful stakes online, you know, where actual good players play) or higher stakes live, players will very easily see through this type of face up strategy and counter exploit you. The audience that reads this book will be doing everything backwards, they will be deviating thinking that it is the default play, when it is the outlier play. You start with fundamentals, then you build deviations on top of fundamentals so you know WHY you are doing something. No I'm not saying that, your play probably makes more money.īut this is not a good way to learn poker.

Small stakes hold em