Overpair Strategy | Upswing Poker Level-Up #36

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with Gary Blackwood. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike (00:00):

This podcast will help you win more money with hands like Pocket Aces, pocket Queens and Pocket Kings. My name is Mike Brady and I’m about to interrogate Scottish Poker Pro Gary Blackwood as he reveals his top five tips for playing overpairs in No Limit Hold’em Cash Games.

Gary (00:16):

What’s up guys? Thank you very much for joining. This is a topic that I’ve done recently for Upswing Poker. A four hour module sort of plundering that a little bit, but some really awesome tips to help you win the most money or lose a little less with your overpairs.

Mike (00:29):

Whether you play live or online cash games, maybe even tournaments when you’ve got deep stacks. These tips will help you play your overpairs better. And like Gary said, he made a I think four hour module about this topic in the Upswing Poker Lab. He talks about how to play overpairs in a ton of different scenarios, really, really a beautiful masterclass on how to play overpairs so Gary knows what he’s talking about. He studied up on this quite a bit pretty recently. So with all that said, let’s dive in. Gary, what is your first tip for playing overpairs in cash games?

Gary (01:00):

So let’s start with single raised pots. I remember once I was playing in Florida 2019, I lost my stack with pocket Aces and some hillbilly dude leans in and says, one pair bro, Aces, it’s just one pair. Well, today I am that hillbilly in single raised pots where the stack to pot ratio is extremely high. You don’t want to just always bet your Aces in every scenario. The board texture is really important. Your Aces on Queen seven deuce rainbow. They can bet virtually always, but your Aces on seven five three flush draw versus the big blind, you’re almost never going to bet for three streets. There are so many bad run outs, you could be beat already here. So your strongest overpairs that need less protection from over cards tend to check a lot. Your pocket eights, pocket nines, pocket tens that have backdoor straight draws and need more protection, they’ll bet a little more often.

Mike (01:48):

We’re going to talk more about what Gary calls the laddering effect in a future tip here where you actually bet the lower overpairs more often than the higher overpairs. But I’m going to focus in a little bit on that seven five three flush draw board in general. So Gary said you’re almost never going to be able to bet three streets on seven five three versus the big blind when you have a hand like pocket kings or pocket queens, and that’s largely true. Once in a while you’ll get the beautiful runout, the turn’s going to be an off suit queen. The river will be an off suit deuce and you’ll be able to go for three streets. That will happen sometimes, but what’s also going to happen sometimes is the turn or river will be a four or a six, which puts four cards to a straight on the board or maybe a flush draw completes, or maybe you have pocket queens and the turns an ace.

(02:27):

The point is there’s a lot of run outs that won’t allow you to continue betting. So a lot of the time you’re not going to be able to go for three streets of value, therefore checking on the flop is pretty reasonable. You start with a check, you don’t allow the big blind to put in a sneaky check raise, especially if they have a big hand. So you actually lose less money if they happen to have flopped two pair or a straight or something, which as the big blind, they can uniquely have the hands like six four suited, five three suited, et cetera, and you also make your strategy more robust. Now when you check back, sometimes you’re going to have Aces. I bet your opponents in one three are not going to expect that and it’s really going to help you win more money against them. Moving on to tip number two, Gary, what do you got?

Gary (03:06):

Position. Whether you’re in position or out of position will have a big factor on your continuation betting strategy, which of course will affect how you play your overpairs. Our strategy determines that we check more often when we’re out of position. So instead of looking at our hand strength and deciding to continuation bet based off of that, let’s use the board texture point from tip one and factor in whether we’re in position or out of position and bet or check accordingly. As I said, we do a lot more checking when we’re out of position, so we can’t just bet relentlessly with all of our overpairs, particularly when we’re out of position.

Mike (03:36):

I’m going to pull up the Lucid GTO trainer to demonstrate how this in position, out of position thing impacts our betting strategy and give you some hard numbers. So if we three bet as the button against the cutoff and the flop comes eight four deuce, we are going to be checking on this board 48% of the time and the overpairs, depending on which overpair, let’s say Aces and kings specifically, they check around 20 to 30% of the time each. So overall checking frequency in position was 48%. Kings and Aces were about 20 to 30%, but if we change the positions and make the small blind the three better, so now we’re out of position when we’re the three better, we’re going to see that checking frequency increase quite a lot even though we’re still on that eight four deuce board. Now the overall checking frequency is 60%, so we went from 48% to 60%, that’s a 25% increase and the Aces and the Kings are checking a ton. Aces is checking something like 80% of the time Pocket Kings is checking about half the time. Queen Jacks and tens are mixing in some checks where they were mostly betting before. So the solver approved strategy is really to check quite a bit more with your overpairs when you’re out of position to build that robust protected checking range that your opponent is not going to be able to exploit. All right, let’s move on. Gary, tip number three.

Gary (04:54):

So this is what I like to call the ladder effect and it’s just so standard as the pre-flop aggressor, particularly when you’re out of position. I touched on it earlier, but it’s well worthy of its own tip. Say the board is something really low like seven five deuce, six three deuce, eight four deuce, as we’ve just seen your immediate overpairs, your eights through jacks on those boards, they will bet way more often than your queens through Aces. There are obviously a lot of scenarios where we just bet our entire range and we don’t need to worry about the ladder effect or frequencies, et cetera. We just bet everything. But there are a lot of boards as we’ve just seen where you want to do a lot of checking and our overpairs fall into this ladder effect category whereby your immediate overpairs to the highest card on the board will bet the most frequently for protection purposes. And then as you ladder up your checking frequency increases. So as we can see on this eight four deuce example, your nines, tens, jacks are betting a whole lot more than your queens and your kings and your Aces.

Mike (05:50):

This effect carries to a lot of different boards as well. I’m going to change this to a ten high board, so ten four deuce now we’re still the small blind three better and we’re going to notice again this laddering effect on ten four deuce. The overpair that bets the most often is what do you know, pocket jacks. And then as you go up, they tend to check more often. So pocket Aces bets the least of any of these overpairs. I will say on this ten four deuce board are betting frequency is pretty high, but this effect remains a constant. And here’s a simple explanation why. When you bet with an overpair, you are accomplishing two things. You are either denying equity, you’re forcing them to fold a hand that has some chance to beat you and you’re getting value. One of the main hands you get value from on a ten high board for example is a ten.

(06:34):

If your opponent has Ace ten and you have pocket jacks, you’re obviously going to get some nice value from them. All of the overpairs on a ten high board accomplish that value bet part. They all get value from the top pair. They all get value from the pocket eights on ten four two and hands like that, but the protection part isn’t so important for a hand like pocket Aces. There’s no overcards to pocket Aces, right? If your opponent has king queen, you actually want them to catch up when you have pocket Aces, so therefore they check more often. Whereas with pocket jacks, you really don’t want your opponent with king queen to see a turn and if they do see a turn, you at least want charge them for it. So we see this laddering effect where the overpairs that are just barely above the top card bet the most often and then the highest overpair, obviously pocket Aces, that’s the least often.

(07:22):

You might be surprised to learn that solvers and strong players even do this in single raised pots. Let’s say you raised from the cutoff and the big blind called and the flop comes seven four three rainbow. The overpairs that bet the most often on this board are eights, nines, tens and jacks. Queen’s checks a good amount more often. King’s checks a little bit more often than queens and then Aces checks the most often of every hand and it’s again this laddering effect. It all comes down to not needing to deny as much equity and actually wanting your opponent to catch up a little bit when you have a hand like pocket Aces.

Gary (07:54):

Now a quick mini tip within this tip when you do a lot of checking out of position with these strong overpairs, it’s so important that we play a really solid aggressive check raise strategy. These queens, these kings, these Aces are checking really quite often here. So let’s go ahead and check raise them aggressively when we’re out of position in three bet pots. Remember that point I made in tip one about Aces not playing for stacks on seven five three in single raised pots. That very much applies to those single raised pot scenarios where ranges are wider and the big blind is going to have more strong hands, but in a three bet pot out of position where ranges are narrower and the stack to pot ratio is lower, your jacks, your queens even hands like tens and nines, they’re happy to play for it all. So let’s understand the difference between those two scenarios. Three bet pots and single raised pots and try and win it all with your overpairs in the three bet pot scenario.

Mike (08:43):

And indeed, when I look this spot up in Lucid, I put seven four three, we three bet from the small blind and then checked on the flop to the button, the button bet small, which they’re supposed to do pretty frequently. We’re check raising 25% of the time overall. And the main hands that make up that check raising range are Aces, kings, queens, jacks, tens, nines and eights. And once again, we do see a little bit of a ladder effect here where nines, tens and jacks raise almost every time that you have them. And then the Aces raises the least often because again, they just don’t need that protection as much. They’re okay with letting the opponent blast off in position with whatever peanut butter and jelly sandwich bluff they have. Queue tip number four from my Scottish friend, go for it.

Gary (09:25):

So this tip follows on really nicely from the last point, but let’s switch it up and now we’ll look at the point of view of the pre-flop caller. Say we’re in middle position, we raise the small blind re-raises and we make the call. The flop comes down eight four deuce, the small blind checks to us. You want to stab your nines and your tens always here, right? Wrong. Remember in theory the small blind is supposed to check really often with hands like Aces and kings and queens and they’re going to check raise super often as a result. It’s so tempting to just bet your weak overpairs like nines and tens here always for protection, but it’s so gross when you face that check raise. Interestingly enough, the ladder kind of turns itself upside down here. Your kings and your queens are going to bet virtually always here. So your strongest overpairs essentially, and that’s because they’re happy. I mean if you’ve got pocket kings here and your opponent check raises, you’re kind of loving life a little bit. But when you’ve got pocket nines, it feels really gnarly and uncomfortable.

Mike (10:18):

And just to clarify, we’re talking about playing as the three bet caller here. So let’s say you raised from middle position as Gary said, and then the small blind three bets and then you call, sometimes you’re going to just call with hand like pocket kings there, you’re going to often just call with nines, tens and jacks. So when these boards come very low and they do check to you, it’s very tempting to be like, oh, I’ve got nines on eight four deuce. I don’t want to see an over card. I want to try to get some value from Ace King. I’m going to always bet this, but that’s kind of playing into their hands if they’re playing properly. If you’re up against a very unbalanced opponent who has a super weak checking range, that’s a different story. You can bet tens and nines more often against those types of people. You’ll see them a lot in one three games. They never really check with Aces Kings and queens because they’re a little afraid. That’s what I’ve noticed at least. But when you’re up against a robust opponent, you don’t want to just always be rifling in a bet with a hand like nines on eight four deuce because again, that is playing into their strong checking range. They’ve checked with a strong robust range and you’re betting into it too light and too often, you want to avoid that.

Gary (11:19):

So if we’re in position and we’re up against a good thinking opponent who we know is going to check raise, let’s not always stab all of our overpairs. Let’s sometimes check the lower ones. Yes, they’re more vulnerable when the flop goes check check, but they also hate to play for stacks versus this check raise that is likely coming. So we can just control the size of the pot here with our medium strength hand.

Mike (11:39):

It’s interesting, we see the reverse of the ladder effect here as the in position player who called the three bet where now kings are betting the most often, queens are betting around the same amount. Jacks are betting a little bit less often, and then tens and nines are betting the least often of any of the overpairs on eight four deuce in position as the three bet caller. And what this comes down to is simply absolute hand strength. In this situation absolute hand strength is king, when you put money in this spot against that strong three betters range, you want to have a better hand. So when you have the better hands, you bet more often when you have the not as good hands, you check more often. Sometimes poker’s just that easy.

Gary (12:15):

Sometimes.

Mike (12:17):

I know you’ve got a fifth and final tip locked and loaded. Gary, take it away.

Gary (12:22):

So we’ve done single raised pots, we’ve done three bet pots. Let’s finish up with some four bet pot strategies here. We spoke earlier about how in single raised pots you’re never really in love with playing for stacks with your overpairs because the stack to pot ratio is high and the ranges are wider. We then spoke about how that changes when we have overpairs in three bet pots, smaller stack to pot ratio, tighter ranges. We’re happier to get it in. In four bet pots for almost every spot, we are fist pump getting the money in with our overpairs, whether we’re the caller, the aggressor, we’re happily putting the money in. There are some scenarios, very extreme scenarios where we’re middle position, under the gun has four bet. We’ve called the four bet, we’ve got pocket eights, the flop comes down seven five deuce, and our opponent bets half pot. We want to just go ahead and fold our eights there, but for every other scenario later position four bet pot spots, if you have an overpair, whether you’re the caller or the aggressor, you can just raise flop and get the money in or you can call your opponent down on those safe run outs and just live your best life.

Mike (13:19):

Consider how big the pot is in a four bet pot and how much money you have behind. If you started with standard 100 big blind stacks and a normal size, let’s say 23 big blind four bet went in pre-flop, that means there’s about 50 big blinds in the pot and you have about 77 or so big blinds behind. That’s like one and a half pots. An overpair is worth one and a half pots, guys. It’s really that simple. When you have queens on whatever board that doesn’t have an ace or a king and you have one and a half pots, you got to just get it in. Sometimes they’re going to have Aces, sometimes they’re going to have kings. It’s going to suck, it’s going to suck, but you still got to get the money in. I think I said earlier in this episode, sometimes you just lose hands in poker.

(14:02):

Maybe it was last episode all kind of blended together, but again, one and a half pots. Think about that stack to pot ratio. Anytime you’re under two pot sized bets, maybe even like two and a half, an overpair is going to be worth all the money, except in those extreme scenarios that Gary just talked about, like you’re up against a very, very tight four bet and you have a weak overpair, but those extreme scenarios are usually going to stick out like a sore thumb. You’re going to know those spots when you’re in them. You’re going to know it’s not worth getting in. Just remember this advice next time you find yourself considering one of those big, big folds and you better have an incredibly good read if you decide to fold queens for one and a half pots, I’m serious, please don’t do it.

Gary (14:41):

Yeah, and we’ll finish up here with a really lovely visual, say the button opens the small blind three bets, the button four bets and the small blind calls. You get this seven three deuce rainbow flop and the button has continuation bet for a quarter pot. Look at our pocket eights, our pocket nines, our pocket tens. They’re overpairs and they’re just playing really aggressively. They’re happily raising, they’re getting it in. No problem at all. Just a very quick tangent when you’re playing these four bet pots, I’m going to get Mike to change this seven three dee rainbow to seven three deuce flush draw. We’ll see a big difference in how we play those overpairs. So on the seven three deuce rainbow, we want to play small raises, but on seven three deuce flush draw, we’re much more inclined to just check shove. So on these four bet pots, when we have our overpairs, if the flop is low, there’s a bit of a difference between how we play the rainbow boards and the flush draw boards.

(15:25):

The flush draw boards are just check shoving with your pocket nines and your pocket tens. But on the rainbow boards, your check raising for a small size with your pocket nines and pocket tens. And one last tangent within a tangent as to why we play that, because learning why we do things makes poker much easier in the long run. If you think about your bluffs on seven three deuce rainbow, you don’t really have any bluffs that are comfortable like check shoving. You don’t have any bluffs that want to just play for stacks. Whereas on seven three deuce flush draw, you’ve got infinite ace queen suited and king Queen suited with a flush draw on Ace four with the gut shot and the flush draw. Our strategy there revolves around how our bluffs want to play. So on seven three deuce flush draw, your bluffs want to check jam because they’ve got lots of equity, they’ve got flush draws and gut shots and things like that. But on seven three deuce rainbow, you don’t have any of those high equity draws. So your bluffs want to kind of check min raise and try and win the pot that way and your value has to fall in line with that. So on the flush draw boards, you want to check shove, but on the rainbow boards you want to play small raises.

Mike (16:19):

That’s small raise in a four bit pot, it might sound really dicey and it is an advanced play. It’s quite an advanced play, but it’s pretty damn sick when it works, right Gary? When the pot’s 50 big blinds, you check to your opponent in a four bet pot. They bet really small like a quarter pot and you just click it back to roughly double their bet. If they fold there, that was the most efficient bluff ever. You risked such a small amount to win such a chunky pot, it’s pretty sick. And then that range is balanced out by hands that you are going to go with, like those lower overpairs, pocket eights or whatever. Another benefit of making that small raise play is it puts a really large amount of their range in a tough spot. If you just check jam on seven three deuce rainbow, they’re probably just going to fold a hand like Ace Queen.

(17:07):

They’re not going to think that they have enough equity, they’re probably going to fold. But when you check min raise, they’re like, oh damn. I’m like, am I priced in to try to hit an ace or a queen on the turn here? This sucks. This guy’s really putting me in the cage here. So that’s one of the many benefits of making that play. If you want to implement that advanced, like small check raise into your game, you definitely want to study up on it because it is an advanced play and one way to study up on it is a great way to learn how to play your overpairs in general. If you really want to play your overpairs like a pro in cash games, check out Gary’s four hour masterclass on this topic inside the Upswing Lab training course, he walks you through playing overpairs in every common situation, so you’ll be better prepared to take on any situation that the poker gods throw your way. When you sign up for the Upswing lab, you’ll also get a hundred plus more classes that each cover a vital poker topic. I really enjoyed the recent release about exploitative adjustments. That one’s super useful for the live poker games I play in and probably the live poker games you play in too. See what else you get inside the lab and sign up now at upswingpoker.com and use coupon code levelup to get $50 off. Hope you enjoyed the show. See you in the next one.

Mike (00:00):

This video will help you win more money with hands like Pocket Aces, pocket Queens and Pocket Kings. My name is Mike Brady and I’m about to interrogate Scottish Poker Pro Gary Blackwood as he reveals his top five tips for playing overpairs in No Limit Hold’em Cash Games.

Gary (00:16):

What’s up guys? Thank you very much for joining. This is a topic that I’ve done recently for Upswing Poker. A four hour module sort of plundering that a little bit, but some really awesome tips to help you win the most money or lose a little less with your overpairs.

Mike (00:29):

Whether you play live or online cash games, maybe even tournaments when you’ve got deep stacks. These tips will help you play your overpairs better. And like Gary said, he made a I think four hour module about this topic in the Upswing Poker Lab. He talks about how to play overpairs in a ton of different scenarios, really, really a beautiful masterclass on how to play overpairs so Gary knows what he’s talking about. He studied up on this quite a bit pretty recently. So with all that said, let’s dive in. Gary, what is your first tip for playing overpairs in cash games?

Gary (01:00):

So let’s start with single raised pots. I remember once I was playing in Florida 2019, I lost my stack with pocket Aces and some hillbilly dude leans in and says, one pair bro, Aces, it’s just one pair. Well, today I am that hillbilly in single raised pots where the stack to pot ratio is extremely high. You don’t want to just always bet your Aces in every scenario. The board texture is really important. Your Aces on Queen seven deuce rainbow. They can bet virtually always, but your Aces on seven five three flush draw versus the big blind, you’re almost never going to bet for three streets. There are so many bad run outs, you could be beat already here. So your strongest overpairs that need less protection from over cards tend to check a lot. Your pocket eights, pocket nines, pocket tens that have backdoor straight draws and need more protection, they’ll bet a little more often.

Mike (01:48):

We’re going to talk more about what Gary calls the laddering effect in a future tip here where you actually bet the lower overpairs more often than the higher overpairs. But I’m going to focus in a little bit on that seven five three flush draw board in general. So Gary said you’re almost never going to be able to bet three streets on seven five three versus the big blind when you have a hand like pocket kings or pocket queens, and that’s largely true. Once in a while you’ll get the beautiful runout, the turn’s going to be an off suit queen. The river will be an off suit deuce and you’ll be able to go for three streets. That will happen sometimes, but what’s also going to happen sometimes is the turn or river will be a four or a six, which puts four cards to a straight on the board or maybe a flush draw completes, or maybe you have pocket queens and the turns an ace.

(02:27):

The point is there’s a lot of run outs that won’t allow you to continue betting. So a lot of the time you’re not going to be able to go for three streets of value, therefore checking on the flop is pretty reasonable. You start with a check, you don’t allow the big blind to put in a sneaky check raise, especially if they have a big hand. So you actually lose less money if they happen to have flopped two pair or a straight or something, which as the big blind, they can uniquely have the hands like six four suited, five three suited, et cetera, and you also make your strategy more robust. Now when you check back, sometimes you’re going to have Aces. I bet your opponents in one three are not going to expect that and it’s really going to help you win more money against them. Moving on to tip number two, Gary, what do you got?

Gary (03:06):

Position. Whether you’re in position or out of position will have a big factor on your continuation betting strategy, which of course will affect how you play your overpairs. Our strategy determines that we check more often when we’re out of position. So instead of looking at our hand strength and deciding to continuation bet based off of that, let’s use the board texture point from tip one and factor in whether we’re in position or out of position and bet or check accordingly. As I said, we do a lot more checking when we’re out of position, so we can’t just bet relentlessly with all of our overpairs, particularly when we’re out of position.

Mike (03:36):

I’m going to pull up the Lucid GTO trainer to demonstrate how this in position, out of position thing impacts our betting strategy and give you some hard numbers. So if we three bet as the button against the cutoff and the flop comes eight four deuce, we are going to be checking on this board 48% of the time and the overpairs, depending on which overpair, let’s say Aces and kings specifically, they check around 20 to 30% of the time each. So overall checking frequency in position was 48%. Kings and Aces were about 20 to 30%, but if we change the positions and make the small blind the three better, so now we’re out of position when we’re the three better, we’re going to see that checking frequency increase quite a lot even though we’re still on that eight four deuce board. Now the overall checking frequency is 60%, so we went from 48% to 60%, that’s a 25% increase and the Aces and the Kings are checking a ton. Aces is checking something like 80% of the time Pocket Kings is checking about half the time. Queen Jacks and tens are mixing in some checks where they were mostly betting before. So the solver approved strategy is really to check quite a bit more with your overpairs when you’re out of position to build that robust protected checking range that your opponent is not going to be able to exploit. All right, let’s move on. Gary, tip number three.

Gary (04:54):

So this is what I like to call the ladder effect and it’s just so standard as the pre-flop aggressor, particularly when you’re out of position. I touched on it earlier, but it’s well worthy of its own tip. Say the board is something really low like seven five deuce, six three deuce, eight four deuce, as we’ve just seen your immediate overpairs, your eights through jacks on those boards, they will bet way more often than your queens through Aces. There are obviously a lot of scenarios where we just bet our entire range and we don’t need to worry about the ladder effect or frequencies, et cetera. We just bet everything. But there are a lot of boards as we’ve just seen where you want to do a lot of checking and our overpairs fall into this ladder effect category whereby your immediate overpairs to the highest card on the board will bet the most frequently for protection purposes. And then as you ladder up your checking frequency increases. So as we can see on this eight four deuce example, your nines, tens, jacks are betting a whole lot more than your queens and your kings and your Aces.

Mike (05:50):

This effect carries to a lot of different boards as well. I’m going to change this to a ten high board, so ten four deuce now we’re still the small blind three better and we’re going to notice again this laddering effect on ten four deuce. The overpair that bets the most often is what do you know, pocket jacks. And then as you go up, they tend to check more often. So pocket Aces bets the least of any of these overpairs. I will say on this ten four deuce board are betting frequency is pretty high, but this effect remains a constant. And here’s a simple explanation why. When you bet with an overpair, you are accomplishing two things. You are either denying equity, you’re forcing them to fold a hand that has some chance to beat you and you’re getting value. One of the main hands you get value from on a ten high board for example is a ten.

(06:34):

If your opponent has Ace ten and you have pocket jacks, you’re obviously going to get some nice value from them. All of the overpairs on a ten high board accomplish that value bet part. They all get value from the top pair. They all get value from the pocket eights on ten four two and hands like that, but the protection part isn’t so important for a hand like pocket Aces. There’s no overcards to pocket Aces, right? If your opponent has king queen, you actually want them to catch up when you have pocket Aces, so therefore they check more often. Whereas with pocket jacks, you really don’t want your opponent with king queen to see a turn and if they do see a turn, you at least want charge them for it. So we see this laddering effect where the overpairs that are just barely above the top card bet the most often and then the highest overpair, obviously pocket Aces, that’s the least often.

(07:22):

You might be surprised to learn that solvers and strong players even do this in single raised pots. Let’s say you raised from the cutoff and the big blind called and the flop comes seven four three rainbow. The overpairs that bet the most often on this board are eights, nines, tens and jacks. Queen’s checks a good amount more often. King’s checks a little bit more often than queens and then Aces checks the most often of every hand and it’s again this laddering effect. It all comes down to not needing to deny as much equity and actually wanting your opponent to catch up a little bit when you have a hand like pocket Aces.

Gary (07:54):

Now a quick mini tip within this tip when you do a lot of checking out of position with these strong overpairs, it’s so important that we play a really solid aggressive check raise strategy. These queens, these kings, these Aces are checking really quite often here. So let’s go ahead and check raise them aggressively when we’re out of position in three bet pots. Remember that point I made in tip one about Aces not playing for stacks on seven five three in single raised pots. That very much applies to those single raised pot scenarios where ranges are wider and the big blind is going to have more strong hands, but in a three bet pot out of position where ranges are narrower and the stack to pot ratio is lower, your jacks, your queens even hands like tens and nines, they’re happy to play for it all. So let’s understand the difference between those two scenarios. Three bet pots and single raised pots and try and win it all with your overpairs in the three bet pot scenario.

Mike (08:43):

And indeed, when I look this spot up in Lucid, I put seven four three, we three bet from the small blind and then checked on the flop to the button, the button bet small, which they’re supposed to do pretty frequently. We’re check raising 25% of the time overall. And the main hands that make up that check raising range are Aces, kings, queens, jacks, tens, nines and eights. And once again, we do see a little bit of a ladder effect here where nines, tens and jacks raise almost every time that you have them. And then the Aces raises the least often because again, they just don’t need that protection as much. They’re okay with letting the opponent blast off in position with whatever peanut butter and jelly sandwich bluff they have. Queue tip number four from my Scottish friend, go for it.

Gary (09:25):

So this tip follows on really nicely from the last point, but let’s switch it up and now we’ll look at the point of view of the pre-flop caller. Say we’re in middle position, we raise the small blind re-raises and we make the call. The flop comes down eight four deuce, the small blind checks to us. You want to stab your nines and your tens always here, right? Wrong. Remember in theory the small blind is supposed to check really often with hands like Aces and kings and queens and they’re going to check raise super often as a result. It’s so tempting to just bet your weak overpairs like nines and tens here always for protection, but it’s so gross when you face that check raise. Interestingly enough, the ladder kind of turns itself upside down here. Your kings and your queens are going to bet virtually always here. So your strongest overpairs essentially, and that’s because they’re happy. I mean if you’ve got pocket kings here and your opponent check raises, you’re kind of loving life a little bit. But when you’ve got pocket nines, it feels really gnarly and uncomfortable.

Mike (10:18):

And just to clarify, we’re talking about playing as the three bet caller here. So let’s say you raised from middle position as Gary said, and then the small blind three bets and then you call, sometimes you’re going to just call with hand like pocket kings there, you’re going to often just call with nines, tens and jacks. So when these boards come very low and they do check to you, it’s very tempting to be like, oh, I’ve got nines on eight four deuce. I don’t want to see an over card. I want to try to get some value from Ace King. I’m going to always bet this, but that’s kind of playing into their hands if they’re playing properly. If you’re up against a very unbalanced opponent who has a super weak checking range, that’s a different story. You can bet tens and nines more often against those types of people. You’ll see them a lot in one three games. They never really check with Aces Kings and queens because they’re a little afraid. That’s what I’ve noticed at least. But when you’re up against a robust opponent, you don’t want to just always be rifling in a bet with a hand like nines on eight four deuce because again, that is playing into their strong checking range. They’ve checked with a strong robust range and you’re betting into it too light and too often, you want to avoid that.

Gary (11:19):

So if we’re in position and we’re up against a good thinking opponent who we know is going to check raise, let’s not always stab all of our overpairs. Let’s sometimes check the lower ones. Yes, they’re more vulnerable when the flop goes check check, but they also hate to play for stacks versus this check raise that is likely coming. So we can just control the size of the pot here with our medium strength hand.

Mike (11:39):

It’s interesting, we see the reverse of the ladder effect here as the in position player who called the three bet where now kings are betting the most often, queens are betting around the same amount. Jacks are betting a little bit less often, and then tens and nines are betting the least often of any of the overpairs on eight four deuce in position as the three bet caller. And what this comes down to is simply absolute hand strength. In this situation absolute hand strength is king, when you put money in this spot against that strong three betters range, you want to have a better hand. So when you have the better hands, you bet more often when you have the not as good hands, you check more often. Sometimes poker’s just that easy.

Gary (12:15):

Sometimes.

Mike (12:17):

I know you’ve got a fifth and final tip locked and loaded. Gary, take it away.

Gary (12:22):

So we’ve done single raised pots, we’ve done three bet pots. Let’s finish up with some four bet pot strategies here. We spoke earlier about how in single raised pots you’re never really in love with playing for stacks with your overpairs because the stack to pot ratio is high and the ranges are wider. We then spoke about how that changes when we have overpairs in three bet pots, smaller stack to pot ratio, tighter ranges. We’re happier to get it in. In four bet pots for almost every spot, we are fist pump getting the money in with our overpairs, whether we’re the caller, the aggressor, we’re happily putting the money in. There are some scenarios, very extreme scenarios where we’re middle position, under the gun has four bet. We’ve called the four bet, we’ve got pocket eights, the flop comes down seven five deuce, and our opponent bets half pot. We want to just go ahead and fold our eights there, but for every other scenario later position four bet pot spots, if you have an overpair, whether you’re the caller or the aggressor, you can just raise flop and get the money in or you can call your opponent down on those safe run outs and just live your best life.

Mike (13:19):

Consider how big the pot is in a four bet pot and how much money you have behind. If you started with standard 100 big blind stacks and a normal size, let’s say 23 big blind four bet went in pre-flop, that means there’s about 50 big blinds in the pot and you have about 77 or so big blinds behind. That’s like one and a half pots. An overpair is worth one and a half pots, guys. It’s really that simple. When you have queens on whatever board that doesn’t have an ace or a king and you have one and a half pots, you got to just get it in. Sometimes they’re going to have Aces, sometimes they’re going to have kings. It’s going to suck, it’s going to suck, but you still got to get the money in. I think I said earlier in this episode, sometimes you just lose hands in poker.

(14:02):

Maybe it was last episode all kind of blended together, but again, one and a half pots. Think about that stack to pot ratio. Anytime you’re under two pot sized bets, maybe even like two and a half, an overpair is going to be worth all the money, except in those extreme scenarios that Gary just talked about, like you’re up against a very, very tight four bet and you have a weak overpair, but those extreme scenarios are usually going to stick out like a sore thumb. You’re going to know those spots when you’re in them. You’re going to know it’s not worth getting in. Just remember this advice next time you find yourself considering one of those big, big folds and you better have an incredibly good read if you decide to fold queens for one and a half pots, I’m serious, please don’t do it.

Gary (14:41):

Yeah, and we’ll finish up here with a really lovely visual, say the button opens the small blind three bets, the button four bets and the small blind calls. You get this seven three deuce rainbow flop and the button has continuation bet for a quarter pot. Look at our pocket eights, our pocket nines, our pocket tens. They’re overpairs and they’re just playing really aggressively. They’re happily raising, they’re getting it in. No problem at all. Just a very quick tangent when you’re playing these four bet pots, I’m going to get Mike to change this seven three dee rainbow to seven three deuce flush draw. We’ll see a big difference in how we play those overpairs. So on the seven three deuce rainbow, we want to play small raises, but on seven three deuce flush draw, we’re much more inclined to just check shove. So on these four bet pots, when we have our overpairs, if the flop is low, there’s a bit of a difference between how we play the rainbow boards and the flush draw boards.

(15:25):

The flush draw boards are just check shoving with your pocket nines and your pocket tens. But on the rainbow boards, your check raising for a small size with your pocket nines and pocket tens. And one last tangent within a tangent as to why we play that, because learning why we do things makes poker much easier in the long run. If you think about your bluffs on seven three deuce rainbow, you don’t really have any bluffs that are comfortable like check shoving. You don’t have any bluffs that want to just play for stacks. Whereas on seven three deuce flush draw, you’ve got infinite ace queen suited and king Queen suited with a flush draw on Ace four with the gut shot and the flush draw. Our strategy there revolves around how our bluffs want to play. So on seven three deuce flush draw, your bluffs want to check jam because they’ve got lots of equity, they’ve got flush draws and gut shots and things like that. But on seven three deuce rainbow, you don’t have any of those high equity draws. So your bluffs want to kind of check min raise and try and win the pot that way and your value has to fall in line with that. So on the flush draw boards, you want to check shove, but on the rainbow boards you want to play small raises.

Mike (16:19):

That’s small raise in a four bit pot, it might sound really dicey and it is an advanced play. It’s quite an advanced play, but it’s pretty damn sick when it works, right Gary? When the pot’s 50 big blinds, you check to your opponent in a four bet pot. They bet really small like a quarter pot and you just click it back to roughly double their bet. If they fold there, that was the most efficient bluff ever. You risked such a small amount to win such a chunky pot, it’s pretty sick. And then that range is balanced out by hands that you are going to go with, like those lower overpairs, pocket eights or whatever. Another benefit of making that small raise play is it puts a really large amount of their range in a tough spot. If you just check jam on seven three deuce rainbow, they’re probably just going to fold a hand like Ace Queen.

(17:07):

They’re not going to think that they have enough equity, they’re probably going to fold. But when you check min raise, they’re like, oh damn. I’m like, am I priced in to try to hit an ace or a queen on the turn here? This sucks. This guy’s really putting me in the cage here. So that’s one of the many benefits of making that play. If you want to implement that advanced, like small check raise into your game, you definitely want to study up on it because it is an advanced play and one way to study up on it is a great way to learn how to play your overpairs in general.

If you really want to play your overpairs like a pro in cash games, check out Gary’s four hour masterclass on this topic inside the Upswing Lab training course.

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When you sign up for the Upswing Lab, you’ll also get a hundred plus more classes that each cover a vital poker topic. I really enjoyed the recent release about exploitative adjustments. That one’s super useful for the live poker games I play in and probably the live poker games you play in too.

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Hope you enjoyed the show. See you in the next one.