7 Cash Game Tips that Print Money | Upswing Poker Level-Up #62

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady and poker pro 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 Brady (00:00):

My poker pro friend helped me come up with seven cash game tips that will help you print money at the table. And speaking of that friend, here is Gary Blackwood.

Gary Blackwood (00:08):

Thanks for joining us guys. Today we’re going to be talking about how to crush cash games. We’ll be covering a variety of topics, talking about when to slow play, when to fast play, game selection, all the tools you need to become a better, stronger cash game player.

Mike Brady (00:21):

We’re going to start with the basics here and get a bit more advanced as we go. Make sure you stick around until tips four through seven because those are the best of the bunch. Tip number one is to value bet relentlessly. Gary, do you want to explain what you mean by that?

Gary Blackwood (00:38):

Your opponents will not be doing this. One of the biggest leaks that cash game players have is they don’t value bet often enough, they don’t value bet well enough and it is so important. Getting value with your hands that want to get value is one of the most important skills that a poker player can possess.

Mike Brady (00:55):

If we look at another way you make money in poker, for example, which is bluffing, you generally do that to balance out your value bets because if you only value bet, your opponents could just respond by always folding knowing that you’re never bluffing. So your entire strategy is really built around what you are value betting. Maybe you have top pair, maybe you have a set, maybe you have a flush, whatever it is, that’s how you’re going to make money. Sometimes you’re going to go card dead, you might go several orbits or even several sessions without making too many strong hands, but your turn is going to come and when it does, you have to be ready to value bet relentlessly to cash in on those big hands.

Gary Blackwood (01:33):

Not only should we be value betting relentlessly with those strong hands, those top pairs and two pairs and flushes and things like that, it’s also so important that we’re value betting thinly. Value betting relentlessly is important. Value betting thinly is just as important. You need to recognize scenarios where your opponents ranges are capped and your second pair, your third pair, even your Ace high in really extreme examples, we can value bet these hands because our opponent is capped and we can get called by a worse hand. Say we open under the gun, we’ve got Ace King, the big blind defense. The flop comes down Eight Seven Deuce. Check, check. Turn is a Three. Check check. River’s a Deuce, your opponent checks to you. This is a very extreme example, but your Ace King is the best hand here ninety-nine percent of the time. Let’s throw out a bet on the river.

(02:19):

We’ve clearly got the best hand. Why not value bet it? There are going to be so many scenarios where we’ll have second pair, third pair, fourth pair, even that extreme example where we have Ace High where we want to value bet our hand. So value betting thinly is extremely important. One other thing I’ll say is that a lot of people shy away from thin value bets because, quote unquote, “what if I get raised?” The reality is that your opponent is going to raise your bet on the river one, maybe two, maybe three percent of the time. So for the other ninety-seven percent of the time where we’re going to get value, we can’t shy away from that value bet for fear of being raised when the raise is going to be happening so infrequently. So let’s go ahead get that value and value bet thinly and win more money as a result.

Mike Brady (03:01):

Not only is that raise going to be very infrequent, it’s probably just going to be a very strong hand with which your opponent was trapping because realistically our human opponents aren’t capable of checking three times and then check-raising with a bluff. They probably just flopped a set. Maybe they turn quads or something and they’re just trying to lay the trap and finally get you to put some money in. So keep an eye out for situations where you almost certainly have the best hand and consider if you can potentially get called by worse. If you can, throw out that thin value bet. Tip number two is to practice good game selection habits. This is a pretty straightforward tip. If you want to win money at a poker table, you have to be one of the better players. If you are the eighth best player in the world but you’re at a table with the seven people who are better than you, you are going to be a losing player.

(03:52):

On the other hand, you could be a quite average, or even below average player, but if you’re playing with a bunch of people who are still learning the rules, you’re going to be the person coming out on top the majority of the time. We’ve got a quick checklist that you can go through in your head whenever you’re in a live cash game. We’ll talk about online cash games in a second. You’re going to want at least two of these boxes to be checked in order to justify staying in a live cash game, particularly if you’re playing low stakes. Number one, at least one player is limping regularly. That’s a sign of a passive player that is probably not going to give you too much trouble and you want those players at your table. Number two, multiway pots are frequent. This is again, a sign of a lot of passivity at your table probably by multiple players. Multiway pots are a really good situation to make money as long as you play them right. We’re going to cover that in a future tip.

(04:40):

And number three, preflop re-raises are either very rare or very frequent. The very rare is, once again, a sign of passivity which is good for you because it means you’re not going to be in a lot of tough spots. You are going to be the person driving the action and thus making the most money. Or if they’re very, very frequent where your opponents are just splashing around in there, re-raising with all kinds of garbage, that’s obviously really good for you too because you could just sit back, wait for a solid hand and print some dough.

Gary Blackwood (05:06):

Whilst it’s important that we’re putting ourselves into the position where we are plus EV, we’re putting ourselves into good games and with splashy players and action players and things like that, it’s really important that we don’t push the boundaries of that too far. We don’t want to be predatory, we don’t want to be making people uncomfortable. It’s important to be respectful and understanding that people are there to have a good time, et cetera. So it’s really important that when we are game selecting, we don’t take it too far and become the villain that everyone dislikes playing with because they’re just bum hunting relentlessly.

Mike Brady (05:33):

Right. That can really do more harm than good. It might slightly increase your short-term hourly to always get that seat change button and jump to the left of the fish whenever you get the chance, but if you are the player in the room who’s constantly doing that, it’s going to cause other issues, and frankly, you’re going to be causing a lot of strife for the other players and yourself. I would just say it’s generally not worth it. Moving over to online, this is a much shorter checklist., it’s just one item. Online we have a much lower standard for what makes a good game. Obviously online games are much tougher. All you really need is at least one weak player at the table. That is a sign that you are in a game worth playing. Gary, you play a lot more online cash games than I. How do you approach this game selection online?

Gary Blackwood (06:19):

I think you’ve nailed it. Online poker is a lot tougher than live poker and when you play online, say you’re playing a six-max table for example, there will be one weaker player and five better players, shall we say, at that table. However, there are different kinds of weaker player. You can have a weaker player who’s not that weak in the grand scheme of things. You can have a weaker player that’s extremely weak. Sometimes you’ll be very lucky and you’ll have two weak players at your online table. If we’re playing an online table where we’re playing against four other regs who are very good and that weaker player is not so great, let’s just go ahead and leave that table. Let’s go ahead and look for a different table which is softer than the one we’ve just left. So you can still game select when you play online as well. You just have to recognize the differences between the types of weaker players that you play against and the regs that you play with as well. Some of them will be stronger than others, so let’s go ahead and game select and recognize the different types of players that we play against online and still look for soft games.

Mike Brady (07:15):

Some of you might be wondering what about if you play tournaments? Well, you don’t really have a choice in tournaments. You just get sat at whatever table, so you’re going to have to do your game selecting ahead of time in those and kind of evaluate the fields and decide if you should register at all, because obviously that table change option ain’t available to you. Moving on to tip number three, which is watch how your opponents play and formulate counter strategies even in hands that you’ve folded.

Gary Blackwood (07:42):

Your opponents will have so many different leaks in so many different parts of their game. They clearly don’t watch the Level Up podcast like you do. You can exploit players in lots of different ways, but that only happens when you’re paying attention to your opponent’s tendencies and the things that they’re doing. For example, say your opponent raises in the cutoff and then they get to showdown and they’ve got Ace Three offsuit, for example. You then know that that player is opening way too wide in the cutoff and you want to three bet them much more often when you’re on the button. Say for example, your opponent raises, you defend the big blind, the flop comes down Queen Seven Deuce, they c-bet the flop, you call and then on the Three turn and the Eight river it goes, check, check and your opponent’s got pocket Jacks.

(08:26):

You know they’re not value betting correctly on the river, which means that when you do face a bet on the river, you want to exploit that player by folding and not hero calling as aggressively as you would versus another player. These adjustments are so important. It’s really important we’re paying attention, we’re seeing what people are showing down and we’re thinking about different ways to exploit players that we play against based on the things that they are doing. Let’s not be the type of player that folds their hand, picks up their phone and starts scrolling through Twitter. You’re missing a vast amount of moneymaking information that’s happening right in front of you, so pay attention to the things that your opponents are doing that you know are mistakes and think about ways to exploit.

Mike Brady (09:06):

I’m going to just run through a couple of my favorite exploits. We’ve covered these on some past episodes, and Gary, I think it’s even worthy of maybe a top ten exploits for live poker episode one day. If that sounds good to you, comment below and let us know that you’d like to watch that episode. I think my absolute favorite exploit that comes up fairly regularly in live cash games is when you see a player who is just way, way, way too loose in particular when it comes to calling. I have this example from a hand I played at Lodge Card Club in Austin where a player limped in early position, there was a raise from somewhere else. That player ended up, I think multiway. We got to the river and that player showed down Eight Four offsuit. Limped from early position, called a raise.

(09:50):

Immediately I’m thinking of the myriad ways I can exploit that player. Whenever he was in the big blind, I was raising to literally 10x and I was doing so with a relatively strong range. I wasn’t doing it with suited connectors and stuff like that, but when I had King Ten suited, I’m putting in twenty bucks at one-two knowing that he’s going to call in the big blind with whatever peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’s holding and then I’m going to be playing a really juiced-up pot in position with a hand that’s going to make a lot of money against him. Similarly, if he limps, I’m going to jack up my raise size really big, mostly with strong high-card hands and pairs. And then postflop, I’m going to expect him to miss the flop quite often because it’s kind of hard to hit the flop when you have Eight Four offsuit and Seven Three suited so often. So I’m going to do a lot of small c-betting, expect to win a lot of pots with very little resistance. That’s a somewhat extreme example, but I hope it gets your wheels turning because there’s a lot of different things that you’ll see players do at the table that you can take advantage of with just a little bit of thought for your counter strategy.

Gary Blackwood (10:53):

I was playing live poker in London a couple of weeks ago and there was a player at the table who checked the flop, checked the turn, checked down on the river, his opponent announced Ten high and he just nodded his head and mucked his cards and that’s another fantastic way that we can exploit that player by never calling his river bets extremely lightly because he’s happy to just check down when he can’t beat Ten high, which means that when he is betting the river, you better believe that my Ace high or my fourth pair is just never going to be good. So let’s look for all the different ways that we can exploit our opponents because they’re not playing perfectly. There’s money to be made by looking at our opponents, observing their strategies and exploiting them relentlessly.

Mike Brady (11:31):

I think the two player types that we just talked about along with many other types of players, treat poker like it’s any table game in the pit where they’re just like an observer and they’re like, “alright, how much is it to call? Alright.” And then they call and then, maybe they flop nothing and they’re like, “alright, I have nothing, so I’m checking.” And then they keep doing that and then before you know it, they find themselves checking down with Seven high and not even considering firing a bluff to maybe take down the pot. Look out for these players because they’re the absolute best to play against. It’s like they’re playing blackjack or ultimate texas hold’em. They’re just playing their cards, they’re playing the board and it’s going to be very straightforward for you to respond to that.

(12:10):

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(12:30):

Tip number four is to play aggressively when in position, especially when your head’s up

Gary Blackwood (12:36):

Before we talk about playing in position, let’s talk about playing out of position. We all know how difficult it is when we’re out of position and somebody is making our lives very difficult. They’re betting, they’re continuing to bet on the turn they’re overbetting the turn. It can be really difficult to play out of position versus an aggressive player, so let’s be that aggressive player when we’re in position, when we c-bet the flop and our opponent just calls and it’s a very scary turn that’s not great for their range, but it’s good for our range. Let’s keep our foot on the gas because we know that our opponent will be uncomfortable because they’re out of position. So it’s really important that we’re playing aggressively when we’re in position to make our opponents uncomfortable. We can make a lot of money by keeping our foot on the gas and making people fold their marginal hands when they’re out of position.

Mike Brady (13:16):

There are loads of very successful players live and online who really take this tip to heart and they pretty much bet one hundred percent of the time when in position in a heads-up pot. No matter what the flop is, no matter what their cards are, no matter what position they raised from or where their opponent called from, if they’re in position, they are betting that flop heads-up. That is probably a little bit of an oversimplification, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many players do this. Overall, that simplification works out very, very well because your opponents who are playing out of position are going to be two fit or fold. They’re not going to check-raise you aggressively enough, they’re not going to put up enough resistance on the flop, turn and river, so you can just fire in that bet and most of the time it’s just going to print money.

Gary Blackwood (14:01):

Let’s be mindful of the fact that when we’re multiway, we might not want to be as aggressive as we want to be when we’re heads-up. The reason being is that there are more players in the pot, there are more players that can connect with the board. There are more players that are likely to have connected with the board in some way and therefore will continue. So we still want to be aggressive multiway when we’re in position versus multiple players, but we can’t be as aggressive because it’s a little more likely that our opponents will have flop something and therefore they will continue or check-raises. So let’s continue to be aggressive but not as aggressive as we are when we’re heads-up.

Mike Brady (14:32):

In multiway pots it’s really important to be cognizant of what your opponent’s ranges of hands look like and how well those ranges connect with the flop and then that should pretty much guide your strategy. Moving on to tip number five, which is to check the flop a lot in multiway pots, especially out of position. We just covered this a little bit, but now we’re focusing more when we’re the out of position player against at least one other opponent. So even if you’re in position against one player in a multiway pot, but you’re out of position against another, this tip still applies. You should be checking quite frequently.

Gary Blackwood (15:08):

One of the advantages of facing a bet when you’re in position is that you get to float wider. You get to call with all sorts of Queen high on a Ten-high board with backdoor flush draws and straight draws and things like that because you’re in position, which means that when we’re out of position and we’re choosing whether or not to c-bet, we need to be mindful of the fact that our opponents are in position, they get to float as much wider. So we want to c-bet less frequently when we’re out of position because our opponents get to float as wider, which means that if we’re c-betting too wide, we’ve got too much air in our range, our opponent’s Queen highs and King highs that they floated with get to make our lives a misery on the turn when we have to do a lot of checking.

Mike Brady (15:43):

It’s not only that they get to float us wider, there’s a reason they get to float us wider and it’s because as the player who just called a raised preflop in position, they have a much more condensed range of hands that is overall pretty medium strength but still pretty strong overall. They’re going to have a lot of medium pocket pairs on a Ten-high board like Gary mentioned, they’re going to have a lot of the Jack Ten suiteds, the Ace Ten suiteds of the world that connect with that board and they’re going to have a lot fewer of the total misses that we’ll have in our range as the preflop raiser. Remember, they called a raise, so they knew they were taking it to the flop. In our case, we were raising and there was the potential that we’ll just take down the blinds or we’ll be playing a heads-up pot in position… But this player saw our raise, saw our willingness to put in more money and still was like, “no, I have a good enough hand to call you and to play a flop against you.” That indicates that they have this condensed range that isn’t just going to fold to a flop bet ninety percent of the time, they’re going to call you quite often when they have one of those many made hands and then on top of it they get to float you a bunch, like Gary said, with a hand like Queen Jack suited on a Ten-high flop because they have the advantage of position and they have the advantage of a range that simply has a lot of made hands in it.

Gary Blackwood (16:59):

I’ve said this many times in my time with Upswing and it is so important. Whenever you are in a scenario where you’re the preflop raiser and you’re forced to do a lot of checking, you’re out of position versus a couple of players, understandably, you have to do a lot more checking, it’s so important that we follow that up with an aggressive check-raise strategy. It’s really important that, yep, we’re checking really often, we’re check-raising our sets, we’re check-raising our overpairs on the right types of boards, our top pair, top kickers… And then we’re looking for bluffs. We’ve got some straight draws. Sometimes we’ll have some flush draws. If we get a really disconnected Jack Six Deuce for example, it’s really important we’re check-raising with our Queen Ten with a backdoor flush draw, our King Ten with a backdoor flush draw, our King Queen with a backdoor flush draw. On these really disconnected boards where we’ve got minimal equity bluffs we’re looking for hands that can pick up equity and continue to barrel on the turn. So it’s really important we’re following up our checking strategy with a wide check-raising range and it’s important we find the right types of check-raises on these different types of boards.

Mike Brady (17:58):

We just threw a lot of cards and details at you there, but the key takeaway is that you have to be defensive initially, but aggressive from there. And the reason you have to be defensive is because you have that positional disadvantage and you’re up against that condensed range. But once you check with your strong protected range and your opponent makes the possibly foolish decision of putting in a bet, you have to be ready to pounce on that with both strong hands and with bluffs. Moving on to tip number six, which is to attack capped ranges. Let’s use that word from tip number one again, relentlessly. Attack capped ranges relentlessly. And just to make sure we’re all on the same page, a capped range is a range of hands that contains no, or very few, strong hands such as a flush on a Nine-Seven-Two all-spade flop, or an overpair on a flop like Jack Two Two rainbow.

Gary Blackwood (18:50):

When you’re playing against an elite poker player or when you’re playing against the solver, the solver will not cap themselves. Your elite opponent will not cap themselves. They will always have strong hands in their checking range. They will always find the right types of hands that want to check back on the turn to allow you to bluff the river. Ninenty-nine percent of your opponents are not good enough to protect their ranges. They will be capped and we want to attack these types of players as aggressively as possible. Let’s go all the way back to the example that I gave earlier when we had the Ace King under the gun, we raised, the big blind defended and we checked it down on the Eight-Seven-Deuce-Three-Deuce board. When we’re in the big blind from that scenario, instead of checking the river there, we recognize our opponent has no sets, no over repairs, they’ve checked twice.

(19:34):

Let’s go ahead and attack that capped range with a large bet on the river to deter our opponent from calling with Ace high. It’s really important that we’re finding lots of different scenarios where our opponents are capped and we’re bluffing these players and making them fold their capped ranges. You can even be unbalanced in a lot of scenarios and bet really big and it doesn’t make much sense to do so, but you’re just attacking capped ranges versus a player who’s not going to be able to exploit your big bet, that is completely fine. You’re allowed to go ahead and do that and attack that capped range and make your opponent fold their capped range with these really big bets. It’s so often that your opponent will cap themselves that will just not have enough strong hands. It’s really important that ws’re attacking these players in these scenarios so we can just keep picking up these spots that our opponent just can’t seem to fight back against.

Mike Brady (20:22):

Here’s a helpful exercise you can do whenever you’re playing. In every hand that you fold, and especially in hands that you play, keep an eye on the hands that are happening in front of you and try to identify situations where a player has likely capped their range. You can not only bluff players more often, like Gary was just talking about, you can also value bet way more thinly. To go back to Gary’s example that he used where it was like an Eight-high board, not super connected, kind of hard to have a pair on and it’s checked down to the river. If you have a hand like pocket Fives there, just a pair of Fives stuck with a pair of Fives on the river, that is a hand that is definitely worth value betting thinly against a capped range. So you not only get to bluff more aggressively and for bigger sizes against a capped range, you also get to value bet more thinly with a bigger size against a capped range, and both of those in combination are going to make you a lot of money whenever your opponent makes the foolish mistake of capping their range too much.

(21:18):

Earlier, Gary mentioned that the strongest players in the world as well as solvers will avoid capping their ranges, and that is one important thing to keep in mind. Don’t just assume that every checkback is hyper weak or every check-down pot means your opponent absolutely never has anything. If you’re playing against a pretty smart opponent, or in some cases a very passive scared opponent, they might actually check down and show a bunch of weakness with some pretty strong hands either to avoid capping their ranges, if they’re a strong player, or just simply out of fear if they’re a more passive player. Use your best judgment and generally attack capped ranges, but look out for spots where people maybe aren’t as capped as you might think. To put a quick bow on tip number six here, I know we’ve been on this one for a little while,

(22:01):

if you’re ever watching really high level poker, maybe you’re watching the Triton high roller streams or a high stakes cash game show or whatever it is, you might notice really good players use absolutely massive bet sizes. I’m talking about five times the pot, seven times the pot, Ten times the pot. Heck, I’ve seen twenty times the pot before. That is generally because that strong player is identifying that their opponent has a very capped range and they’re attacking it as powerfully as possible with a massive overbet. So if you do watch shows like that, keep an eye out for those spots going forward and now you’ll know why they’re doing it. Onto our final tip, number seven. We’ve covered it a little bit along the way here. Mostly fast play when you have a strong hand. As we mentioned earlier, making a hand and value betting with it is how you make money in poker. The primary way, at least.

(22:55):

So when you have a strong hand, you should mostly fast play. If you called a raise out of the big blind, you should start with your procedural check with your entire range. But if your opponent puts in a bet, go for that check-raise, fast play your hand, get money in the pot as soon as possible. If you’re in position and you have a strong hand, like top pair or a set, something like that, you should generally be betting, fast playing it, building that pot so you can make more money. Maybe your opponent checks back on the flop, bet into them on the turn when you have that set. Start building the pot as soon as possible. Put simply, you’re going to win more money on average by doing so.

Gary Blackwood (23:28):

In single-raised pots, we want to bloat the pot. We flop top pair top kicker, two pair, a set. We flop the flush. We want to fast play. We want to bloat the pot and play for all the marbles. It’s really important that we are building pots in single-raised pots because the pot is so small and we want to have the option of playing for all. There are some scenarios where we perhaps don’t want to fast play. Say for example, we’re in a three-bet pot in position, we’ve got pocket Nines and the flop comes down Nine Four Deuce and our opponent c-bets, we don’t need to fast play in that scenario. We’re in position, we’ve flop top set. We want to just go ahead and call. We want to allow our opponent to continue to barrel on the turn. We’re in position, we get to decide whether or not another bet goes in on the turn because we’re in position. So we want to mostly fast play, but look for those scenarios where it’s completely fine to go ahead and just call a bet and allow your opponent to continue to bluff or catch up with you, because the pot is already pretty big and we don’t have the need to fast play and bloat the pot so we can play for all the jets.

Mike Brady (24:25):

To sum up. When the pot is small, you’re really incentivized to fast play and get money in there as soon as possible, because if you don’t, the pot is going to stay small and you’re going to minimize your winnings. But if the pot is already big, especially if you’re in position, it’s not going to be so tough for you to get all your money in by the river because the pot is already so bloated. So in those cases you can consider doing some slow playing. We also talked about some scenarios earlier, like when you’re out of position in multiway pots and you need to do some slow playing with strong hands essentially as a defensive mechanism to prevent yourself from being too weak when you check. So, there are exceptions to this tip and we spent more time on the exceptions than the tip itself, but that’s because the tip is so simple.

(25:04):

When you have a strong hand, you should generally fast play, especially when the pot is small. It’s, simply put, going to make you more money. Which of these seven tips did you find the most helpful? Let us know in the comments below and definitely let us know if you have any questions about what we’ve talked about as well. If you like this show and you want more like it, we’ve got more on the way. Hit that subscribe, follow, like or rating button. We really appreciate it. It helps us keep this thing going and we’ll see you in the next one.