The Power of Pressure and Position in NLHE
I was playing in a small stakes NL50 game on Cake Poker this week when the following simple hand cropped up which underlined the sheer power of not only having position but also applying pressure as well. There had been two limpers before the action came around to me and I was on the button with one of my favourite hands, a small suited connector which just happened to be the 7c-6c.
Both of my opponents had good sized stacks and I elected to raise the pot. To my surprise the big blind and both of the limpers called making a four way action pot.
The flop came 8h-4s-2d giving me nothing but an inside straight draw. All three of my opponents checked to me and now I had to decide what to do.
My raise represented high cards or high pairs so this board didn’t figure to have hit much of my range if anything. A bet into three players would be unlikely to take it down and I could even get check-raised in this situation. I had a small chance of making a straight so I checked and took the free card option.
In these situations then you cannot simply blindly assume that just because three players have checked that they are all weak, they could simply be checking to the raiser. Also my pressure play pre-flop has essentially failed in that it has not succeeded in winning the pot pre-flop or getting the situation into what is called “heads up with position” where I am in a heads up situation against an apparent weak limper.
But this pressure play may have failed to take the pot down immediately and it may have failed to get the hand heads up but it hasn’t failed completely. It has succeeded in escalating the pot to a stage where if I make my hand then I could actually win a players entire stack here.
So I check it back and the turn brings my home run card of the 5c filling my inside straight! The big blind bets around two thirds of the pot and the first limper calls, I decide to re-raise and the big blind shoves all-in for their remaining stack…..the limper folds and I obviously make the call. The big blind reveals 5h-5d for a set and they are now hoping that the board pairs on the river. The river card is a king and I end up winning a very big pot.
So you can see here that raising pre-flop had several distinct advantages and even though my original raise was called in several spots, I could still use that situation to my advantage. Here I had the ultimate position on the button so no one got to act after me and I had the chance to decide whether or not the entire table got to see the turn card without anymore money having to be put into the pot or not.
This is one of the primary advantages of having position, it isn’t always about making continuation bets but also knowing when to back off and take free cards that are to your advantage. You can actually beat the lower levels on most sites quite easily without having to use any tracking software or anything like that.
Whenever I am playing at a serious level then I tend to use Poker Office 5 as that allows me to be able to see information on a large number of players and also allows me to table select far better. However on Cake Poker you cannot use tracking software like these which levels the playing field immensely. But the lower levels of play and by that I would say $100 games and below have more than enough weak fish in them to make using pressure plays a very profitable strategy.
This doesn’t just apply to no-limit hold ‘em but all forms of poker. Once you are aware of just how to play poker then you will quickly realise that techniques and strategies that you can use in one form of poker can be transferred across to another quite easily and rapidly.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
