Strategy Corner
Overbetting and Capped Ranges
The reason No Limit Hold-em is such a beautiful game and the most popular form of poker is because there is no restrictions to the amount you can bet - if you have it in front of you, you can bet it. What I don't understand is why people don't utilize this "Show of Power" and flex their muscles a little bit. I mean, after all, it has to be useful in some scenarios, right? Yes!
In this article I am going to talk about when we should be flexing our muscles, using the overbet, and the reasons why we should do it every now and then. I am not going to dive in too deep to the theory but I will explain a little bit of what our thought process should be in these circumstances. I will also give a few hand examples of hands I have played in the past, where I have incorporated an overbet into my game.
First, let's think about the reasons why we should overbet. We know that if we are using toy games to solve for poker solutions that we can assume perfectly polarized ranges on the river. While this is hardly ever true in real life scenarios, they do help and are more practical because solving every scenario by breaking down all the math would be pain-staking and take too much time and toy games can give us a general idea of why certain actions are favorable.
For Balance
If we are looking at a Nuts/Air vs Bluffcatcher scenario, on the river, we know that if we want to be unexploitable we need to be betting a balanced range. If the pot size is 100 and we have effective stacks of 100, then we would need exactly 2 value bets for every 1 bluff when we shove our polarized range into the villian (assuming our nut hand beat all his bluff catchers and our air loses to all his bluff catchers). 100 pot + 100 shove = 200, villian calling 100 to win 200+100 (his call) shows that he needs to win 33% of the time. If 67% of our hand combinations beat him and we lose 33% of the time, the EV of his call equals 0, and therefore, our opponent will be indifferent to calling or folding.
So, you are probably asking yourself, "How does this relate to overbetting?!" Good question! If we have more bluffs in the previous circumstance we would need to bet larger to remain balanced and unexploitable! So, the more hand combinations that are bluffs in our range, the larger we should bet! And vice versa. Now obviously if we are playing against a fish who will call all the time, then we should be exploitatively betting large with our value hands and never bluffing. Here, we assume the villian is playing optimally.
To sum it up, we can add more bluffs to our range and remain balanced, increasing the EV of our range.
Villian has a capped range
When should we be adding more bluffs to our range and overbetting? One of the best times to add more bluffs and overbet is when villian has a capped range and you hold a hand which does not block your opponents draws but does block your opponents value hands. This makes it harder for your opponent to call because his range will be weighted towards draws when you block his value hands, and when he holds draws you will be offering him a horrible price to try to complete them.
Here is in example of when I played a hand in such a manner;
Example 1:
Playing $1/2 No Limit online:
Stacks are $200 effective. Villian is good reg. Folds to button and he opens for $5. I am in the Small Blind with Ah Jc. I normally play a mixed strategy in this spot, switching between 3-betting as a bluff and flatting. This time I 3bet to $18. BB folds. Button calls $13.
Pot $38
Flop comes: Kd 6d Js
I cbet $23 and villian calls.
Pot: $84
Effective Stacks: $159
Turn: 5s
Villian's range is capped in the sense that he would have 4-bet KK and JJ preflop. Also, some good regs 4-bet AKo and some flat the offsuit combos, so we can safely assume he holds less AK combos than us. Since we don't hold any diamonds or spades, villian has more combos of flush draws in his range and we don't hold Queens or Tens which block straight draws. What we do hold is cards that block his combinations to nutted hands, like AK, JJ, and KJ, which could be flatted preflop. If he only has offsuit AK in his range and we hold the Ah and the Kd is on the flop, then he only has 9 combos of AK in his range. He has 3 combos of JJ and only 1 combos of suited KJ in his range! This is a great spot to be overbet-shoving! Just remember that we must have some KK in our overbet range along with alot of other types of bluffs to remain balanced!
Example 2:
Playing $1/2 No Limit online:
Stacks are $200 effective
Button is good reg. Folds to button and he raises to $5. I am in Big Bling with 6s 4s. I call $3.
Pot: $11
Flop comes: 7s 5s Jd
I check. Villian checks.
Turn: 2c
I chose this spot to overbet because villian would most likely be betting his straight and flush draws on the flop as well as overpairs, AJ, KJ, QJ, A7, J7, J5, 75, JJ, 77, and 55. This leaves his range relatively capped to holding weak Top and Middle Pairs, a few Ace and King highs, and maybe the random AA with no spade that checked back. This is another great spot to overbet! His range is so weak we can have a ton of bluffs here and he will have a very hard time calling! Even if he does call we will be betting most rivers pretty strong and take it down as his range is going to have a hard time calling. Also, if a Ten, 9, 8, 3 or spade came on the turn, this would not be a bad spot to overbet. As you can see, not much of his range really loves those cards. So, I bet $17, which is about 1.5x pot. Villian folds. I scoop another pot.
Overbetting Turns after flop check-backs with top pair top kicker type hands is also a great way to increase your EV and punish your opponents capped range.
Overbetting can be a great weapon in your arsenal if you know how to use it well. Look for spots where your opponent is capped and you hold blockers to value hands. It can help ramp up your profits and make you a much tougher opponent to play against.
Good Luck at the tables! Don't forget your overbets!
David Alford
***David Alford is a low/mid stakes professional online poker player. He spends most of his time grinding the virtual felt on Bovada's 100NL-400NL tables as well as 100PLO. He has recieved coaching from some of today's best, including the likes of Alan Jackson, Steve Paul, and many others. Off the felt he studies Game Theory using some of the best poker study software available. His hourly rate for coaching is $60/hr with a 5 hour minimum. To contact for coaching please email: alford.david@yahoo.com
Credit
David Alford
