23 Mar 09 Friday Night Action
There are days where I just want to stay in bed and munch on chips and dip all day while playing multiple tournaments online. However, I have to motivate myself to get in the shower and drag myself to the overcrowded casino because it is Friday night and the games are supposed to be good. These days it seems like such a hassle to get in my car and drive to the casino because the economy isn’t that good and there just isn’t as much easy money being thrown around. More often than not I’d rather just play online because it is more convenient and there are softer games to be found. None the less, I get myself primped and ready then head for the casino.
Thankfully when I get there the games seem good and they have a selection to choose from in case I get stuck on a dreadful table. My game is actually decent and I like the action that is going around. The standard preflop action is raised 5 times the big blind with an average of four callers. It doesn’t take long to figure out who are the loose players and who are the tight players. The best part about this table is the big stacks are actively building pots, but they are not aggressively trying to take it down post flop. This is a great table for a medium to small stack to build off of. I limp into several pots with a wide range of hands including AK-J10, any suited ace, suited connectors, and suited gapped connectors. With a table that is fairly loose preflop, I opened up my range of hands when it was opened for a standard raise. On a tighter table I would probably fold a large range of these hands for a raise unless I was getting great odds, but on this table I knew that the two big stacks were raising with anything, and the other callers were most likely calling with two face cards or pocket pairs.
It only took about two hours for this method to become detrimental to my chip stack. I was getting a lot of suited connectors in late position, and I was calling the raises preflop and missing. Even more frustrating is I couldn’t find any good spots to pull off a bluff to recuperate some of my losses. At this point I was definitely considering going back to my standard hands for calling a raise. Once again the pot was raised 5x the BB, there were three callers in front of me, and I noticed this lady was already getting her bet together to call. I looked down at 6s 7s and said to myself, “Ok one last time we’ll give this a try.” I called, and to my surprise the lady minraised. With the three callers in front of me I reluctantly called as well. The flop came out 6h 7d 9d. It checked around to me, and I checked seeing that the lady was already counting chips to bet. She bet half my stack and I moved all in. She called with aces and luckily didn’t hit a set. I was grateful to double up as my method finally paid off.
For me, calling raises with a wide range of hands works best when you are doing it against a tight player or when there is big pot building action. When playing against a tight player I open my range of hands tremendously because I know what kinds of hands he is playing based on his raise. If I miss the flop, I can easily lay the hand down. In multiway pots, I like to call with a wide range because the investment I put into hitting my hand is worth it in regards to the pot size. Also, if you can determine who the tight players are on the table and they are involved in the pot, you can be fairly sure that they have each other’s outs. I try to avoid calling raises with mediocre hands when the participants are looser players or other players that play a wide range. It is more difficult to play against these players when you hit two pair with your suited connectors. For all you know they have a straight or higher two pair. When trying this strategy out, it is good to make a plan for the amount of chips you are willing to play loosely with. There is no point in calling so many raises and missing that you become desperate to double up. Consider your cards and position in relation to your opponents cards and position to make better decisions on when to call a raise. Make a plan and if it doesn’t work out you’ll have to start waiting for good hands. When you get a good hand you can limp reraise with it to take down the pots preflop.
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