Revenge of Range - Part Two - The Over Bet

Live Tournaments Games / Marcus Bateman / 23 July 2010 / Leave a Comment

What this shows is that although solid range analysis is the bread and butter of good poker decision making, sometimes other factors substantially out do it.

In a recent piece, I described a hand where an elderly player made a big over bet into me when I was holding top pair and an open ended straight draw (and a back door flush draw if we are really getting nitty). Going through the equities involved, it was a pretty trivial shove as long as her range is anything other than sets - but in this case her range could actually be hugely narrowed down by the over bet if I had more experience with that player.

Humans being the creatures of habit they are, they mostly stick to certain tactics in certain situations in poker. As I sat down at the bar after I busted and waited for my friend to exit, I got chatting to a regular who asked me about my bust out hand. He quickly shook his head when I started discussing her likely ranges and immediately said 'No...Kathy never bets big unless she has it - she is quite passive unless she has a big hand'.

Had I known this, or had been at the table longer to be able to observe it, it flips what against an unknown player is a pretty trivial shove, into a relatively simple fold. Against a range of just sets, my equity is very bad (around 25%), and in the face of the big over bet is an easy fold against that specific player.

What this shows is that although solid range analysis is the bread and butter of good poker decision making, sometimes other factors substantially out do it. In this case, I made a move which was correct given the limited information, but was a huge mistake had I been more experienced with the player. In poker you have to deal with the tools available to you - and this hand is a good example of just how fast your thinking (and the correct play) can quickly shift from one extreme to another.

All this illustrates just how important close observation and memory of players is. Small factors in poker can quickly build up to be huge considerations in certain spots, and keeping track of these factors and using them in your thought processes when you play is crucial to being on the right side of the majority of your decisions.

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