In the modern poker world, where competition is high, simply following the tight game is no longer enough to become a plus player in the long run.
To really succeed in this game, you need to constantly improve your skills and expand your knowledge, surpassing conventional methods. Therefore, in this article we will present you three advanced strategies that should be present in the arsenal of every plus player and that will allow you to win against your opponent.
Let’s get down to business!
Light 3-betas against wide tables
Incorporating light 3-bets into your preflop strategy is a great way to complicate your actions in the eyes of your rivals. It is also one of the easiest ways to switch from a tight aggressive gameplay style to a more aggressive loose style of play.
A light 3-bet is a 3-bet on a preflop, which is primarily aimed at forcing the opponent to fold.
For example, when someone makes an opening raise, and in response you raise the bet with J♥️T♥️. It is clear that you are not doing this in order to assess the strength of his hand, since you do not expect numerous calls from weak hands.
Lite 3-betas have several advantages:
1. You make it harder to play against yourself
Light 3-bets are an effective means against the playing styles from your blind, as you attack the opponent’s wide and weak ranges. Most hands from these ranges will not withstand the pressure of 3-beta, which allows you to trigger a lot of folds.
Many players, especially at low limits, do not protect their blinds enough, and therefore wide styles become a very simple and effective strategy against such players.
However, it is worth remembering that other players will also try to steal your blinds, and you need to take measures to prevent this. Lite 3-betas are one of the ways to combat this problem.
Expecting to get 3-bets often, your opponents will have to think twice before trying to steal the blinds from you.
2. You will be able to win more due to the overfold of the field
It is rare to find very strong card combinations in poker, so it is important to find ways to win pots without necessarily having them in your hand.
With a light 3-bet, it is not necessary to have a strong hand, because your goal is not to play it after the cards are dealt on the table, but to take the pot right now. The most important thing is to consider the opponent’s playing style, not the strength of your cards.
Most players, especially at low limits, often give up after 3-beta, so you can say that you can benefit against them by starting to use this technique more often.
This does not mean that you can 3-bet any random cards. It is important to choose hands that can be playable in the next stages of the game if your opponent calls your bet.
It is also important to use a light 3-bet with cards that block possible combinations of the opponent’s cards. For example, if you have cards with high cards of the same suit, this reduces the likelihood of your opponent having a pair of aces or a high card, which can lead to more frequent deals.
3. Light 3-betas will help balance your range
If you limit yourself to very strong hands at 3-bet, your style becomes predictable for attentive players.
This may not play a role if you play with amateurs, but it can become a problem when you meet more experienced opponents.
Over time, your 3-bet strong hands may become less effective if they are used only to gain value. A lack of value with strong hands can seriously affect your victoriousness.
To avoid this, you need to integrate bluffs into your 3-bet repertoire. This way, you will constantly make your opponents doubt the strength of your hand.
However, this does not mean that you need to start 3-betting with completely random hands. We have already discussed which criteria to use when choosing light 3-betas.
In poker, the bulk of your profit will come from your opponent calling your strong hands when he has weak ones. However, this does not mean that you just have to sit and wait for you to have nats.
Monsters are rare in the Texas Hold’em game, and even if they appear, no one guarantees that your bet will be accepted. Therefore, it is important to learn how to extract value from less powerful hands. And here subtle velvets play an important role.
A thin wager is a bet with a hand that is slightly better in odds than a range that can call. That is, you expect to be ahead a little more often than half the time.
When should you use such thin velvets?
- Spend thin velubets especially actively against “phones”.
This may seem obvious, but it is important to emphasize it once again. The best candidates for thin velo-bets are players who tend to call too easily. First of all, these are amateurs who play poker mainly for entertainment and often make blunders such as excessive call downs.
They can attract various draws regardless of the chances of success, get too attached to beautiful hands on dangerous boards, or just call because they think you’re bluffing. So, as a rule, the more impatient an amateur is, the more successfully you can use thin velubets against him.
Sometimes you may be surprised by what cards they will show you at the showdown.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone around you thinks like you do.
Just because you personally would never have called in a spot does not mean that your opponent thinks the same way.
- Use subtle velvets especially actively on safe run-outs.
The decision on whether to make a thin well bet depends not only on your opponent’s style, but also on the structure of the board.
You should usually be more inclined to use subtle value bets on safe textures and run-outs.
A safe run-out is a board where too many potential draws have not appeared and the picture regarding the strength of your and your opponents’ hands has not changed.
For example, your hand: 
Examples of safe run-outs: 
Examples of unsafe run-outs: 
Run-outs are important not only because your opponent may be ahead, but also because he may be ready to call with a wider range. After all, your opponent sees the same cards on the board as you do! If suits or possible straights appear on the board, the probability that your opponent calls you with less strong hands decreases.
- The use of thin velo-bets against weakened ranges.
Each weakened range has its own upper limit on hand strength, so it is often recommended to reduce the bet size when using thin bets against such ranges.
Almost always, when your opponent calls your bet instead of raising it, his range weakens, which means that he most likely has a weak or medium hand. Of course, he can also play a slowplay, but this does not happen so often.
You always need to consider your opponent’s entire range, not just the hands you’re hitting.
Counter-betting on the flop is practiced by everyone today and is a standard strategy nowadays. You will often come across players who automatically make a counter bet 100% of the time on almost any flop, regardless of the strength of their hand. Since most hands do not match most flops, this means that most of the counter bets on the flop will be based on empty air.
However, many of these players often do not continue their aggression on subsequent streets unless they immediately receive their fold on the flop. Against such rivals, it is worth adding floats to your arsenal.
Float means to call a bet (usually in a position) with the intention of stealing the pot on future streets, usually by bluffing.
First of all, it is worth noting that you can float both in position and without it, but in position it is much more effective for obvious reasons.
When playing positions, you act last on each street, which gives you more opportunities to bluff successfully. In addition, without a position, most players will not actively defend their banks.
Floats on the flop work best against so-called “honest” players. These are those who often make a counter bet on the flop, but continue their aggression on the turn only if they have a strong hand. Given that strong hands in no-limit Hold’em are the exception rather than the rule, you will often see their checks on the turn.
What could be more important than the strength of your arm? That’s right — your opponent’s inclinations.
A significant statistical discrepancy between the bets on the flop and on the turn indicates that the player is likely to bet on the turn only with a strong range.
So what does effective floating look like in practice?
It is worth repeating that the effectiveness of floats depends more on the opponent’s playing style than on the actual strength of your hand, but this does not mean that it is worth floating with any two cards. Ideally, you would like your hand to have at least some potential and chances of improvement on subsequent streets. Therefore, there is no point in floating if your hand is absolutely useless.
For exploit floating, you need to call with a slightly wider range than you would do by default, but not so wide that you just throw money away.
