Holdem strategy.

You hear a lot about gear switching in poker, but it’s a term that’s often tossed around unexplained. Basically, the concept is that you develop several ways of playing a given game, each way a complete entity unto itself, and that you switch between these games as the situation you’re in warrants. It’s different than just adapting to a situation with a specific strategy - it’s more of an actual mind set switch that ends up with you playing a style that renders you unrecognizable to someone who had been watching your play earlier in the session. The benefits of this approach are pretty obvious in terms of the impact it has on your opponents. However, it’s one thing to know that you should switch gears from time to time in a game, and quite another to develop effective gears and the ability to move in and out of the at the right points.

Only experience and a ton of hands will generate that understanding, but this article will try to get you started in the right direction by providing capsule descriptions of the three gears I favor most in NL Holdem and the situations where I feel best about deploying each gear. The reference point for this info is shorthanded NL, 2-4 blinds and up, but the principles should be pretty transportable to most games.

I’m going to describe three pretty distinct gears and give an overview of the benefits and drawbacks of each. If after writing this it seems like there’s enough additional info to warrant further analysis, I’ll get to that at some point in the distant future.

Gear A: This can be best shorthanded as “Doyle.” Much of this gear stems from the concepts in Super System. The basic principle here is aggression, before the flop, on the flop, on the turn, and sometimes on the river. Lest you think I just read Super System, did what it said and am now trying to pass it off as my own idea, let me assure you: you’re pretty much right on that one. Doyle developed a hell of a style.

That being said, I think a part of the reason Doyle’s style worked so well for Doyle is because he was, well, DOYLE. It’s a lot easier to scare people off a hand when the bets are coming from the massive paws of an old-school texan. This phenomenon is a bit stilted online, but you can still develop a fearsome table image with this style - if it’s clicking. So, when we play Doyle, we’re going to play it just a bit tighter than Doyle. Just a bit

The overview:
Playing Doyle, you’ll be raising preflop most of the time if you’re going to enter a pot. You’re looking for any pair, and middle connected and suited or one gap, two gaps if you’re rolling well, suited aces, suited broadway cards and, about one out of every three times when you’re on the button or CO and it’s folded to you, absolutely any two cards WITHOUT an ace or king. You’ll be bringing in for a pot-sized raise every time. The only reasons for limping are: a) Position - if you’re early and have a monster or a small drawing hand, you might consider a limp. b) Setups. If a player has been coming back at you when you limp ona regular basis, you might want to let them take control of the pot when you have a good hand to play HU. On the flop, you’ll probably have position, and you’ll be following up 70-80% of the time. Sometimes you’ll flop huge, sometimes a bit, sometimes not at all, it doesn’t matter. You don’t follow up about a 1/5th of the time for a few reasons. One, if you feel like you’re getting trapped by a tight player. Two, you’d like to trap every once in awhile, and you’d be surprised how many players take a stab with a weak hand on the turn when you check the flop. They’ll bet it for you on the river as well.

Since you’ll be betting a lot of draws playing this way, turn and river play are pretty automatic when you’re drawing strong. Vary your play between strong follow through’s on the turn and check for a free card. Bet your strongest draws, since you don’t mind getting all in at this point with two draws [if you’ve built the pot correctly, it shouldn’t be hard to get better than 2-1] and check your weaker ones if you think you’re being set up. If you flop or turn a monster, tend to bet strong, especially if the board shows a draw or a likely second best for your opponent. If you miss the flop, bet, miss the turn, bet and miss the river, it all rides on your opponent and the board - and how much more you can charge them to call.

Playing like this does set you up as a target for the weak-tight players, but let’s face it - AA, KK and QQ only come so often, and even when your opponents get them, you’re playing the kind of hands that have good shots at cracking them. Plus, those players will be so frustrated at that point that they will stop thinking and just throw their stack in - making it easy for you to fold when you miss and easy for you to get paid when you hit.

Playing like this also requires faith, as you’re putting a lot of chips on the line over and over again. You’re going to lose big sometimes, and often you’ll go for a long time without hitting a monster and collecting. If you feel outplayed or your table image just isn’t getting you any respect, it might be time to shift.

Gear B: We’ll call this gear “Lazy Gus.” This mode essentially has you mimic the rag-hand playing of Gus Hansen minus all the raising. In this gear, you’re basically going to limp your opponents to death with some real trash hands. This style requires a few miracles, but with the way it frustrates opponents, you’ll cash huge when the miracles come and make it impossible for your opponents to dismiss the possibility that you could have any hand at any time.

The Overview:
Playing Lazy Gus, you’ll be seeing an insane amount of flops with hands that make straights, trips, flushes, whatever. There aren’t many hands you don’t play, except the real garbage like 2 9o, etc. If your cards can make a straight and they’re suited, you’re probably playing. And if there’s a raise preflop, all the better. You want to be playing these hands against a raise with a deep stack behind it. You, however, will not be raising preflop, even with monsters. If you can trap in a CR preflop with AA or KK, great, but otherwise, don’t bother. This style requires you to play every draw you hit pretty aggressively on the flop, to be willing to CR all in with a draw, and to realize that you’re playing those trash hands for straights and flushes, not for top pair. This style also requires that you be cautious when you flop a flush draw and face a bet with 2 or more callers and no other obvious reason for them to call, as you’ll be making teeny flushes a lot of the time.

Playing like this makes you look like an absolute moron, and that’s the beauty of the style. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cracked a big pair with a hand like 96s and watched the loser go on tilt for the next hour, doing everything they could to get in a big pot with me, forgetting, of course, that I get good cards too. You’re table image with this style is absolute trash and that’s the way we want it. People will always assume you’re on some sort of draw and overbet their hands, or panic when they have a decent hand and the board comes 4 6 8 and check you into some sort of improbable hand.

This is almost the antithesis to Doyle. I think I once described this style to someone by saying that if you took Super System and replaced every instance of “raise” with “call”, this would be the result. Lazy Gus is just about the most passive style imaginable. You are always trapping, almost always letting someone else do the lead betting for you, and always looking for a hand so ridiculous that no one would be able to believe you had it. When they don’t believe, of course, is when they call for their stack.

The drawbacks: You’ll bleed off a ton of chips, win a massive hand, then start bleeding off again. People will put you in tough situations when you flop a pair and they have overs because they will assume you’re on the draw and their overs are good. People will laugh at you.

The upside: You’ll be taking their chips. There’s a longer article that covers some of the concepts of preflop calling in big bet poker, altho it recommends slightly tighter play than this gear requires Anyhow, read it, you’ll get some important concepts.

Gear C: We’ll call this gear “The Coach”, referencing Bob Ciaffone, since this is pretty much his style, or at least a solid derivative. This gear you’ll recognize as the solid, tight-aggressive approach that several top pros, including Hellmuth, advocate for tournament play, and it also works well for ring. This is the gear of a solid winner, and it’s a good one to slip into when neither of the above gears are working at your table.

The Overview:
Think of textbook play at a full ring limit table and you’ve got this style in a nutshell. You’re playing any pair from any position preflop, raising with the better pairs [say 99 and up] when it’s folded to you late. Same with suited connectors, but you’re probably laying off the one and definitely the two gaps unless you’re late and have a lot of limpers in front. BIg suited aces get raises middle and late, and big suited broadway cards get a raise late if first to act. Your goal is to get in solid, multi way pots with big hands that can develop into the nuts or something closely resembling said nuts.

You do have to be willing to throw some variety into the style, lest you get predictable, but since you should have respect at the table, save that variety for flop and turn semi-bluffs. You won’t fool the great players at the table with this style, but why bother tangling with them anyhow?

The drawbacks: It can be a bit of a boring style, if that’s a concern to you at the table, insomuch that it requires good cards to actually play.

The upside: When your money goes in, you usually have the best of it.

Postscript
At this point, it becomes clear that the strength of each gear isn’t so much within the gear itself, but in the way each gear compliments another. What are opponents going to do when you go from not raising at all to raising every hand back to not raising at all to raising select hands? If you’re on a night where you’re actually getting a hand or two to hold up and making a draw here and there, you’ll be controlling most of the action at the table.

When should you switch? How long should you stay in each gear? I have no idea. That is all so relative to your table, your image, your skill and a multitude of other factors I can’t even begin to list. The point of this article is to get you realizing that one style, no matter how well it works, isn’t enough to maximize your potential win in NL. There’s nothing wrong with sticking with a style that works, but if you want your game to grow, you’re going to have to tackle this concept at some point. Might as well be now.
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