Facing Big Opening Raises

Oftentimes in no-limit hold’em tournaments you’ll find yourself seated at a table with opponents making extreme opening raises to five or more times the big blind. In a recent discussion with a friend of mine, Mike, he questioned how he should handle such situations. He understood that when players are making these large opening raises, his playable hand raise narrows and his question was geared towards those times when you pick up a premium hand. For sake of this article, here’s how he phrased his question:

“What do you think is the best line of action when facing an opening raise of five to six times the big blind when you’re holding a pair of kings? Do you reraise or just flat call here knowing you do have position, but could let him catch?”

Like almost all poker questions, the answer is that it depends. Before committing yourself to one course of action, you need to consider all of the factors that will have weight in your decision such as reads, stack sizes, your opponent’s tendencies, and players with pending action. Each of these factors will help you to determine the best line to take, but keep in mind that it’s not going the same line every time against the same or different opponents.

The first option I proposed to my friend Mike is flat calling. Right away when people think of flat-calling, the idea of letting other players in with greater odds comes to mind. What you need to remember is that the original raise was larger than the norm in these situations. Therefore, it should be enough to keep others out of the pot just from an odds stand point. I’m not talking about implied odds with deeper stacks; I’m talking about immediate odds. This is one reason why I believe flat-calling is a very good option against certain opponents. The opening raise is too large that others will feel they have odds to call cheaply, so you can usually rest assured that you’ll be taking a flop heads up and in position against the over-raiser.

Mike then questioned whether this would be a good spot for another player to squeeze and steal the pot. I responded that it would be much harder to pull off a successful squeeze play here. First of all, with a large opening raise, the squeezer’s fold equity is minimized. Secondly, most aware players at the table will see a flat-call in position of an oversized raise and steer clear because of the hand strength is usually takes to be able to flat in this spot.

It’s also important to consider your opponent’s hand range in these instances. Some people will make large raises like this with their entire range, while others will make it with hands they may deem as “trouble hands” such as pocket tens or pocket jacks. Many players find it difficult to take a flop with these hands, hoping to just like to take it down preflop despite leaving themselves wide open for some exploitable play. Against the players that do this with their entire range, you’d want to slow play less often because more boards may hit them and put you in a tough spot. Against players that only do this with a narrowed hand range such as medium-big pairs, you can flat more often and more safely.

You must also assess your opponent’s abilities and understanding of the game when thinking about flatting. If you read your opponent to be a solid player with knowledge of what he is doing, you might not want to flat. Simply put, he’ll know that someone would be very apt to flat there with a big, premium hand. Even when I make a standard raise and see a knowledgeable opponent flat behind me, a little light goes off in my mind that indicates they could have flatted with a strong hand. Flatting in position is something I consider myself capable of doing with a big hand, so it’s important to understand and take into account your opponent’s level of thinking. I’d much rather flat in these spots against weak opponents as opposed to strong ones because the chance of getting paid off on later streets is greatly increased.

The second option you have here is to make a reraise with your premium hand. Of course, this is the more ABC, by-the-book play. I’m not knocking this standard play, but there’s a lot more to it than just making a raise.

Most players that make these big raises will frequently be committed to calling a raise or a shove, depending on their stack size of course. It’s also important to know if a player has tendencies to feel committed or not. For example, a player may raise to 5,000 with the blinds 50-100, but have a stack of 100,000. If you shove your stack into the middle and have him covered, he might feel he is committed because of the size of the opening raise he made when really he is not.

As a new approach to these situations recently, I’ve taken the raising approach with a little twist. Instead of making your more standard three-times reraise, I’m opting for a min-raise. Some opponents have the awareness and ability to get away from their hand if they face a big three-bet, but won’t fold to a min-raise. Even if I pick up A-K in this spot, I can min-raise pretty confidently knowing that they won’t come back over the top of me with a medium-big pair. The min-raise really does put them in a tough spot though. For the majority of the time, these large open raises aren’t big premium pairs such as aces or kings, so players won’t reshove on you. That is one reason I can get away with making this play with A-K included in my range. Other times when you do so with a huge pair as opposed to A-K, they’ll call as well. The idea of feeling committed to only a min-raise is generally too much for them to fold. This can give me some extra value with a hand like aces or kings.

A lot of poker players will aggress that it’s a pain in the ass to play these medium-big pairs in big pots where you are out of position. Combined with the many unfavorable board textures you tend to receive with medium-big pairs, it can really be a headache to play them out of position. This will really put your opponents in tough spots despite having yourself made more of an unexploitable play. I tend to use this min-raise tactic when both my opponent and I are deeper stacked and I feel he might have the ability to fold out sometimes. This also puts you in a great situation to exercise good post-flop play against a weaker player.

The other aspect of raising is the standard three-bet you can make which is often a shove for all of your chips because the stacks permit it. I am all for making this play when I feel his stack or misunderstanding of pot commitment will force him to call me. There’s really no need for trickery when things line up this way. You can make the obvious play and a player will either have to call you or call because he feels he has to.

I will say that if you do decide to reraise an opponent that has made a large opening raise, pay attention to stack sizes of both yourself and your opponent. With deeper stacks, you don’t necessarily need to make a big reraise because there will still be a good amount of play left if you are called. With short stacks, you’d more than likely just want to get the money in preflop.

So in the end, what’s the answer I gave Mike? Well, there wasn’t one. I laid out these possible options and the reasoning behind those options, but as stated before, it always depends in poker. Knowing your opponents and understanding the factors such as reads, stack sizes, and your opponent’s tendencies will help you to make the best decision. Hopefully I gave you good insight as to why each play may or may not work.