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Picking up small pots in no-limit Texas Hold’em

Most winning Texas Holdem poker players in no-limit hold’em make the bulk of their money winning small pots and especially small un-raised pots. You will get numerous chances to win un-raised pots and this is one of the major reasons as to why many players like to limp and especially when they have position. Essentially when players limp then they are doing so for one of several reasons. Firstly they could be limping because they don’t feel comfortable raising! Also they could be limping because their position is bad.

Another reason why players limp is because they have speculative hands and are hoping to flop something big or make a big hand. Let us look at an example, you are in the big blind with junk and have 8d-3c and the UTG player limps in with 4d-4s while the button limps with 10s-9s. The flop comes 5c-2s-2d and you check and the player with the pocket fours bets two thirds of the pot. The button folds and now you check-raise and the pocket fours fold fearing trip deuces or a higher pocket pair.

The small pot made the decision easier for your opponents and remember the old saying of “don’t go broke in an un-raised pot”. It is unlikely that the UTG or button has a deuce in their hand so your only fear is if the UTG player limped in with a big pocket pair but the chances are against that. Another example is the following where it has been folded to the button who makes a surprising limp and the small blind completes.

You check with junk as you have Jc-3d and the flop comes 10d-5c-2s and the small blind checks. Here you have a great chance to pick the pot up here as the board is broken and no one raised pre-flop and the small blind checked the flop. So betting presents the button with somewhat of a problem as if they call or raise then they have the small blind to worry about who may be sandbagging. Even if the flop bet gets called then as long as it has only been called by one player then a turn second barrel will probably get the job done.

Winning small un-raised pots is fantastic for your earn rate and you can double your earn rate by frequently picking up un-raised pots. This was one of the most important factors that I learnt when I was studying no-limit Texas Hold’em. There has always been a large volume of opinion regarding always raising when you enter pots or three betting to raises. However there is mileage in calling as part of a balancing strategy as always three betting every time someone open raises is going to get exploited by your opponents aggressively four betting or even shoving depending on stack depth. Calling a raise with position allows you to control the size of the pot and use your position to your advantage post flop and that definitely needs to be factored in.