Sports & Gaming
Mixed Strategy
Lesson time 18:29 min
A predictable player is an easy mark. Daniel teaches you how to keep your opponents guessing by adding layers to your game and shares his personal method for randomizing sub-optimal plays.
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Topics include: Understanding Board Coverage • Increase Board Coverage With Hands That Have Postflop Potential • Letting People Know About Your Board Coverage • How to Randomize Your Mixed Strategy • Adapt Mixed Strategy Based on Your Opponents • Incorporating Range Balance Into Your Mixed Strategy • Teach People to Fear Your Checks • Mixed Strategy and Metagame
Teaches Poker
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We talk about no always, no never when it comes to poker. And the importance of that is the fact that you don't want to be so easily read. So sometimes, especially today, a lot of players develop what's called a mixed strategy. Essentially, what that means is, OK, so they have King-Jack. Sometimes they call. Sometimes they fold, and sometimes they reraise in the exact same scenario. So to use a real life example, let's say for example, the player next to the button raises, and you're on the button, and you have King-Jack. Well, this is a situation where you may want to use a mixed strategy based on various factors. If you're going to play with this guy or this girl for a long period of time, there is going to be tendencies that you both will give away, right? So one of the ways that you can make it more difficult to be read is to play the King-Jack three different ways. Sometimes, maybe if you feel some strength, you fold the King-Jack. Other times, maybe you just call, and take a flop. Other times, you may actually play aggressively in three-bet. The key thing this does is it makes it far more difficult for your opponent to put you in a very specific range. He can no longer say, well, the player just called, so you know, they can't have aces. They can't have kings. Well, the player three-bet, so they can't have King-Jack, because they normally call or fold. The more tricky you can get, which is essentially what mixed strategy is going to be about. It's about being tricky, adding layers to your game, so you don't-- you're not that player that everyone says, well, they three-bet. They have aces or kings. What is board coverage exactly? Well, when you're a player who plays a lot of hands-- right, you know, you play six-four-suited, or you play 7-3, you play aces, you play kings, you play all those hands-- what that means is that any time the flop comes out, you could theoretically have hit that flop, right? So it's a little more difficult to play against players after the flop when the range of hands they can have is still rather wide, right? So we call that board coverage, right? And you don't want to obviously play hands like seven-deuce and 7-3, because those are a little too wide. But there are some hands you want to add to your arsenal, like six-seven-suited or five-six-suited, pocket sixes, pocket fives that give you some board coverage. Now what that means is if you play a three-bet pot, and your opponent knows that you only three-bet with really, really high cards, when the flop does come 4-5-6, a dangerous board like that, he can eliminate you from having a very, very strong hand. You could still have aces or kings, but that's-- that's the cap of your range. That's the best you could ever have, whereas if you have a much more balanced range in these situations, where you have board coverage, because you're sometimes three-betting with six-seven-suited and seven-eight-suited. Now your opponent can't take such liberties...
About the Instructor
Put yourself across the felt from Daniel Negreanu, the biggest live tournament poker winner of all time. The six-time World Series of Poker champion teaches poker strategy, advanced theory, and practice through hand-reviews of his winning games. Learn how to sharpen your mental game through demos on reading opponents and spotting tells. Join Daniel at the table to increase your win rate, grow your ROI, and get your game “in the money.”
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Daniel Negreanu
Join Daniel at the poker table. Learn his strategies to advance your cash, tournament, and online play.
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