PREFLOP

Adjusting Poorly to the Rake

Before we talk about the adjustments we want to make to higher rake structures, let’s talk about the
rake itself, and how much it affects the way we play. I have used PokerStars as an example of how
the rake compares at different stakes.

Let’s start with the higher stakes. Assuming we are playing 6 handed games, if we look at 1/2, we
can see that the rake is capped at less than 1.5bb per pot. If we look at 25nl, we can see the rake is
capped at 8bb per pot. If we look at 5nl, we can see that the rake is capped at 20bb per pot. This
tells us that the lower stakes we play, the higher the rake is, and we need to make significant
adjustments as a result. Naturally there are many plays that we can make that are very high in EV,
but there are certain plays that will be very marginal in terms of their EV, and the higher rake
structure then starts to make some of these plays lower EV. It is extremely important that we are
mindful of the rake, and just how significant it is at lower stakes. Please note that the preflop charts I
am using are designed for a 500nl rake structure.

With that in mind, let’s talk about how we can adjust to the higher rake structures. I am going to
break this section down into two different parts. The first part will be about flatting preflop on the
button, and the second will be about playing out the big blind.
On the button – as we all know, we don’t want to have a flatting range when we are in MP, CO or SB.
There is actually one scenario where we can have some flats in these positions, and that is when we
have an absolute maniac behind who we really want to play pots with, and even then it’s a pretty
narrow flatting range. I am not talking about standard recs, or even splashy recs, I’m talking about
those once-every-few-months maniacs, and even then our flatting range is hands like 88, 99, AQo
type hands. Coming back to looking at flatting on the button, we are going to use a couple of
different charts and look at what hands the solver wants to flat vs each position. As we can see from
BTN vs UTG, the solver will have some low frequency flats with hands like 22-55, 54s, 65s and AJo.
These hands need to be taken out of our flatting range at 50nl and below. These very marginal calls
will get eaten up by the rake, particularly the dominated hands like 65s and K9s. If we take a look at
BTN vs CO, we will see that our range of course gets a little wider. We now have hands like T8s and
A2s to go along with our 65s, 22, J9s type hands. Again, we want to trim off the lower parts that are
usually very marginal calls at best. Naturally as our opponent’s opening range gets wider, our range
also gets wider, which is why we see us VPIP a hand like ATo vs CO but not vs UTG.

You might be asking yourself “can we simplify our strategy, and just play 3bet or fold on the button
given the rake”, and that’s a question that some people think the answer to is ‘yes’, however even in
the higher rake structure I still think we want to have some flats on the button. The reason people
want to simply play 3bet or fold is to win the pot preflop more often and therefore pay no rake in
that pot, which is obviously a sound reasoning, but I think that playing single raised pots in position
is going to be still very profitable, providing it’s done with the correct range. My advice is to trim off
the marginal calls, up our 3bet frequency with the KQs, JJ, AJs type hands, but still call them at a low
frequency because of how well they play postflop. Case and point, a reg opens in the CO with KJo,
and you have KQs on the button. If you 3bet, you force your opponent to fold their hand, but for the
times it comes down K83r it’s still worth having that flatting range. A hand like T8s, however, is going
to be more dominated and less appealable to flat, and THEN you factor in the rake on top, it then
makes more sense to 3b this hand the same amount our charts suggest, but then folding the rest of
the time instead of calling.

Summary – ditch the marginal flats on the button, up your 3bet frequencies with hands that are
mixing between 3b and call, and still call at a low frequency with certain hands that have your
opponent often dominated preflop. A perfect example, CO vs BTN, our charts say 3bet AJs and KQs
50%, I would up my frequencies to 75% 3bet, and 25% call. One last point that is really important,
it’s impossible to memorise your charts and your frequencies, so when studying for preflop
strategies, simply do your best to have a solid grasp on how often you want to 3b certain types of
hands as well as calling them, and up your 3b frequencies slightly.

Defending the big blind – I firstly want to talk about defending the big blind in general. Similarly to
the above, we simply want to trim off the bottom parts of our defending range. If we look at BB vs
UTG (which is actually surprisingly quite wide anyway), we can see that we want to defend hands
like 42s, J5s, 84s, A9o and T9o. At 200nl and above, these are of course fine, but defending these at
25nl for example will be haemorrhaging money. Again just to reiterate the point, if UTG opens to
2.2bb, and you are the only caller, there should be 4.9bb in the middle. At 200nl, more of that 4.9bb
pot will still be in the middle after rake is taken out, but at 25nl much more of that pot will already
be gone due to the rake. As one very quick sidenote for those of us watching, it goes without saying
that in live poker the exact same rule applies. If you are playing a timed game you get to defend
EXTREMELY wide, but if you are playing 2/5 for example, then you’ve just got to play so much tighter
than you might realise when it comes to defending the big blind.

If we look at BB vs BTN now, we again see an understandably very wide range that wants to defend.
Again, in a higher rake environment, we just can’t defend as wide as this. Hands like 76o, A3o, 93s,
52s etc become very clear folds. The next point is really quite important, and will hopefully help you
determine just how much tighter you have to play from the BB…

When we are looking at a more narrow range like BTN flat vs UTG open, we want to trim off a
small amount of that range. When, however, we are looking at a really wide range like BB vs BTN
defend, we trim off a much bigger part of that range.

The next two parts of this module are no longer about the rake per se, but what we are about to
look at will fortunately also help us avoid paying unnecessary rake.

Calling too much in the BB multiway

I have managed to secure some multiway preflop defending ranges for the purpose of this module.
Again, these are rake adjusted for 500nl, but even without that fact, I’m really hopeful that these will
be quite eye opening in terms of just how much tighter we should be when calling multiway out of
the big blind. Our first example is UTG opens to 2.2BB, BTN calls, and we are defending out of the big
blind. Let’s firstly take a look at some of the hands that just aren’t in there/aren’t pure calls. ATo and
KTo are pure folds, QTo and QJo are only in there sometimes, and hands like Q2s, J7s, 84s and 32s
are just never/rarely in there. It is EXTREMELY important that we don’t just shrug our shoulders, and
click call with hands like this because we think we are priced in or that we’re closing the action so we
can call really wide. How dominated our hand is far outweighs the price we are getting or anything
else for that matter. It’s also really important to understand that when there are more players in the
pot, the equity of our hand goes down and therefore we’re going to be doing more poorly postflop.
Factor in a higher rake environment at the micros and we can clearly see that a lot of us are calling
way too wide multiway out of the big blind (myself included!). Again, if we change this to look at CO
open, BTN call and what our defending range looks like, we see that it is not very wide at all, 16.28%
in fact. Just look at all these suited hands that you might think are calls (85s, J2s, 74s, 32s etc), along
with the fact that the solver is MIXING with QJo/JTo etc. I really do think this will be eye opening to a
lot of us, and we can now start to drastically tighten up our calling ranges out of the big blind
multiway. I think it’s also important to say that this isn’t a spot you can really study and nail down
your ranges/frequencies on, so the main point of this subsection is too simply advise you to be more
mindful of how much we might need to tighten up from the big blind multiway.
 Calling too much in the BB with hands that should be 3bets

When asked to make this module, this was the very first thing that sprung to mind. It is such a
common leak, and one that all lower stakes players have. It is extremely easy to think that you know
your preflop charts and you are 3betting well from the big blind, but the reality is you are almost
certainly not 3betting enough. You can check this right now in your tracking software by filtering for
your 3bet stat BB vs UTG, MP, CO, BTN, and SB. It should be approximately as follows…

BB vs UTG – 6%

BB vs MP – 7.8%

BB vs CO – 10.2%

BB vs BTN – 14.9%

BB vs SB – 19%

I want to look at three different preflop charts to signify where the leaks arise.

BB vs UTG – we can see that our 3betting range isn’t that wide, and therefore the reason I have
chosen this chart is a reminder that we want to 3bet hands like 76s, Q9s, A2s at some frequency. It’s
easy to just click the call button, but these hands play well as a 3bet and that’s why they are in there.
This is another nice way for us to not pay any rake, by ensuring we are 3betting correctly from the
BB with these infrequent hands and taking the pot down pre more often. Be sure that you are
mindful of these hands that want to 3bet and aren’t just always calling them.

BB vs BTN – similar to the above, there are a lot of hands like 54s and A2s type hands that we need
to be mindful to 3bet at some frequency with, but the wider the opening range, the more
extravagant hands we have in our range that will for sure be slipping some of our minds. As we can
see from BB vs BTN, we should now be 3betting hands like J7s, ATo, 64s, Q8s and K6s. It’s really
important to remember that these hands are 3bets at some frequency because that is a higher EV
option than just calling, so if we are currently not 3betting these hands then we are costing ourselves
EV.

BB vs SB – taking it one step further from the above range, we can see that BB vs SB is just a whole
other animal itself. Not only are we in position, but the SB is opening extremely wide, and we can
deny so much equity by following this 3bet chart as closely as we can. For example, think of all the
ace highs that the SB opens that they have to fold when we 3bet our K6o. It’s a very wide 3b range,
and of course the most polarised range that we will see, but it’s just so important to find these T7o,
T2s, A2o, K5o type hands at some frequency instead of just always calling them, and that’s before
we even consider the higher rake structure!