One of the most profitable spots you can find yourself in is playing deep-stacked against bad opponents who also have a lot of chips in front of them.
This happens primarily in cash games, especially live, where you can achieve a huge win rate against players who make many mistakes.
Unfortunately, not all cash games will let you buy in deep, so you’ll need to build your stack up over time. When I used to play $5/$10 at the Bellagio regularly, the most they would let you buy in for was $1,500 (150 big blinds).
Often, however, towards the end of the session, I’d be sitting with $5,000 or more in my stack, playing deep stacked against players who loved to gamble in these scenarios, creating a very profitable situation for me.
But, in order to get in that spot, you need to build a big stack over the course of the session, and these are three hacks that will help you achieve that goal almost without a fault.
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Hack #1: Splash Around Preflop in Position
In soft cash games, you can afford to call with a wide range in position, especially if the rake is low or if the game uses the time rake model.
As you can see in the left chart below, when playing on the button against a lojack raise, our range in a raked game is pretty tight. This, of course, presumes our opponent plays a good, winning strategy.
In live poker, though, players aren’t 3-betting nearly enough, and you’ll get to see more flops in position, so you should be using the second chart for your overall strategy, which is actually a tournament preflop chart, presuming a game with no rake and with antes.
This isn’t to say that you should be calling with all sorts of garbage, and you should definitely 3-bet with some of your hands – not just suited aces, but also some suited kings, suited connectors, and even certain offsuit combos.
Hands that prefer calling and seeing the flop are pocket pairs like 55, 66, and 77. Even stronger pairs, like 99, TT, and JJ don’t 3-bet very often. These hands have great equity, and you don’t want to deny yourself that equity by reopening the action and giving the opponent a chance to 4-bet.
It is important to emphasize that all this applies exclusively to playing in position. Out of position, you don’t want to get out of line too much, as realizing your equity is much more difficult.
Hack #2: Do Not Slow Play on the Flop
Quite often, when I’m reviewing hand histories sent to me, I see players slow playing big hands on the flop with the goal of trapping their opponent.
The problem with this strategy is easy to recognize. With big hands, you want to play big pots, and if you slow play on the flop, you won’t be able to get enough money in the pot by the river.
Let’s look at an example of the button raising and we call from the big blind. The flop comes 9♠8♣3♦. We check as we do with our entire range, and they bet 2.1 big blinds.
Your opponent’s strategies when it comes to c-bet sizing in position will vary. In general, when your opponents bet smaller, you should be raising more often. As they bet bigger and more polarized, you should raise less often.
We can see here that the best hands are raising very often, especially the ones that are not blocking your opponent’s continuing range – like two pair and the bottom set. The top and middle sets are slow playing sometimes, but these specific hands are raised 100% of the time.
Your overall value range that check-raises isn’t too wide, but you don’t want to slow play these strong hands, especially if you are up against a player who you know doesn’t like folding.
Hack #3: Master Turn and River Over-Bets
A lot of players play poorly against massive over-bets. If you learn how to utilize them well, you’ll get a big upper hand on the opposition and significantly increase your win rate.
Let’s look at an example that comes up often where you should be blasting off a lot.
We raise, and the big blind calls The flop comes J♠10♣3♠ with straight and flush draws on the flop. We bet, they call, and the turn comes the 4♣. This is a very dynamic board, where the current nuts is not likely to stay the nuts on the river.
In this scenario, we want to bet big. You can see that the solver suggests betting over 24 big blinds into the pot of just over 14 big blinds.
Hands that are betting big are jacks and tens, and then pocket aces, kings, and queens, as well as AJ. Then, we have a variety of draws that use the big bet sizing as well, including a mix of high equity and low equity draws, such as:
- A♠K♠
- AQo
- 77
- K7 & K6 with flush draws
By betting big here, we are trying to set up an all-in on the river. We bet big, and the opponent calls. The river comes the 7♥, so we have the board of J♠10♣3♠4♣7♥.
When your opponent checks here, the GTO strategy is to either go all in or check. Here, we are over-betting for value with AJ and better.
When it comes to bluffs, we have a lot of busted draws in this spot, but so does our opponent. So, hands with showdown value prefer checking back on this specific river, but we will blast off with hands like KQ, Q9, K9, and K8 with backdoor draws and A6 and A5 with backdoor draws.
Most people never over-bet the turn, meaning they never over-bet the river then, allowing opponents to realize their equity far too frequently.
By utilizing this strategy, you’ll get folds from many decently strong holdings like QJ or T9. Even if the opponent holds on after the turn bet, they’ll really struggle to make the call facing a river jam with these types of holding.
Simply put, you’ll get your opponents to drastically over-fold, making a lot of money in the process.
Of course, your strategy should be player-dependent. If you are in a pot against a player that you know hates folding, you should significantly reduce the number of bluffs and lean more into your value hands instead.
These three hacks will help you build a big stack and play a lot of hands in situations that you’re much more comfortable with than most other players. Your opponents’ mistakes in deep-stacked scenarios can get very costly, resulting in a huge boost to your long-term win rate.
