Poker Strategy

Maximising your profit in cash games
As Tom Murphy likes to say before some of his articles, ‘Warning this may contain traces of maths!’ But don’t worry it’s not that complicated.

The object of a cash game is slightly different to a tournament in that unless you are playing with the last of your bankroll, survival is not something you are thinking about. It is all about maximising the profits when you have the best hand.

Lets look at a hand that crops up quite often in both cash games and tournaments. You have made a raise pre-flop with AK and get one caller. You have position and the flop comes A 8 9 with two cards of the same suit. Your opponent has checked to you. This makes you confident that you have the best hand at the moment. As in a tournament you cannot give him a free card to make a possible draw so you have to bet.

In a tournament you will usually bet the size of the pot here as a good player will not call for a draw unless they are getting over 2:1 for their money. The smaller the bet you make the better odds they are getting. In a cash game, where it is not going to break them a lot of players will call here if you bet the pot. There is often a mentality that they are almost getting the odds to call and therefore they do. In fact most people think that 2:1 is all they need to call for a flush draw or an open ended straight.

Let’s have a quick look at the real odds. Say for instance they have J10 suited but not the suits on the board. All they have realistically is the straight draw. The pot size is $10 before you bet and you bet the pot so they are calling $10 to win $30. They are getting 2:1 for their money.

Over 1000 hands they will win 342 times and you will win 658, there are no possible ties.

Overall they win $30 * 342 = $10,260 and you $30 * 658 = $19740.

You are both committing $10,000 to win these amounts so you can see you have a huge edge here + $9740. Your opponent is barely making enough at + $260 to cover the rake, in fact he is probably losing.

Now an opponent who is going to call with these odds will still most likely call with slightly worse odds, in fact getting as little as 1.5:1 is enough for this type of player to call (of course there are some that will call for all their chips!). To give odds of 1.5:1 then you must bet $13 in this situation. Your calling station will not see that the extra $3 is costing him $3000 over 1000 hands but your bankroll with love the extra $3000!

This extra money also makes up for the times his J10 is of the suits on the board and he is a 56% favourite, and also the times you have come up against a set of 8’s or 9’s. Of course some people will call a raise with A8 or A9 and get lucky against you, so take my advice and when you have a loose caller increase your bet slightly to adjust for this.

If your opponent has the flush draw only here then it is even more likely he will call the extra $3 but he will still only win 390/1000 hands and end up losing over all.