Don't make this mistake playing poker out of position

As we all know, position is king in Poker!

It's no mistake that the best players will generally play a lot more hands in position than out of position.

When in position, you have more information available when making decisions. As Poker is a game of incomplete information, every piece of information you can gain is vital!

This week Pokercode Coach & Poker Cash Game Pro Steffen Sontheimer completed another review of Fedor Holz's online cash gameplay for our Youtube Channel. He was outlining a couple of mistakes for the Pokercode Founder to improve his game at the Cash Tables.

We're going to run through some of Steffen's feedback to ensure you don't make the same mistakes when you're next on the felt!

Incorrect 3-betting from the Big Blind Preflop

Blinds $5/10

Villain opens UTG+1 to 2x ($20), Fedor decides to 3-bet out of the BB to $96 with A♦️5♣️.

Raising isn't something we should be looking to do at the cash tables and looks to be something that has come into Fedors game from his tournament history.

We are generally playing off shorter stacks, acting in a more polarised fashion with cards that block AA or KK and our equity against calling ranges matters less.

In cash games, we're deeper. Villains are flatting a lot more, especially in position, so we have to navigate less than premium hands whilst being out of position.

As expected, Villain flats, the pot sits at $197, and we see a flop.

Flop - 6❤️8♦️4❤️

Bluffing here makes sense, as this is a decent spot for us. Villain likely isn't calling all his 88, 66, or 44 here preflop, so we're still pretty nutted when we have hands like QQ or JJ.

We need to bet big, though. We don't want Villain to call with everything here (any 7, 9 or 5, for example) and see runouts.

Fedor c-bets the flop for $115 or roughly 58% pot & Villain folds.

Turn A❤️

Villain now can have all kinds of flushes here, definitely more often than we do so, we have a mandatory check here which Fedor does.

Villain bets around 33% pot $141, and realistically we are always calling here. We don't have any other options in this spot.

River 4♠️

With this river being a brick, we have a bluff catcher. Sure we block hands like 4♣️5♣️ and we block the A.

Fedor Checks.

Villain Jams.

We expect when Villain Jams he's repping AK+, so we need to analyse value hands vs bluffs.

We know if Villain has AK with K❤️ he plays the hand as played. The same goes for 66 or 88. We need to think about what bluffs he gets to this river with as played?

9♦️T♦️ or J♦️T♦️ both play like this and may start betting the turn.

77 or 55, do they start betting the turn? Do they call preflop always? We also block the 55. Do they always go for it on the river?

It's close, but it feels like it's tough to find enough bluffs here that make sense. We need Villain to float hands like 22 or 33 here, then start going crazy for a call to make sense here.

So a fold looks to be the right decision, especially when our 5 blocks hands like 55, which we'd like the Villain to be bluffing.

Fedor makes the fold, so he eventually finds the correct decision but ends up losing a decent size pot from the preflop mistake of 3-betting too loosely out of position.

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