You're playing some shorthanded no-limit hold 'em. Action folds to you and you raise on the button. The blinds fold. An orbit later, action folds to you, you raise on the button, the blinds fold. The same pattern emerges orbit after orbit. In fact, you're not even looking at your hole cards. You're exploiting foes who play too few hands, and you're running over the table.
A natural flow of action exists in no-limit hold 'em. Players in later position have a right to open with more hands than players in early position. Though the blinds know that the players in late position are opening with wide ranges, the positional disadvantage they face after the flop means defending their blinds a smaller percentage of the time when facing an open raise from a player in late position. Poker is fair because of the clockwise movement of the button around the table.
This model of no-limit hold 'em highlights the importance of late position aggression. However, excessive aggression in position can also be a big leak. Take a situation where everyone at the table has 15 big blinds. If the button raises to four big blinds with about 40 percent of his hands, he's going to get crushed if he's only going to call 3-bets with {AA-TT, AK}.
I chose 40 percent because it's the approximate amount of time you should generally be open-raising from the button when effective stacks are at least around 50 big blinds deep. The blinds can liberally 3-bet because their 3-bets will be all-in shoves because they face no positional disadvantage in post flop play.
When stacks are deeper, someone who raises too often from the button is exploitable by blinds who are calling and three-betting with the appropriate ranges. Say you open with 500 hand combinations, and you're only willing to defend against a three-bet with 50 of them. Your opponent is picking up free money 90 percent of the time that he 3-bets (for reference, {AA-TT, A-K} is 46 combinations).
In the two preceding examples, it's clear that some combination of the following two adjustments is necessary to avoid turning the button into a disadvantage:
1.) Open with fewer hands from the button
2.) Defend against 3-bets with a wider range
These adjustments reflect a more general concept: the more hands you're aggressive with, the more hands you have to be willing to play in response to aggression from opponents if you don't want to be an easy target for exploitation. Most top players who successfully open with about 500 combinations from the button are willing to defend against 3-bets with a range that's wider than {AA-TT, AK} (exploitative adjustments aside).
This discussion on pre-flop play is also applicable to aggression after the flop. For example, if you're continuation betting 100 percent of the time, then folding top pair to a raise on the flop is a disaster because of the potential to give up too many pots after the flop. However, getting lots of chips involved with As-Ac on a board of 9h-8h-7h is also a disaster because protecting all those pots entails getting lots of chips involved in situations where your overpair has poor equity.
Increased aggression expands hand ranges that must be played, but the implicit expansion of ranges that occurs with increased aggression puts a practical limit on the hands that you can aggress with in a tactfully sound fashion. If you want to play no-limit hold 'em profitably, you must master this concept.
Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker by the Numbers and Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus). Visit him online at www.killerev.com, and check out his weekly show, Killer Poker Analysis, on Rounder's Radio (www.roundersradio.com) Fridays from 5:00PM to 6:00PM Pacific Time.
