Inforaising
A strange but really helpful concept is to raise a player for information, and sometimes this means stacking off to get a read that will help you later. Say you have A10, and the board comes Q,K,10. You have bottom pair, and a new online poker player is betting into you. You have no idea about his tendencies, so in order to get a read, even though you have bottom pair with a gutshot straight, you raise to see what he’s betting with. If he folds, you can reasonably put him on a draw. If he calls, or reraises, you can put him on Top pair or middle pair with top kicker, or possibly the made straight. Now this is a -EV poker online play, but you call or reraise the whole way down if you hit the flop. Sure, you may get beat, but you’re doing two things, First, you’re making sure you go to showdown. That way you get an idea of how he bets his hands he hits. Or maybe he was bluffing, and you get to see what cards he bluffs. Or maybe he has TPTK, and you get to see how betting patterns on how he plays that hand either in or out of position depending on your inforaise. A lot of people settle for the probe bet, which let’s you know where you are, but if you’re ready to possibly lose a stack off just for information and are confident you can win it back, then you’ll easily want to adopt this tactic of inforaising a raiser to get information. Because if you think about it, if you fold, he takes down an uncontested pot, and you’re left in the dark wondring if your bottom pair was bluffed off, or if he floated you on the flop. So with new online poker players, and/or if you’re deep stacked or rolled, consider doing this a time to two. Not only will it make a player respect you, you may hit your miracle card and tilt the hell out of that player, which means more easy money plus information about such a player.
Comments Off