Leak 2: Neglecting the Most Profitable Poker Situation | Podcast #184

I discuss Bread and Butter situations: the most profitable poker situation you can put yourself in.

In episode 183, I discussed mental game control strategies and post-flop 3bet pot strategies to help you plug the leak of losing money when calling 3bets.

What is the most profitable poker situation? (2:05)

What is the most profitable poker situation to put yourself in?  It’s the Bread and Butter Situation.  I learned about this from Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker.

Bread and Butter Situations have 3 aspects:

1. You made the last raise preflop.  You have initiative on the flop, so your cbet can take it down.  Your opponent just called, giving you the stronger range.
2. In position on the flop.  You have additional info to work with because your opponents have to act before you.
3. Facing 1 or 2 opponents.  The more opponents in a hand, the harder it is to get value or to bluff them off the pot.

Symptoms for this Leak (4:40)

#1: Not knowing about Bread and Butter Situations

If you know where you’re money is coming from, you can hunt for them and attempt to put yourself in more of them.  Not mentioned in the podcast is also the fact that you can also try to avoid non-B&B situations.

#2 Being a losing player

The more B&B situations you put yourself in, the more likely you’ll be playing profitable poker.

#3 Calling too often and not often having the opportunity to cbet

When you call, you cap your range, so you don’t have QQ+ in your hand.  But, your opponent raised, so they have all the strongest hands in.  That’s why you’re forced to fold so often to cbets.  That’s also why B&B situations, and making cbets is so profitable.

Leak Diagnosis (8:25)

Follow the filters below to record your win rates in these scenarios.  Do this for the current year or at least the last 30,000 hands played.  Make sure you record the number of hands and the win rate (BB/100 hands played) in your journal so you can analyze your progress later.

#1: Total Win Rate (no filtering)

Just record your BB/100 hands win rate as a total and by position.  This gives you a baseline for your profitability.  You want to see your non-blind win rates all positive and hopefully they get bigger as position gets later.  Also, a good SB win rate is -20 and in the BB it’s -40.

#2: Various Saw Flop Win Rates

This gives you an idea, in total and by relative position, how you’re doing when you see a flop.

I didn’t describe this in the podcast, but the filters below will each show you “saw flop” hands where you were not all-in preflop.  You’re going to have to select the 4 items (faced an all-in on flop, any bet opportunity, any raise opportunity, and any raise opportunity type) and add them to the filter.  Then, un-group them so you’ll have 4 separate filters.  Then highlight all 4 and hit “OR”.  Here’s a quick video that shows how to do this.

Total Saw Flop

Saw Flop IP

Saw Flop OOP

Neither IP nor OOP when Saw Flop

#3: Various Bread & Butter Situations

Bread & Butter 2-3 Players

Bread & Butter 2 Players

B & B 3 Players

Bread & Butter Any Players

#4: Filters for Common Spots

The first is Call Preflop 2bet; next is Call Preflop 3bet and the final is Call Preflop 4bet.

Challenge (17:00)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:  Run all of the filters I discussed for your play this year or for the past 30,000+ hands.  Record your stats then for the next 10,000 hands or more, try to put yourself in Bread and Butter Situations.  You’re striving to be IP on the flop, with initiative and against 1-2 other players.  At the end of at least 10,000 hands, record all the stats again to see your progress.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

Tom Rowland picked up the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4 to help him understand and exploit his opponents better.  Take their chips, Tom!  Get the Smart HUD here.

Dave Normy and Željko Arnautović both upped their study game by purchasing two webinars this week:

• Mashing the Micros Webinar: Get $5 off
• How to Study Poker Webinar: Get $5 off