Last time I was out at the casino, about two hours before close. A new player joins our $1/$2 table. Sits down smiling, buys in full and says he's here to gamble.
Friendly guy, chatty and likeable. I would have guessed he was a businessman. First hand he's UTG and blind raises to $20. Then every time after that when UTG same thing. Blind raise $20. Blind bet $30 on the flop. Yep he's put $50 in and hasn't looked at his cards yet.
He was getting lots of action. Most flops with him were 4 or 5 way. Alas I was direct to his left and had nothing to work with so I was just a spectator to all this action. I've been thinking about how to deal with this type of opponent.
I realized that the place to be is not to his left but to his right. You want to be in the big blind when a big gambler is UTG. That way when it comes around you'll be closing the action with the most information.
This is much better than being to his left. What are you going to do in UTG+1 with TT or AQ? Call 10% of effective stacks hoping to not get squeezed and then hit a miracle flop? 3 bet to $65 and end up in any type of squeeze or gross spot on the flop? The options all pretty much suck. Whatever you have, to his left you will end up both winning the least on your winning hands, while losing the max on your losers, and folding the winning hand most often.
Now in the BB it's much better. By the time it comes around there will be around $60-$100 in the pot. Opponents tend to have medium-weakish hands hoping to hit the flop, leaving dead money in the pot. Effective stacks are 10bb. This means you can just profitably shove preflop a moderately strong range. With the dead money you will have pretty good equity even if called by a slightly stronger range on average. But you can end up benefiting on both sides. Some hands that should call against your range like JJ or AK may fold instead of play for 100bb. At the same time some will also see the dead money and convince themselves to call with hands your range crushes like 66 or ATs.
Another benefit to being in the BB is that you can actually set mine your small to mid pairs. Let's say there are 4 callers of the $20 raise. Discounting the blinds and including the $30 flop blind bet you are getting 6.5:1 odds. The thing is anyone with any piece will call the flop bet since the gambler hasn't looked at his cards and most likely has nothing. So again with relative position on UTG you can crai or slow play if you flop a set and it will be profitable overall.
