Restealing Preflop, Deep Stack 4-Bets
A friend of mine was playing .5/1 cash games online. He was in middle position and raised to $5 and after a few calls, the BB made it $18. My friend then made it $40 total, and the B folded. Before I talk about the poker hand he had, let’s think about 4 betting preflop.
Most people who open for a raise and face a reraise think they have 2 options: fold or call. The exception to this is if they have a premium pair, aa, kk, or perhaps ak. In a cash game, where you are sitting with at least 100 times the BB, you have a lot more options than just folding, calling, or even moving all in.
By using certain concepts like the Galfond box, we can try to put our raiser on a range of poker hands. If he re-raised from the BB, why is he doing this? Does he think he can just win the small pot preflop? If so, he could be doing this with anything. His bet from the BB is out of position on most of the table. When people make large best out of position, it generally means they have a big hand and they don’t care about their position because the hand makes them feel secure, or they don’t care about position because they are trying to make it a preflop game only. So, the range we can put out opponent on is either very strong or absolutely weak. He’d probably call the $5 with a hand like 10,9 suited or KJ because if he hits it right, he could potentially make a lot of money. The preflop reraise to $18 is either to take it down right now, or isolate against one opponent. Again, this probably means a monster or nothing. My friend decided to try a 4-bet and raised the action to $40 total, a raise of $22 more to our opponent. The opponent folded and my friend took down the pot preflop.
Now, this means that the opponent did not have a monster. He could have had nothing, as suspected, but he also could have had a hand like JJ or 10,10 and gave our friend credit for a big pair like AA or KK because that is how it appears. Although, I think with a nice pair, the opponent would call the $22 more for set value and take a look at the flop.
My friend had K,Q. Not a very strong poker hand, and not a hand normally worthy of 4-betting. But in this instance, he decided that based on the range of hands the guy playing back at him could have, more often than not, he did not have a hand strong enough to play back at a 4-bet. He was right. If he were wrong, he only wasted $40, and not his whole stack. This is the beauty of sitting deep stacked in a cash game.
