Poker - Balanced Play

I would consider my blog to be more of an intermediate gambling blog, you have to at least know a little bit about each situation to grasp the ideas in this blog.

Here is something that is more advanced and I am blatantly stealing it from Bart Hanson's Podcast "Deuce Plays" which is on www.deucescracked.com, a training site, but the podcast is free. Bart used to be the man on his podcast Cash Plays that was on PokerRoad, but he moved to Deuces for a more financially rewarding deal. Anywho, his podcast is the absolute best on the web. The focus is mainly cash games, but I would more call it an intellectual take on poker. The podcast is NOT math heavy, which makes it an easy listen and you often pick up some golden ideas with each podcast.

Balanced Play, was his topic at the start of a podcast that featured Shaun Deeb (this podcast actually dealt with tournament play, but that's neither here nor there). Quickly, balanced play is when you play different hands in the same manner or the same hands differently, confused yet? Basically, you play in a fashion that theoretically extends your ranges for situations, ie, usually upfront in a cash game you would raise the top 3% of hands, but occassionally, you might raise a suited connector for balance. Same thing flop, turn or river play, you throw in some plays that aren't your usual play to balance and add doubt to your opponents about your play.

Hanson told a story of a hand he played in a live game in which based on his opponents unbalanced play, he had an easy river decision, in what looked like a difficult spot. He talked about how against unbalanced players, you can play a couple different situations similarly because they are always doing the same thing. Another point he made was that depending on your game, you don't need to be balanced to be successful. This is the point I loved......

When playing in a game with good, thinking and attentive players, balanced play is important, you need to have your opponents guessing as to what your range of hands is......on the other hand and more importantly for 99% of us who are playing poker............you never need to balance your play when playing against players that are strictly recreational and won't think too deeply into the game, you just make the best plays (equity-wise) possible and live with the results.

Remember, thinking (balancing) is only important if others are also thinking. If they aren't just think about the best equity play and execute it. Keep It Simple Stupid, when applicable.