Play your draws aggresively

In Texas Hold’em you often run into the problem of still being a clear underdog even when holding a good draw on the flop. In 6+ Hold’em, you are in a much better position with strong draws.

As a result, semi-bluffs will be more profitable than before. If your opponent folds, you will get the pot right away. If he moves all-in, you often still have a coin-flip when calling. If you like to read more about semi-bluffs, i recommend reading this article here.

If you have read some of our published strategy articles, you might already know that top pair isn’t a very strong hand in Short Deck, so with the right aggression, you can make your opponent fold top pair or even an overpair, depending on the board texture and a few other factors. 

Let me give you some hand examples:

Villain in HJ raises to $26 ($250 stack)

Hero calls 13a in CO with 89 (covers Villain)

MP folds

Flop is: QT6

Pot is $68

Villain cbets for $45

Hero ?

On this flop we have an OESD, which as we know, is very strong in 6+ since against a hand like AQ or QK, we have practically a coin-flip and plenty of fold equity. We don’t really want to get it in against hands that dominate us like KJ or J9 on this board, but if Villain happen to have one of these hands, we still have around 35-40% equity. I’m not saying you should always raise or jam with an OESD, but there are certainly many spots where aggression is better than playing it passive, given that we can win the pot with 9 high in this example, making our opponent fold a hand that has around 50% equity. Let me give you a another example in which we can illustrate 

Hand example 2:

Villain in HJ raises to $26 ($250 stack)

Hero calls 13a in CO with TJ (covers Villain)

MP folds

Flop is: AQ8

Pot is $68

Villain cbets for $45

Hero ?

This is also a very common spot for 6+ Hold’em player, but maybe not as obvious for beginners. I prefer raising here with our OESD a little more than in the previous example, but it is not that different. The reason being is that both our outs (K and 9) are to the nuts, unlike in hand example 1. We have 42% against AQ/AK or 46% vs AJ, which is a likely holding of Villain, but most players won’t expect you to raise JT on this board and thus might fold their top pair hands, since you can very likely have AQ or a set of 8s which you would raise as well. Therefore this is a great candidate to have in your raising range as a semi-bluff.

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