During a hand, you'll notice that pressure is applied to one or more of the players left in the hand. It is at those points that money is made or lost. The person applying the pressure is usually at an advantage, so being able to apply the most pressure at the right time gives you a bit of an advantage over the next player.
I believe this s one of the key NL concepts necessary to do well in SNGs, and MTTs. A lot of the same principles apply for ring games, but with a finite amount of chips on the table, being the aggressor at the peak of the pressure point is a big advantage.
I'm not inventing anything here. I'm just looking at the anatomy of a NL poker hand a little differently. As bets continue, the amount of pressure on each player increases until both are pot-committed and all the pressure declines. A peak of pressure if you will. Many have said before that the difference between winning and losing players are the decisions they make under pressure. If you force your opponent to make hard decisions, you'll be better off than getting yourself into hard decisions. By hard decisions, I mean when the pressure is on.
You want to control the size of the pot and manipulate the hand so that you're the one who gets the pressure bet in. It's important to describe what a pressure bet is before I described how to get there. An example:
You have aces and raise and get called. Pot is $75. The flop is T98. You bet the flop and get called. Pot is $225. The turn is a 6. You bet $200 and get raised another $700. You have $1200 left and your opponent has you covered.
Notice that the pressure applied to you here is the peak of the hand. You're forced to call $700 knowing full well that you're playing for your last $500 as well. $700 and an implied $500 more is the most pressure (money) applied during this hand. You only have $500 left so you can not apply more pressure to your opponent than they just applied to you. The $700 raise is the peak or the pressure during this hand. If stack sizes were $5000, then there is plenty of pressure (money) left to be applied and you could create a new peak.
The shorter the stacks, then the earlier in the hand the pressure peak will be.
This post seems to have a lot in common with pot-limit strategy where manipulating the pot-size is crucial, but I never play PL so you'll have to make your own assessment.
Generally (everything depends in poker), I try to get two things before we reach the peak pressure point in the hand. I try to gain information about my opponent's hand and I try to put myself in position to be the one making the pressure bet.
Read that last sentence again.
Once you hit the pressure point of the hand, the person making the decision is the person who will make or break the hand for both players. If you are the one put under the pressure, then you're going to want as much information about your opponent's hand as possible. If you play the hand in such a way that you don't really get much information from your opponent, you'll have less information than you want to make the correct decision.
Making your opponent be the one who is forced to make the hard decisions is obviously (I hope) a big advantage.
There ya go...the basics as I see them.
Ideally, you can optimize the situation a bit further. What if you could get your opponent into the situation of making hard decisions without a read on your hand? Ah...now we're talking.
We obviously want to know as much about the opponent's hand as we can before we decide to put pressure on the opponent. Making a big bet into the nuts isn't really pressure, ya know?
Continuing down this stream of consciousness, we basically want to shrink the range of hands our opponent has as much as possible as early as possible. We want to expand our range of holdings as much as possible and we want to manipulate the pot-size such that it is our turn when a large enough bet can be made to apply the most pressure of the hand. All pretty basic poker right?
The reason I see value in viewing a NL hand this way is because it describes the reason for doing all the things that are "poker basics". I often see people justifying a play by saying "I was trying to find out where I was", "I was trying to be deceptive with my hand" or "I didn't think he could call" (pressure bet). By themselves, those things are not all important. You need all three.
When an opponent makes a great call (one you didn't think he should have) on you, it is probably because he had information about your hand. Another situation I see is people making an "information bet", which basically takes the hand right to the peak pressure point at which time the opponent has the choice whether to apply pressure or not. When playing against people who are willing to apply pressure with pure bluffs (me), you risk getting pressured off your information bet because it is a transparent attempt.
A quick example:
With deep stacks, I reraise a LAG on the turn with K high. That was the pressure point. I was the player with the opportunity to make the pressure bet. If we has smaller stacks to begin the hand, then he would've still made that turn bet and he would've won the race to the pressure point. He would've won the pot.
In that same hand, the LAG had very little information about my hand when he was forced to make a big decision. He had to call off the majority of his stack only knowing that I've called 2 smaller bets on a paired board. My range there is huge.
Back to the concepts. Finding out where you are is great, but only if it is early enough to be useful at the pressure point. When stacks are short, finding out more information is a luxury often not worth chasing. You'll just have to play with the range you already have. Applying pressure is great, but if it is minor compared to what your opponent just did, it has less utility.
Another example:
You have JJ and reraise EP. You get reraised. You put your opponent squarely on a top 4 hand (ranks, not # of hand instances). You've just accomplished one of your goals of narrowing their range of hands from maybe 30 to 4. Whether to continue depends on how far out the pressure point will be. If his reraise was an all-in or a large portion of one of your stacks, then the hand is basically over. The pressure is on you and you have to make the decision. If the stacks are very deep, then the pressure point is still far off and there is plenty of poker to be played in this hand. Say you call and the flop is 876. Your opponent bets again. Now, you still believe that your equity is below 50% (he is more likely to have you beat and your outs don't make up for that fact). The decision to call or raise is again dependent on the pressure point of the hand. If his bet is the pressure point, the hand is over. However, if you smooth-called here and raised big on his turn bet, would that be the pressure bet? If a pot-sized raise here would be the pressure point, then you can make that bet if your opponent can get away from an overpair after that kind of action. In other words, can you add folding equity to your side and be the one making the pressure bet? If the stacks are too short, then the answer is no. Having a read on your opponent to assess your folding equity, knowing you probably only have 2 outs and being able to be the one making the pressure bet are all important elements of this hand at this point.
Last example:
4-handed in a SNG, a player limped UTG with AA. He had 8.5 big blinds left and the SB and BB had him covered. SB completed and BB checked. The flop was 652. The SB bet and the BB raised. I realize what the AA player was trying to do, but look where it got him. He is the one that is under pressure and he knows nothing about the other player's hands. If he had tripled the big blind or even 2.5, there would be a good chance that he'd be the one putting in the pressure bet on the flop.
I think this post might click with some beginners as to how to manipulate the pot/action during a hand and for others, it'll just be confusing as hell. It makes sense to me and I hope it helps a few of you. These sorts of thoughts are the crux of big bet poker in my opinion and are what makes NL so different than limit poker. Limit poker is more about making a lot of correct decisions over time whereas NL is more about manipulating pressure at the opportune times.
Check out doubleas's book, Pressure Poker: Poker Strategy and Tools to Improve Your Game (also available in the PokerSavvy Shop)
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