Six Plus Hold'em Poker Adjustments by Stats

Having said all we've said in the previous article, there are a lot of skills that you can translate from regular Holdem to Six Plus, and THE most important of these is exploiting opponents by reading their stats very well and understanding how YOU can turn them in your favor. Let's see what some of these stats are:

Let's say that the small blind to big blind ratio like is 1:2 like it is in most poker games. So when you're raising from the small blind preflop, you're putting down 2.5 blinds to win 4. That means that if your opponent folds more than 62.5%, you're making a profit even if you check/fold every time postflop. 

If you're raising from the button, you're putting down 3 blinds to win 4.5 so the BB fold to steal ratio multiplied by the SBs' has to be 66.6% at least for you to be raising profitably any two cards. Don't worry, though. You'll take the pot down a lot of times postflop, sometimes by C-bet bluffing and sometimes by showing down a stronger hand. So the stat to look out for here is ~50% FTS in both.

This is discussable because some players won't adjust their ranges and will still call/4-bet 3-bets and 5-bet shoves with the same ranges they used in Holdem. The way you can exploit this is by changing your frequencies to match theirs so that you profit in the long run. If they have over 67% fold to 3-bet you can fire away even 66% bluff/33% value, or even more if you know that they don't adjust.And even if they do adjust, usually up until NL200+, if people see you 3-betting light/wide, they will start calling with a lot of marginal hands and over-adjusting even more, because in this game Nines are of way lower value than in regular Holdem, but people will still get aggressive with them in the wrong spots.

If you think about it proportionally, 99 in Six Plus is actually 77 in regular. So, would you 4-bet/call 77? Probably not.

The way you can exploit this is by getting tighter with your stack-off ranges against people who don't tighten up theirs, and also 3-bet wide, the players who call them a lot preflop, because you're in for some surprises (like seeing AJ take you to showdown on an A-high board).

This stat is universal in a sense that it will not change its' profitability if you take cards out of the deck. It's pretty simple, really. Most players who aren't regs limp sometimes, and if they like to limp/fold to raises a lot they are very exploitable. Raising 4x on the button with a limper behind you, you need him to limp/fold about 65% of the time to make it profitable, taking into consideration that the blinds will react only with decent holdings. If it's lower than that, don't fret. You have to take into consideration also the fact that he's limp-calling to try to hit the board and this will rarely happen, so think before folding that Q9s, because it can be profitable in the long run to make him limp-call and then bet a lot of dry boards.

The same applies to the general stats, the game hasn’t changed from a mathematical point of view, so anyone who still plays too loose and too passive can be exploited. Value-isolate the 30+ VPIP limper guys so that you can take them to Value Town after the flop. 

Don’t let the 50+% guys who steal your blinds to get away with that, 3-bet wide or light confidently. Don’t let the 70%+ 4-bet bluffers get away with it and start jamming a wider range against these players. The math is exactly the same as Holdem and I think that a lot of players will have trouble understanding this and transitioning from one game to the other. If you don’t believe this, just play some Omaha and look how soft the games still are ,even at the mid stakes. 

Some players are used to squeezing a lot in Holdem, and they will transgress this multi-way aggression to Six Plus. They will start squeezing with hands like A6s, KTs, just because they have the same mentality as in regular Holdem where it’s a lot harder to make a hand postflop. This means that you can start calling squeezes with the likes of KQ, AQ, a lot of suited connectors because now you flop straight draws a lot more often, and they’re a lot easier to hit, so this is usually a good play. 

Undoubtedly this game is going to be all about the straight draws, because they are easier to hit and you’re obligated to play them aggressively against players who can fold pairs which leads us to our next and final stat.

These stat gain a bigger emphasis in Six Plus Holdem, having a bigger hit percentage for straight draws on the flop and a bigger completion percentage(~50%) up until the river, it’s obvious that we need to play them aggressively to win against good players, so we can use these stats to know if they like to fold to raises and which street is the best to make your awesome move.

Obviously the boards that are best to raise on are the dry boards, because that keeps opponents from putting you on draws and calling with a pair, and also being easier to hit two pair here, pairs drop in value and should be a lot easier to fold by thinking players.

The next level of this mental battle is not folding these pairs because you know that your opponent knows that you’re supposed to fold pairs, so you don’t. But this is for the higher stakes, and up until then, make sure that you’re raising against the right opponents and on the correct streets, stat-wise.