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Squeeze Play

krista
krista

I don't fully understand what a "squeeze play" is can someone help me understand it better please?

Comments

  • 1warlock
    1warlock
    edited July 2018

    OK, lets say you are in late position (BTN, SB and BB) and someone from EP opened to 3x. Then you had 1 or more other players just call the open. We are getting great pot odds to see a flop so 1 option is to simply call and take a flop. Another option is to take advantage of the information already given to us by the other players and create a difficult situation for them. This is the squeeze play.

    We can put the initial opener on a range of hands as we normally would. Then, because subsequent players only called and didn't 3-bet, we can also put them on ranges. These ranges are capped, meaning that we can exclude all the combinations that they would 3-bet with (like AA, KK, AK …). To put it simply, these are hands that would like to see a flop but probably aren't super-strong.

    When we decide to squeeze, we are 3-betting and attacking all the money already put into the pot before us. When we do this, we are normally only worried about the initial raiser's hand because he/she thought it was worthy of opening the pot with. We know the other player(s) who just called shouldn't have very strong holdings or they would have 3-bet themselves. Now, even if the initial raiser has a strong hand, he has to consider folding to your squeeze because he is not closing the action - he has all those callers left to act after him. This puts a lot of pressure on that player. He may fold the lower end of his range along with some stronger hands that don't play well multiway because if he calls, he's giving those earlier callers great prices again to see the flop.

    So when you squeeze, that initial raiser will need to fold quite a bit of his range if he's opening fairly standard. The beauty of the squeeze play is if you can get that initial raiser to fold, much of the time those other players who just called his open will also need to fold. If you consider the initial hand to come from the strongest range and each successive flat-call to be from a wider and wider range, if the 1st person folds, the rest tend to come down like a house of cards.

    This isn't a complete explanation by any means (maybe not even a good one). Its a very powerful play and you are right to study it. I'm adding a link to a really good article by Michael Brady about it here: https://upswingpoker.com/squeeze-play-poker/

    Please LMK if you want more info or have questions. Its not an easy thing to explain all at once but mostly its about attacking dead money rather than just playing passively and taking the flop.

  • krista
    krista
    edited July 2018

    warlock ty again - you an amazing teacher (even a blonde can understand what you say) - you so smart about poker is a great explain and ty for the link i will study it

  • 1warlock
    1warlock
    edited July 2018

    No worries @kristak - when you are done with that article, try this one out by Thomas Pinnock. More in depth for multiway pots: https://upswingpoker.com/multiway-pot-preflop-squeezing-leaks/

    If you can digest this article, you are probably better than most players, blonde or not :)

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