Squeeze Poker
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In poker, a squeeze play is a bluffing opportunity that presents itself after a player previously raised and at least one other has called. A squeeze typically occurs on the preflop betting rounds in games such as Hold’em and Omaha. It refers to a situation where there is a re-raise (three-bet) after an open-raise and one or more callers. In other words, it’s a three-bet made against two or more players at once. For example, imagine the following. Poker squeeze play is an effective way to pick up chips with absolute rags. Certain conditions are required for it to succeed. Learn more about squeeze poker.
The squeeze play in poker is a slightly advanced maneuver that is used in both cash games and tournaments against two players preflop. It can be quite rewarding when successful, however it is tricky to pull off. You need to have an idea of your opponent's tendencies, stack sizes, blinds and your own table image in order to maximize your success rate when attempting a squeeze.
How to Perform the Squeeze Play
How a squeeze play works is one player will open the action with a raise and another player will flat behind. The 'squeeze' comes from you raising in late position or from the blinds in order to squeeze the original raiser out of the pot and then inducing a fold from the player who flatted behind.
The idea behind this play is that the original raiser could be raising a wide range of hands, many of which would fold to a 3-bet. This is especially true if the raiser is loose. Now, the player who flatted is most likely weak as most players who flat behind are just as weak, if not weaker than the raiser. So when you make a squeeze, you can almost be sure that if the raiser folded, then the flatter will too.
The goal with using the squeeze play isn't so much to get value for your hand, but to collect all the dead money that is in the pot. In fact, often times your hand is almost irrelevant to your decision to squeeze - as long as it plays easy on the flop than that's all you need.
Squeeze Example
For this example, say you have 67s in the big blind. The game is a 10nl 6-max and everyone has 100 big blind stacks. The cutoff raises it to $.40, the button flats and the small blind folds. The pot now has $.95 in it. Based on your assessment of the cutoff and button, you decide to squeeze. You make a raise of $.75 into a $.95 pot and the cutoff (raiser) folds and after some thought, the button folds too.
Squeeze successful. You pick up a $1.70 pot or 17 big blinds.
How to Ensure Your Squeeze is Successful
Squeezing is definitely a tricky play to pull off. You are often making a squeeze out of position and you need to induce not one, but two players to fold. So in order to make a successful squeeze play, there are variables you should consider before pulling the trigger.
• Is the raiser loose or tight? The tighter the raiser is, the less inclined I would be to try to squeeze. He probably has something if he's tight and raising from early position.
• Is the player flatting tricky? In other words, do you think he'd flat a premium hand such as aces behind the raiser? If not, is he capable of folding?
• What is your table image? Have you already squeezed a few times? If so, you might want to consider passing up a few opportunities in order to improve your image. Also, if you have been squeezing or squeezed in the past, you definitely need to be aware of the flatter's tendencies as it would be possible for them to trap with a premium hand. If you have been involved in tons of hands, I would also pass up squeezing opportunities as your raise will be given less credit and you'll be called more often and have to play hands out of position. A tight image is the most optimal for a squeeze to be successful.
• How are your abilities to play postflop poker? Sometimes the squeeze won't work and you'll have to play a flop. If you are lacking experience playing postflop (especially out of position), then it might be best to avoid the squeeze play until this area of your game improves.
• What hand do you have? While you don't need to have AK to squeeze, you should have something that is at the very least playable in case you're called. A suited connector such as 6-7, 9-T or T-J would be fine because they are easy to play post flop. Either you connect or you don't.
• What are the stack sizes? The deeper you are, the more pressure you can apply. Ideally, you'd be able to put your opponent's at risk for all of their chips, but that won't always be possible if you are all deep. Just be sure that you are all deep enough so that no one is committed to calling a raise or shove.
Using my example above, if the cutoff and/or the button only had $.60 left behind I probably wouldn't bother with a squeeze. It's just too likely that they would call.
• What are the blinds? If the blinds are low, say, 10/20 then squeezing is probably not worth your time given how risky the play is. Not to mention that squeezing from the get-go will give you an loose-aggressive image which will affect your ability to squeeze later on. Squeezing is much more profitable when the blinds are higher and more so when antes are involved. The idea is to find and collect as much dead money as possible.
Summary of Squeezing in Poker
The squeeze play can definitely be a profitable weapon in your strategy arsenal if used sparingly. Just keep in mind that for the play to work, you need to have plenty of fold equity. Your opponent's need to be loose (wide range of hands to fold), capable of folding and not pot committed. This is in addition to you having a tighter table image. If all of these variables are in place, then a squeeze play is definitely worth a shot.
Squeezing Range
There’s not an absolute squeezing range because, as with any other poker concept, it will depend mostly on our opponents’ tendencies but if we were to give a standard, we will start by saying that a very wide range is worth squeezing.
First of all, let’s consider our position at the table. It is often better to squeeze out of position than in position. The reason is quite simple: when in position, we have a great advantage over our opponents, so playing our hand and see the flop is not always a bad idea; on the other hand, when we are out of position, we give up the positional advantage to our opponent. By squeezing, though, we take the initiative, and we put our opponent in a situation where he have to take a difficult decision to make.
Our squeezing range should be made up by two different categories of hands:
1) Strong hands that don’t play well multi-way, but do in a 3-bet pot. Fundamentally, we’re talking about middle/high pocket pairs (TT+). Those hands lose value when playing in a multi-way pot, and there are lots of flops that could scare us. Plus, callers often play small pocket pairs when set-mining, and we don’t want to give them the possibility to hit their hands cheaply.
Squeeze Poker Term
2) Hands with a blocker. A card is considered a “blocker” when it limits the possible combination of a given range. For example, if we hold an Ace, we are decreasing the possibility that our opponents holds strong aces (AQ+, AA). So, Ax and Kx are good hands to squeeze.
Squeeze Poker Stars
Against opponents who tend to fold to 3-bet, we can use even a larger range, because they’re going to give up a lot of hands. Of course, that doesn’t mean squeezing with any two cards; in fact, there are hands that show most of their profit in multi-way, small pots – like medium suited connectors or low pocket pair, for example.
Opponents to Squeeze
As already said, the best players to squeeze, especially in a ‘bluff’ situation, are those that fold to a 3-bet a lot. If an opponent never folds to a 3-bet, there is no point in squeezing him with a bluff; in this case, we should open up our value squeeze range – including hands like 88-KJ+ – because those kind of opponents are very easy to value bet.
The players we don’t want to squeeze are those inclined to 4-bet; against them, it’s better to tighten up our squeeze range, squeezing only our best holdings and calling with the bottom of our value range.
Squeeze In Poker
Defending Against a Squeeze Play
Squeeze Poker O Que E
The best defense against the squeeze, especially at micro limits, is to fold. Our opponents won’t squeeze often enough, so it doesn’t affect our win rate significantly. Against frequent squeezers, the best defense is to tighten our opening range, because 1) we will be less often set up to a squeeze; 2) we will have a range mostly made up of value hands that we should be more willing to play it back.
Squeeze Poker Cash Game
If an opponent raises, we cold-call, and another opponent squeezes … Well, in this case, we’ve already announced that our hand is not so strong (unless we are playing a monster in a tricky way). So, in this case it’s better not to defend.
Squeeze Poker
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