In the dynamic world of poker, understanding blockers can be the key to gaining a significant advantage over your opponents. Blockers, in poker terms, refer to the strategic card removal effect achieved by holding certain cards in your hand. Picture this: you're in a game of poker, and the flop reveals all spades, with the Ace of spades in your hand. Congratulations, you just blocked your opponent from having the nut flush! Blockers play a vital role in Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) as the game often involves polarized situations, where players either have the nuts or nothing. If you want to take your poker skills to the next level, it's crucial to master the art of using blockers effectively.

Starting with Preflop:

Before delving deeper into advanced blocker strategies, let's start at the beginning: Preflop. How often have you thought, "I have an Ace, so my opponent can’t have AA, I 4-bet my AKKx" ? It's a common initial thought, but to gain a real edge over your opponents, you need to elevate your thinking and consider not just one specific blocker but all four of your cards.

Next Level Thinking:

To truly exploit blockers, you must examine your entire hand and its interaction with the opponent's potential ranges. It's a mistake to focus solely on one blocker and wonder if it justifies a particular action. The value of a blocker depends on the combination of your side cards, which can either enhance or neutralize its impact.

For instance, let's take an 8% villain 3-bet range and a 20% opening range, and explore the effect of having an Ace in your hand. The results are fascinating and emphasize the significance of side cards:

Side cards make all the difference!

The first thing that we can notice when looking at the 8% villain range is that having an A is still relevant compared to not having one. However you can see the “value” of the blocker varies greatly between reducing the likelihood by 38% to actually increasing it by 10%. And this is all down to the side cards. Let’s break this down:

AKKQ Increases my chances or running in to AA, but I have an Ace!?

An 8% 3-bet range in this context is usually high card heavy and consists of hands like KKxx, QQxx, KQxx double suited, and others. If Villain couldn’t have a K or Q in his hand, 60% of his 3-bet range would be AA. However we only block 2 Kings and 1 Queen, so we are somewhere in-between which is the essence of blockers – they decrease the occurrence of certain hands in your opponent's range. If we modify our hand to include only one King (AK), we can observe a drop in the probability of running into AA. This demonstrates how side cards influence the value of the primary blocker (the Ace). In the case of AKKQ, not only do we block the Ace, but we also obstruct a substantial portion of the non-AA 3-betting range. In contrast, with AK, we still block the Ace but affect a smaller portion of the non-AA 3-betting range.

Why is 22 so impactful?

Let's explore the situation with a different blocker – 22. You might wonder how having a weak hand like 22 can reduce the chances of running into AA. This phenomenon arises due to "unblockers," which operate on the flip side of blockers. With 22, we are actually unblocking more of villain's non-AA 3-betting range, specifically, high Broadway pairs, double suited rundowns, and the like. Recall that an 8% range is relatively narrow, and there would be very few hands containing a 2 in this range. Most of which would likely include AA alongside it or perhaps AKK. By holding 22, we effectively limit the number of AA combinations present in villain's 3-betting range, while also unblocking higher rundown hands. In fact, the number of hands containing a 2 that would 3-bet, excluding AA, is merely 0.7%.

Strong hands without an Ace:

An eye-opening example comes with the hand KKQQ, facing an 8% range. Surprisingly, you would run into AA a significant 62% of the time! This counters a common misconception that not having an Ace simply implies facing AA at the standard percentage. But again we heavily block the remaining 3-betting range outside of AA.

The influence of side cards becomes even more pronounced when dealing with tighter ranges, where subtle variations can drastically alter the outcomes. As the range expands, the presence of an Ace becomes the most significant contributing factor.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You've taken a crucial step toward mastering the art of preflop blockers in poker. Armed with this knowledge, you can now strategically navigate through Pot Limit Omaha games, utilizing blockers effectively to gain an edge over your opponents. Remember, the true power of blockers lies not just in one card, but in the interplay between all your cards and your opponent's range. To continue to master blockers post-flop, check out our next article in the series “Mastering Poker Blockers: Your ultimate guide to crushing Pot Limit Omaha (post-flop)”.

If you want to learn more and elevate your game, visit PLO Poker Coaching to schedule your free consultation.