The concept of ABC poker is oftentimes misunderstood. Many players think ABC poker is playing some super exploitable and dumbed-down strategy that makes about 0bb/100. However, ABC poker is really just a term to describe a simple strategy that focuses on good fundamental play and veers away from FPS (fancy play syndrome).
In full disclosure, I use an ABC strategy quite often, especially in live games and micro stakes online games. But if I’m fully capable of using a LAG strategy, why would I use such a simplified strategy?
Imagine playing in a brand-new game. Every player is unknown to you, you have zero information on any opponent, and it folds to you with T♣8♠ in middle position. An ABC player would just fold here. T8o isn’t a default open-raise from middle position and thus it’s an easy fold.
But if I had information, such as everyone behind me is tight, then I’m going to break away from ABC and raise to try and steal the blinds from a non-steal spot. This is how I would play as a default too. With information I’m going to raise and try to pick up the pot preflop…but without information, I would resort to a default strategy of just folding my weak hand because I don’t have information on the other players.
This, in essence, is ABC poker.
This same concept can be applied to postflop poker. With information, you may continuation bet more, size your value bets more perfectly, and even run double barrels and overbets more often. But without information, or even with super minimal information like a sample size of 14, you will oftentimes have to revert back to default lines.
The ABC Poker Playbook
Since ABC poker boils down to simpler play, their playbook is usually easy. They typically use a small ball poker strategy and utilize an easy bet sizing strategy that prioritizes a single size over multiple. They also avoid mixed strategies and instead use a binary approach when building their ranges.
So what are some ABC lines that players use?
Continue reading
