Some yearsago then whether you played live or online, you could make very good moneyplaying nothing but ABC at most levels. However, along came the coaching sitesand suddenly all that changed. Do not get me wrong, ABC can do very well and isprobably optimal at all levels up to around NL50. However at NL100 then youcertainly need to utilise plays that are different some of the time. Let uslook at an example here to show you what I mean taken from a game of mine at www.pokerstars.co.uk

I was in thebig blind with the 10c-8c with 117bb in my stack and I had folded to c-betsagainst the same cut-off raiser on two of the last five orbits. They had astack of 143bb and so my stack was the effective stack. During the past twoorbits then I had expended an extra 5bb when I called two raises to 3.5bb. So Iwas only down 5bb on that small sequence. Many people would say that you aredown 7bb but money placed into the pot in blinds is gone.

The flopcame 9d-6c-4h giving me the gutshot draw and an overcard. I checked and theyfired a 5.5bb c-bet which I called. The turn card was the Kc giving me theflush draw and gutshot and I checked again and they made it 14bb to go which Inow check-raised to 45bb. They tanked and folded and actually showed Ks-3s. Sobecause of the fact that I was playing tight and making my moves sparingly thenI had not only bluffed at a pot but I had also made my opponent fold top pair.

These arenot plays that you should be doing all the time. They are plays that you needto do every once in a while to prevent your opponents from running over you andto keep them guessing. Playing ABC counts for about 99% of all of the playsthat you make and this is especially the case in full ring cash games. Howeverwhat really makes the difference between recycling money and making money atlevels like NL100 and NL200 is the crucial 1% where you do something different.