Student Hand Analysis: Hero Flops Nut Straight vs. Cutoff Limper

*Note: comments below have been paraphrased for ease of readability.

STUDENT COMMENTARY

"Opponent plays a 29/5/2, and bets flop in position 75%.

What are your thoughts about the turn bet? On the river I was choosing between a shove or a check/call. What do you suggest is the better play here?"

I love the hand as was played, but let's start from the beginning.

PREFLOP

Villain's stats are fairly fishy, but just as important, if not moreso, is the fact he open limped on the cutoff, which is the weakest spot to do so. Open shoving preflop is a profitable option, albeit marginally so with this specific hand, therefore completing the small blind is perfectly fine, while folding is clearly not an option.

THE FLOP

The flop play is good, but it is probably very close when compared against the other two options of donking out or checkraising. This flop hits very well against both limping and opening ranges, so unless he has a small pocket pair, he is usually catching a piece of this.  

Of the three options of check/calling, donking out, or checkraising, I like check raising the least, since there are a lot of ways that he can catch a piece of this flop, yet still be far from being committed to it. When playing with small stacks, any checkraise is putting him to an immediate commitment decision that he may not be thrilled about, such as when holding something like T8 or Q9, which he would love to see a turn card with. By letting him see the turn by donking out or check/calling, you giving him a chance to improve in a way that is much more likely to suck him in and stack him. Of course, if he is ready to commit now, then taking the lines of donking or check/calling aren't going to change his decision.

THE TURN

I like the line of choosing to lead out, because this is a spot where villain::

1) Will likely check back and pot control with good/decent hands that have been ruined, such as two pair or sets, and the potential of pocket aces, which, given the fact that his PFR is very low at 5%, makes it more likely to be in his limping range than a guy who is open raising 100% of his cutoff range.

2) Is unlikely to barrel behind on both streets unless he has now caught up with you holding a single Q, or in the rare case, beating you with exactly AJ.

3) Facing a checkraise is highly unlikely to get him to stack off in a way he wouldn't also do vs. both a turn and river bet.

Leading out in this spot is also how the good mid and high stakes players play, as this type of board texture allows them to make very effective float/bluff lines vs. other regulars*, such as if you had Kx with a backdoor flush draw and chose to turn your hand into a bluff. Since you are representing a very specific hand on this board with the implicit threat of a pot-sized river shove, he is therefore only left with two options: call or fold, but never raise.

*This would be a situation where you were defending the BB against an open raise from a regular, as it is extremely rare for them to open limp the cutoff.

THE RIVER

In my opinion, against all player types, a shove is the best play, even if there is now a reasonable chance you are beat, as the J is a very crappy card. Since you never intended to fold, and since he obviously had enough to call a potentially pot committing bet on the turn, he is either going to stack you with a boat or check behind a lot of hands he may have called with, like trip Jack's.

Furthermore, suppose he did have trip Jack's and thought it was worth a small thin value bet if you had checked to him. He would probably also make the same sized bet with a rivered full house, since the board has now gotten so bad that most players, both good and bad, should see that you have pretty much run out of hands that can reasonably call a larger bet.

The problem with this scenario is that if this situation had happened, you would be forced to only call with your one-card straight, since by checkraising you can only beat a bluff (which obviously won't call), or exactly trip Jack's. The logic, of course, is that if he were willing to bet and call a shove with trip Jack's then he certainly would have called the shove.

Well played, sir!

Tricky AA Hand

Here is another submission by a student.  The play is standard from pre-flop to turn, but the river action is where things get interesting, especially when we begin to consider alternate paths that this hand could have taken.


 

Player Commentary on Turn:

Opponent is a pretty solid reg.  I'm not sure what to do at this point.  I feel like if I bet I might get some value from a worse FD calling but can't really think of a Kx or Qx hand that calls the flop here.  I'm free rolling against all other Ax hands but still felt like I shouldn't bet here since I can't think of almost any hand that can call, so I check.

Short Stack Hero's Analysis:

With a reg in the BB, he can have almost any hand in a 3-way pot, but you can be reasonably certain that his cards are almost always suited and/or connected in some way.

I don't suspect he has a set or made straight yet, because this is not the kind of flop that a reg (hero) c-bet bluffs at when up against two callers. If he was already there, and especially with the size of the pot already, I suspect he check/shoves and merges his range with all his draws. More likely, he has a pair/gut shot combo, or some kind of flush draw that he doesn't feel is good enough to check shove, which incidentally is probably not enough good enough to flat the flop, in my opinion.  For the record, I don't think he has a flush draw and I would weight the option towards the former.

The turn card sucks, even though you picked up a draw. Your straight has absolutely no value, obviously. If he were to lead more than 1/2 pot, you clearly have to fold, since he would be challenging an ace or overpair to call, and holding the nut draw, your implied odds are terrible. Your nut draw blocker also significantly reduces his holdings going into the river, but as you can see, it is pretty irrelevant to the way this hand plays out.

The river overbet is a must fold and only fish, amateurs, and low-level pros would make this call. Does he have it? I think maybe like 20-25% he has the straight, and like 10-15% he has a flush, at the most. More importantly, he has a pretty good idea of what you have, so he can purposely twist your arm into making a bad call or bad fold, but he also knows you literally can never profit here. I think he has nothing a majority of the time, but he has laid you such poor odds that you are helpless.

If he were to check, I would shove, for the opposite reason. Since he would likely lead out all bluffs and made hands, a check to you is a hope for a free showdown. And even though you never have a 7 here with the unlikely exception of exactly 77 (and he knows it) he can't be certain you don't have the flush, since this would have been the optimal way to play any flush/overcard combo. You could lay him such awful odds to a chop that he can't possibly call, even if he literally never believes you.

In an alternate scenario, I would make slight overbets in favor of shoving vs. fish, ironically, because they don't read hands as well, so a shove isn't necessary. On this particular board vs a good reg, he has a stronger awareness of ranges, lines, and odds and thus is more apt to call the overbet. With the shove, however, I suspect he is more likely to shy away due to pot odds, even though you are repping the exact same thing. 

Note: When in position, I make slight overbets here 100% of the time when checked to, and I would say that it gets folds about 75%. More importantly, it is very rare that you will bet and be beat at showdown.  This is VERY profitable, use it! 

B3RTstare's Hand, Revisited

Now...time to look over our work from the previous example!

My data on villain shows that he is opening 19% from MP.  Although he might be valuing his openers slightly different than I would, here is what I came up with:

Developing this range assumes that we are working with a substantial sample size of MP opens.  From a database of hands obtained through a vendor, I have 232 samples, which should put us close to where we need to be for this to be workable.  Being that villain is a 22/20.5, this seems roughly accurate.  The 19% range is actually kind of tricky, and the basis of coming up with an accurate estimate is highly dependent on how he values his mid-upper range suited connectors, which begin to take on a very subjective appeal around the 20% range.

Normally I wouldn't care so much, but the 9 dropping on the turn, in addition to flopped made flushes make this situation rather acute.  Looking back over his 232 samples of MP opens, I was fortunate enough to find a showdown one worthy example of 98s, in which there was a likely defender in the BB, meaning that we can expect villain to do this on a regular basis.

Plugging all this into Flopzilla yields this:

Villain is trailing B3RTstare just under 70% of the time.  But what happens on the turn?

Completely unfiltered, villain's equity has grown by a mere 1%, however, his turn call has eliminated all the trash from his range.  Assuming that I did this correctly by using the turn filters (close, if not precise), here is where we are now:

Equities now have almost flip-flopped, with villain taking a 63:37 lead in the hand.  Let's go to the river!

Facing villain 85% equity, it's time to call it quits on this hand.  There are two very important things to note here:

1) B3RT's open-ended straight flush draw provides a great blocker for reading villain's hands.  It eliminates virtually all possibilities of king-high flushes, and there seems little to no doubt in concern of flushes below a 9, given the opening range.

2) Virtually all possibilities for villain's flush potential is to the nuts!!!!  Would he turn a nut flush into a bluff or thin value shove?  Doubtful, in my opinion.  On the other hand, a very good player such as this could make great bluff shove with a top pair hand like AcQx, knowing that B3RT could really only make the hero call with the small boat.  

CONCLUSION:

Any way you cut it, this hand goes to villain, no question.

Is the case closed on this hand?  Not quite...there is still the possibility that something strange happened, like villain hanging around after the flop with 8c8x because he doesn't like folding to B3RT, coupled with the fact that he still has the slim hope of drawing to straight flush.  Or he might even be raising a different range to combat what he believes B3RT's blind defense strategy to be. 

Bottom line: I think this hand has great potential to open people's eyes to how ranges hit the flops and how using c-bet frequencies and blockers can seal the deal on reading an opponent's hand.

The Null Flop, pt. II

In my last article concerning the null flop, I ended with the beginning process of reading a donk bettor's hand on a K99 rainbow flop by first understanding his common flat range. If you have not yet done so, please read the previous article, lest you become hopelessly lost and confused as we move forward.

As it stands, the red-outlined ranked hands below are the only ones we will concern ourselves with, being that your typical villain has little to no desire to draw to a backdoor flush when out of position. Notice how I include all gutshots as hits, as they not only give villain some small chance to improve, they also allow him the ability to bluff even when he misses if some inconsistency in your betting pattern is detected.

Facing off against the widest possible villain flat range (most ranges won't include the weakest suited kings, etc.), we can see that he connects at least weakly with this flop just under 50% of the time. From here, we need to divide the two basic actions of betting and checking and determine which hand ranges are appropriate for each one. Check-raising is excluded from this specific flop because any villain worth his salt will quickly realize that this aggressive action can't possibly be supported by his range when contrasted with our own, i.e. all check-raises look like they are begging for a fold as few hands within our own range can bet/all in.

When villain checks:

Again, if we assume that he is only giving up in those rare instances when he flops a weak ace high, he is likely going into check/call mode with the very top of his range (due to the deck being crippled), as well as AA (occasionally donked, yet rare), some 9x, as well as all Kx hands, which are effectively now all bluff-catchers due to domination concerns.

The presence of the gutshot here might present something of an oddity to experienced players. Notice how I listed the appropriate response as a check/call. Since clearly he does not have the odds to draw to the gutshot, why is this appropriate? It's simple: by check/calling, he gets to realize the full equity of his hand because he can sometimes improve to a pair and win if hero just bets once with his air and then gives up on the turn and river. If you combine that with his ability to bluff if his draw bricks out after hero checks the turn, he now has a very profitable play on his hands.

When villain leads out:

Now we are down to business. Since villain's top pair range is severely weakened by domination concerns, we can scratch this possibility from the list. Though he might also choose to lead with AA, this most radical scenario that fails to include card removal from our own open raise range and a 0% 3-bet frequency on his end makes this a complete non-factor at just over 2%. We can effectively exclude this from his donking range entirely.

Adding all this up means that his donking range is severely polarized between air (50.4%) and trip 9's (12.9%). If we give him full credit for having trip 9's as well as all air when he donks, that means he is almost 4 times as likely to have nothing as he is to have a 9!

So we should raise every donk bet, right? Right?!

WRONG.

Check back in for The Null Flop, pt. III as I walk through every step from the flop to the river!