Extracting Bonus Value on Dry Boards

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Dry boards sometimes offer a golden opportunity to get extra value for your medium strength hands like top pair. Many players are always looking to sniff out a bluff on a dry board, and you can use that fact to your advantage if you have a hand that beats a typical bluff catcher. In particular, you can often get pot-sized bets (or even bigger) paid off on the river by hands like unimproved pocket pairs that would never, ever pay off such a big bet on a board that includes lots of high cards and obvious three-straights and three-flushes.

Here’s a hand I played recently where I used this principle to my advantage:

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

MP: $674.60 (337.3 bb)
Hero (CO): $207 (103.5 bb)
BTN: $411.90 (206 bb)
SB: $118.05 (59 bb)
BB: $361.75 (180.9 bb)
UTG: $400 (200 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with T J
2 folds, Hero raises to $7, BTN folds, SB calls $6, BB calls $5

Flop: ($21) 4 3 3 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($21) J (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $11, SB folds, BB calls $11

River: ($43) 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $43, BB calls $43

Results: $129 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed T J (two pairs, Jacks and Threes) and won $126 ($65 net)
BB mucked 6 6 and lost (-$61 net)

I elected to check back the flop rather than c-bet because I expected to get called the vast majority of the time. Whenever the flop comes three low cards, particularly with a pair like this one, you can expect loose players to peel the flop with overcards and tight players to show up with overpairs quite often.

Now getting called isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. Say I bet the flop, and only the BB calls with 66. Usually at least one overcard and often two will fall by the turn and river. I can sometimes use position and the overcards to leverage the out of position player off the pocket pair by firing twice more.

A couple of factors dissuaded me from trying that line this time. First, I have two opponents. Second, the stack sizes are a bit unfavorable. One player is loose and started the hand with only a 60BB stack. I expect him very often to peel the flop. The tighter player in the big blind may call (or raise) with an overpair or flush draw or may muck a hand like a suited connector after a bet and call. But even if the big blind mucks and an overcard comes on the turn, I won’t know whether the overcard spiked my opponent’s hand or not, so bluffing becomes a bit of a risky proposition, and I don’t have a lot of room to leverage with just the 60BB stacks.

So I just checked it back and hoped either to pair up on the turn or for an overcard to come and have it checked to me again.

I did pair, and it was checked to me again. Now it’s time to extract value if I can.

Though it’s not a certainty, I would expect someone with a better jack than mine to bet the turn. Someone with a three might choose to check it again, or they might bet out. So overall, when it’s checked to me again on the turn, I think there’s a quite good chance I’m ahead and there’s a decent chance I can get value from unimproved pocket pairs or even possibly weaker jacks or deuces.

I bet half pot. This is a bet size I like to use in these situations on dry boards. I can tempt calls from pocket pairs and maybe ace-high hands, and if I’m bluffing, I can get out most of the other unpaired hands. Against aggro players, I can sometimes even induce a bluff-raise.

You could bet more here also. Three-quarters pot would be a reasonable size here, and even a full pot bet would be ok. But when choosing your bet size, remember three things:

1. Top pair is a fairly strong hand for your range in this situation. You want to choose a size that will work for the entire range of hands you will have in this spot, not just for your actual hand.
2. Often you will have two unpaired cards and be looking for folds. However, you frequently will have this first bet called, so whatever you choose to bet, you should be thinking about how a second barrel will line up for the river. For instance, say I had KT here. I would likely bet the turn just as I bet JT. I would expect unimproved pocket pairs to call. Now say the river is a Q. I would certainly bluff this card, and I would bet it hard enough to put a lot of pressure on a hand like 66. I want to make sure I bet an amount on the turn that will leave me with the right amount behind to put in a hard-to-call river bluff.
3. You may want to bet different amounts on different river cards. A river Q is a perfect bluffing card, so you may have to bet only pot to get your opponent off a pocket pair. But a river 3 is a terrible bluffing card because it can’t have improved you and it gives your opponent a likely full house. You may choose not to bluff it at all, or against some particularly nitty players you might want to bomb it with an overbet shove. Again, just make sure your turn bet size sets up a good bluffing opportunity for you given the stack sizes and the potential river cards that can come.

Also, think about how your opponent is likely to read your particular line here. If you’re going for value like I am here, and you choose to pot the turn, you likely can’t also pot the river for value, because that will probably be too much money and it will push your opponent off most unimproved pairs (unless the river card is a really perfect one for you like a 3, and even then pot-pot might get some folds).

So you could play it pot-halfpot, but that line tends to look a little more going-for-valueish than the actual line I took, halfpot-pot. My line looks more bluffy, in my opinion, which is what you are going for in this particular situation.

In any event, I bet half pot on the turn and got called by what is likely an unimproved pocket pair. Why is this likely an unimproved pocket pair?

• My opponent is tight, so he’s not likely to have called my preflop raise with a deuce.
• Same goes for a three, and he’s especially unlikely to have that card because there are already two on board and he has now passed up three opportunities to be aggressive with his hand.
• I think he likely would have bet out with a stronger jack, but even so a jack (better or worse than mine) is definitely in his range.
• With a flush or straight draw, I would expect him to have gotten aggressive at one of his three opportunities, but these hands are also possible as well.

Unimproved pocket pairs fit all of his actions thus far perfectly, and I think they constitute a very significant chunk of his total range.

The river comes nearly perfect for me. Only the aforementioned three or an offsuit deuce would be better cards for me, really. I suppose a jack would be excellent also (and would give me the effective nuts to boot). These cards are good because, in my opponent’s mind, my range still consists of a lot of unpaired hands that I bluffed on the turn. The cards I mentioned are, in his mind, the most safe cards for him. Therefore, he’s most likely to pay off on these cards, and he’ll likely pay bigger bets on them also.

I took advantage of the great river card and went for a full pot value bet on the end and got paid. If the river had been an card nine or higher, I likely would have tried a significantly smaller bet, perhaps another half-pot bet or even a one-third pot. But on the deuce I could go for full value.

That’s the beauty of dry boards when you have a solid pair. You can and will get looked up “light”, particularly if you give your opponent a glimmer of hope that you’re weak (as I did in this hand by checking the flop and betting only half pot on the turn). Don’t miss out on your river value!

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