Hand Discussion #14: My Thoughts

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A couple of days ago I posted an interesting hand from the message board.

The hand was played by our own threads13, and here’s how it went:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($50)
Button ($21.35)
SB ($105.05)
BB ($71.60)
Hero ($58.25)
MP ($44.50)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with J , J .
Hero raises to $1.5, MP calls $1.50, 1 fold, Button calls $1.50, 2 folds.

Flop: ($5.25) 5 , T , K (3 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $2.5, Button folds, Hero calls $2.50.

Turn: ($10.25) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $2, Hero calls $2.

River: ($14.25) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $6, Hero…?

I have a few thoughts.

Starting on the flop this is a tricky situation any way you slice it. There are merits to starting off aggressively, and there are merits to the passive approach threads13 took. First I’ll talk about the upsides of leading the flop and going from there, an aggressive approach:

1. Less likely to lose the pot to a weaker hand by getting bluffed out
2. Reasonable chance to get value for your hand from a draw or weaker made hand

The downsides of being aggressive are:

1. Little chance to get a better hand to fold
2. Vulnerable to an aggressive player floating or bluff-raising
3. Limited information coming to you due to being out of position and driving the betting

Most of these points should be fairly straightforward. The last point, that betting out limits the information that comes to you, is a fairly universal aspect of being aggressive from out of position. When you bet, a wide range of hands will call you: draws, floats, top pair, weaker pairs, and some monster hands. Getting called doesn’t really narrow your opponents’ ranges so much. So being aggressive from OOP often comes at the expense of defining your opponents’ ranges better.

The upsides and downsides of a passive approach roughly mirror those of the aggressive approach. The upsides:

1. Put less money at risk with a marginal hand
2. Gather more information about your opponents’ hands by their betting decisions and bet sizes

And some downsides:

1. Get no value from your still decently-strong hand and give free cards to weak draws to beat yo
2. Give good hand readers an accurate picture of your holding, allowing them to play nearly perfectly against you (including squeezing value from you sometimes and pushing you off the hand other times)

Let’s talk about how some of these advantages and disadvantages to the passive line played out this time around.

A main advantage of playing passively is that you get more information. In this hand, you definitely get plenty of information about your opponents’ hands. This betting line – 1/2 pot on the flop, 1/5 pot on the turn, and roughly 2/5 pot on the river – it’s a weak one. That turn bet, especially, reeks of weakness. This hand comes from a 50NL game where people aren’t generally going to be trying to outlevel you. So you can be quite fairly sure that this guy is futzing around with nothing too wonderful. (Against a tough opponent that small turn bet could be designed to elicit action. But that’s not what’s going on here.)

But what is “nothing too wonderful”? Well, it could be a busted flush draw. It possibly could be a five that spiked on the river and now our adversary is going for a fairly wimpy value bet. It could be a king, almost certainly with no kicker. It could be a hand like T-9. Or it could be a hand like Q-9 that spiked on the turn.

Bottom line is that I think you’re ahead a decent percentage of the time here, and I think you’re behind something like a K or a Q or even possibly a 5 fairly often also. That river bet is just small enough and my opponent has shown just enough weakness (and propensity to play like a nutbar) that I don’t like folding the river.

If you call, you’re going to get shown a better hand a lot, but you only need to win about 30% of the time. In my experience these flaky, small time betting patterns are total air quite frequently and busted draws some time more than that.

But when my opponent shows weakness like he did on the turn in this hand, I tend to attack it. To attack in this hand, I like a turn checkraise followed by a river barrel. The turn checkraise is semi-value/semi-bluff. It’s one of those weird two way bets where you’ll get called by weaker hands (mostly draws), and you can also bluff out better hands. The bluff aspect will be especially effective after you fire the river barrel.

This show of force will work quite often against someone who bets 1/5 pot on the turn like your opponent did here. That bet just shows a weak range in this game, and getting to see that weakness is one of the upsides to using the passive line out of the gate.

Having said all that, I tend to bet the flop on hands like this one. Your hand is generally strong enough that your bet will get some value, and in a relatively straightforward playing 50NL game, you significantly reduce the chances that you’ll end up getting bluffed off the best hand.

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