RedChipPoker+Late+Position+Chapter+7.pdf

Hands

 Tur  Turning ning a Medium Pair Pair into a Big Bluff (Villain’s flaw)

(Difficulty rating)

(Hero’s exploit)

Great hands and terrible hands are easier to play than other hands. If I  were dealt 27o every hand, then all night I would only lose the blinds. If instead I was dealt AA every hands, I would make a killing, and it would be relatively easy. However, give me lots of playable hands hands that keep making middle pair, and I am going to have a very difficult evening of decisions.  These decisions will either lose me a lot of of money or build up my stack. Learning to play middle strength hands can take a good player to great.  A middling pair can be bet for value, turned into a semi-bluff, folded to aggression, or brought to cheap showdown. showdown. Assessing the relative merits of these basic plans is a complicated yet important poker skill. $1-$2  Venetian Friday 9:00pm UTG+1 Cutoff

Image:

Action:

Hand:

Starting Stack:

Predictable  TAG Hero

$10/Call

Covers

$31

$261

Regardless of the day and time, there are good tables, and there are bad tables. This table had been degrading quickly and was turning into a nit fest.  We already have talked to the floor, asking for a table change when this hand comes up. The early position, predictable TAG open-raises and covers our $260 stack.  The Villain is a TAG player both pre-flop and post-flop. His ranges and actions are predictable, and we do not expect much creativity from him. We have been at this table for about two hours, and over that time he has faced a few three-bets pre-flop and he has folded against each of them. So right now we decide to turn our T8s into a semi-bluff three-bet to try and fight for the pot. Before three-betting here, we should think about a few things. First,  what did he likely open-raise with from UTG+1? Well, we had seen him open-raise from early position earlier in the session with 33 and stack a fish 49

Red Chip Poker: Late Position

on a T93 board. Given that information, we can likely assume that he openraises from EP with hands like 22+/AQ+ or 22+/AJ+/KQ. That is something between 8% and 11% of hands. We can just average it to a 10% range. Secondly, how often would he fold if we three-bet pre-flop? We have seen him fold to a few three-bets already, and given his general player type,  we can expect he would only really continue with stronger hands. If we assume he would continue with 99+/AK, then he continues, either by fourbetting or calling, with 3% of hands. We would always rather he fold preflop, but if he is going to give action, we would rather he call than four-bet.  When he calls, we get to actualize some of our equity, whereas when he four-bets we will likely have to fold (unless we get a read or great information). If he open-raises 10% of the time and only continues 3% of the time, then we can expect him to fold about 70% of the time pre-flop. The necessary breakeven percentage looks like this: BreakEven% = $RISK/($RISK+$REWARD) BreakEven% = $31/($31+$10+$3) = 70%  Villain folds about 70% of the time, so we are at our breakeven point.  Were he to fold more often than we expect, we would do better than breakeven immediately. Very reasonable questions to ask here are: Why bother  with this bet? Will this increase our swings for no reason? Should we wait for a better spot?  There are a few reasons for marginal bets like this. Being bored is not one of them.  A moment of philosophy here: Typical bad players slowplay their big hands to disguise them among their poor hands. They often lose with these premium hands because more opponents are in on the hand. When they do  win, it is a smaller pot because it was not played aggressively.  We take a different philosophy: Disguise your big hands by raising  with more junk hands. We assure you, bring a hand like this to showdown to win a big pot and you will get plenty of action with your premium hands later.  The other thing to think about is that this bet is break-even immediately .  The formula from before is assuming that the reward is only what is in the pot right now. If Villain calls, we go postflop with position, initiative, skill, and some equity with our cards. We would much prefer to have a blocker hand like Ax or Kx, but sometimes you do mix in less ideal three-bet light hands. Playing a hand like this is rather optional. You only need to do it every a couple of times a session. If they see this hand from you at showdown, your opponents will remember it the next time you raise and they hold 50

Hands

something like Q9o. Even though they are out of position and easily dominated, there will be doubt in their minds. They will more likely make a mistake by calling out of position with their poor hand. Truth is they should never have been in the hand in the first place and now they have compounded their error.  What about the rest of the players? The players behind us, on the Button, and in the Blinds are a mix of nits and TAGs, neither of which we expect to get out of line. We also do not think that the TAG will four-bet each time with even his premium pairs, so we do expect to see the flop a reasonable amount of the time when we raise. If he does not raise, we will see a flop versus his range. The following chart shows our hand and the range that we estimated he would give us action with:  vs. 99+/AK  All-in pre-flop equity Best hand on flop 24%

10%

 T8s has 24% equity versus 99+/AK and will have the best hand on the flop 10% of the time.  We will always fold to a four-bet. If Villain would always four-bet KK+, that means if he does not, then we are doing better than we thought  when he only calls because his range does not have AA and KK in it anymore. This means he comes in with a weaker range, which has more unpaired cards. That makes it much easier for our T8s to win.  vs. 99-QQ/AK  All-in pre-flop equity Best hand on flop 30%

17%

 We do not know how he will play this, so we need to go with the more conservative assumption that he has 99+/AK here.

Predictable TAG

Pot: $65

Range:

Starting Stack:

Check/???

99+/AK

Covers

(UTG+1)

Hero

$38

$230

(Cutoff)

51

Red Chip Poker: Late Position

 This is a low paired board. If we analyze the texture using 99+/AKs in Flopzilla we see that his range is an overpair 90% of the time and misses  AK 10% of the time. We can also figure out the breakeven percentage using the same formula as above: BreakEven% = $RISK/($RISK+$REWARD) BreakEven% = $38/($38+$65) = 37%  We see our bet of $38 needs folds 37% of the time to breakeven. If we assume that he would never fold an overpair here and would always fold  AK, then our bet is not outright profitable. We are behind and unlikely to catch up. Are we crazy? Why would we bet into this range? Let us think ahead to the end of the hand. If the Villain calls the flop, he has a pair. He likely thinks we have an overpair too, possibly AK. We three-bet pre-flop, so we very well could have the bigger pair. There is only one way for his pair to improve: catch a set to make a Full House. There are lots of very scary overcards that can come and weaken his hand. We are playing a game of Chicken right now. What is going to make us win? What  will make us lose? Helps Hero win

Overcards  Villain thinking we have a bigger pair from beginning

Helps Villain win No overcards come

Hitting a set

 What would the TAG do if he check-called the flop with JJ and the turn was a King? What if he check-called the flop with 99 and the turn was a Jack? Not only does the overcard scare him, but so does us holding a higher pocket pair. With our three-bet pre-flop, a bigger pocket pair seems  very reasonable.  A tighter player, like a nit or TAG, rarely wants to get involved in a huge pot with second or third pair. Of course, if we had any history or had gone to war against each other, that would influence things. Up to this point, however, we had been staying out of each other's way. We do not think he will want to call turn or river bets on cards that push his flopped overpair down to second pair.  We are not getting enough folds right now to make this flop continuation bet outright profitable. But, by looking ahead, we see that a decent chunk of cards can be good for us. For instance, we could bluff on an overcard. We would prefer to bet on an Ace rather than a Jack, because an Ace applies pressure to hands like 99-KK, and a Jack only applies

52

Hands

pressure to 99 and TT. Keeping in mind that we have a Ten in our hand –  which blocks the combos of TT from six down to three – betting on a Jack  would only apply pressure to nine combinations of hands. Here is something interesting to consider:

 Turn

99+ is not overpair or set

% of this or higher card on turn

90%

8%

70%

17%

50%

25%

30%

34%

 This means if we bet on a turned Jack, we can expect about 30% folds. However, if we bet on a turned King we can expect about 70% folds. If we make a two-thirds pot-sized bet on the turn, then we need 40% of folds to breakeven. We can expect that 40% fold rate if we bet any Queen, King, or  Ace on the turn. Again, this makes the assumption that he will actually fold those second pairs on the turn or river. If he would not fold second pairs at any point in the hand, there is no real reason to even bet the flop.  We also know that a Queen, King, or Ace will hit the turn 25% of the time. To recap, we will win on the flop about 11% of the time. For the times Villain calls the flop, we will be able to win a profitable chunk of the time on 25% of turns. That is good. Unfortunately, we are also going to double barrel into an overpair some of the time.  This barrel-on-overcards plan relies on a set of assumptions: • • • •

 Villain’s open raising range from early position  Villain’s call vs. four bet vs. fold range  What range he would check-call on this flop How his flopped overpairs would react to a second barrel

If any of these assumptions are off, it will change the expected value of our play significantly. Against a TAG, these are fair assumptions. We doubt a TAG is going to check-raise the flop with 99-QQ types of hands if he just called them pre-flop. We doubt a TAG is going to love facing a committing turn bet if we three-bet/continuation bet/commitment bet on a scary turn

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Red Chip Poker: Late Position

card. We assume that when a TAG does not love something, he is likely to just fold and back away.  That all being said, this is not the most profitable play ever. While we can contend for the pot on certain turn cards, we will also pick up some equity on other ones. For instance, if the turn is an Eight or Ten, we then pick up two outs to a Full House going into the river.  A single pair only really helps against the Villain’s 99 holding and then, only against the Tens. There are some very sneaky backdoor flush and straight possibilities. We likely cannot bet those backdoor equity cards since they are not scary unless they are the face cards of Clubs. Backdoor equity is always nice to have and pays the best when it gets there. No amount of hand reading can help Villain’s KK when we hit a backdoor straight after three-betting pre-flop with a suited one-gapper like 8Ts.  TAG calls the $38. Pot: $141

Predictable TAG

Check

Range:

99+/AK

Starting Stack:

Covers

(UTG+1)

Hero

Check

$192

(Cutoff)

 The turn is an Eight, giving us a medium strength pair. But against the range of hands we thought the TAG would call our continuation bet with (99+) our pair of Eights does not do anything but give us two more outs.  We do not have any showdown value right now. Once the TAG checks we only have two options: check or bet. A bet does not really do anything here other than put more money in when we are a huge dog to improve. A bet on the turn would make our hand into a bluff. This is only valuable if we expect villain to fold often. So if we think  Villain can fold his 99+ here often enough, then fire away. But if we think  Villain will not be folding those overpairs, then check behind and try to improve for cheap or pick up a great bluff card. Pot: $141

Predictable TAG

Check/???

Range:

99+/AK

Starting Stack:

Covers

(UTG+1)

Hero

$106

$192

(Cutoff)

 The river is an Ace of Spades, putting up an overcard and also filling up the backdoor flush draw. If we recall the chart from earlier we see that an  Ace pushes 90% of a 99+ range down to second pair. 54

Hands

 The Ace is a great card that applies a massive amount of pressure to the majority of Villain’s range. The TAG has a very realistic story he can piece together. We three-bet with AK. We continuation bet on the flop. We then gave up on the turn only to hit a miracle on the river. Villain can hate himself for letting us get there and lament checking the turn. Someone with reasonable hand reading skills will be able to come up with this theory and possibly fold because of it. How deeply can the TAG think? For instance, if we did in fact have  AK or AQ, would we take this line and bet $106 on the river? Would we choose a different size on the river? Would we maybe just check behind because the bet on the river is not likely to get action from any worse hands? How well we expect the Villain can think about this hand influences how many levels of thought we need to consider. In this hand we decide to bet the river for $106, going just a hair over the $100 price-point. This is a big, healthy bet and one that does not offer  Villain a good price to try and hero call us. If the Villain is going to call us  with a bluff catcher, he needs to be right at least 43% of the time. If we can expect 90% of folds from Villain here, then this is a hugely profitable bet. If  we can even just expect 75% of folds, this is a hugely profitable bet. In fact, if you have never looked at the expected value of this hand, let us assume  Villain would fold 75% of the time here: Expected Value = (0.75 * $141) for the 75% he folds or $105.75 Expected Value = (0.25 * -$106) for the 25% he calls of -$26.5  Total expected value = $105.75 – $26.5 = $79.25  You cannot ever complain about a bluff that wins you $80 on average. It is even more if you expect more folds.  These perfect bluffing cards are improbable, but you should be looking for them. The more you run this kind of math away from the table, the easier it becomes to recognize them at the table. For example, the perfect bluffing card might be an Ace on the river, or it might be a fourth club bringing in a flush that devalues all other hands. Watch for these kinds of spots and then do something about them. Many players are tempted to think their pair of Eights has showdown  value. In this case is does not. You should not make a hopeless bluff simply because it is the only way you can win. However, you should also not pass up a bluff because you have a pair. The showdown value of Eights is an illusion in this case.  Villain tanks for a while then folds.

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