This hand also illustrates how powerful a committing raise can be to an observant opponent. If you pick up on an opponent that plays reasonably well you can probably pick a spot like this to run a bluff on them by raising the flop and betting the turn. They have to fold almost anything less than trips in a spot like this. Conversely, if they are willing to get all-in here(thus committing too easily) you have quite of bit of implied odds and you should play accordingly.

Paired boards are good to pay attention to because many players play them incorrectly.

It is an interesting hand you have here. I think this hand illustrates how important it is to have a “baseline” read on your opponents. Let me tell you what I mean by that.

What hands does a player with these stats call with preflop? How aggressive is a player with a 1.5 aggression factor? You want to have a general assumption you make so that you have some idea how you want to go forward with the hand.

Most players have done this with preflop, but with postflop aggression(which is often a more important consideration) they seem to leave it out. At least this is what I often see on twoplustwo.

I assume that this player would have 3-bet AA-JJ so those are a discounted part of his range. I assume that a player with a 1.5 AF still plays pretty straightforwardly. If he raises he probably has you beat. He probably doesn’t raise draws and prefers to call them. He probably plays one-pair type hands fairly cautiously.

So, if you go with that as a read then your play on the flop is probably to bet/fold. He may sit by and call with any PP or TP that is in his range but he will probably rarely raise without a better hand(keep your eye on him though as many players will often play overly aggressive on paired boards).

The size of the stacks are very important here though. If he has an 80BB stack then his raise puts you to a commitment decision. You would have bet 6 into a pot of 8(so you have put 10 which is more than 1/10 of the starting stacks0) If he raised to 26(a pot-sized raise) then you shouldn’t call and then fold. You don’t want to be putting in 1/3 of your stack and then folding. You have to make your decision on whether or not you want to get all-in on the flop. I don’t imagine you want to get all-in so the play is to fold.

Look at it another way. Say the turn is a brick and you check and he bets 3/4’s the pot(assuming he raise to 26 then that is a bet of 30BB with him having 20BB behind). Are you calling here? If you are calling here you certainly are calling the river.

I find it is important to think about what my reasoning should be for calling. What I mean by that is if you call the flop you have to be thinking your opponent has a worse PP or TP often enough to call. If the turn is a brick then nothing has changed(unless you think your opponent won’t bet twice with a worse PP) and you should call because you called the flop. If you call the turn you are certainly calling the river getting those odds. You can see how quickly you get yourself locked in here.

So as far as the specifics of your hand, it really depends more on the stack size, but you probably will need to just fold the flop here. Most of the time an A isn’t coming on the turn and you will have to fold anyways which means that your flop call was probably a mistake(depending on the raise size and the stack size).

I had KK and open-raised 4xbb. A 20ish/13/1.5 (IIRC) villain called from CO. Flop was 889r. I c-bet 3/4 or so OOP and he raised me decently. Wanted to shove (wouldn’t have been able to raise and then lay it down), but it seems like everytime I do that I’m sorry.

I think A9 is probably possible as is a PP, but 1.5 AF (granted sample size wasn’t huge at < 100) makes this sort of play stand out. Can’t see him making this move with an 8 though, as why blow me out of the water there if he was way ahead? Who knows though…it is 25NL!

I don’t have the hand here at work but I don’t remember him being full but definitely more than 1/2; maybe 4/5ish stack or so? I was full. Anyhow, I decided to call flop raise and re-evaluate turn, hoping he was testing and we could keep the pot from getting huge. On the turn an A hit. I checked to him and he bet. I figured it was likely that even if I had been ahead before, I wasn’t anymore. I folded and felt like I’d completely misplayed my hand. Hate that!

I agree that taking your image into consideration is an important thing. I also agree that is important to take this into consideration when it’s close. I constructed these two hand examples because these are situations where the decision is a bit more apparent given the specific read I gave you (which I carefully constructed to work out in my favor – of course )

In the first hand, given our read that our opponent is pretty much always calling on this flop. If we thought he would fold some hands here than a bet is much better. The 30-35% number you are quoting is the amount of time that he will hit with an unpaired hand. In this case most of his range is paired so that number doesn’t help us much in this particular spot. Look at it this way:

His range is AK/AQ 99-22

There are 9 combos of AK (3 remaining A’s and 3 remaining K’s).
There are 12 combos of AQ.
There are 48 combos of 99-22(6 combos each of the 8 hands).

There is a 30% chance that he has an unpaired hand that will fold. If you bet you will get called well over a majority of the time.

Against this particular player a bet is not nearly as enticing as a check to get a free card since you will never get him to fold a better hand. True, if you change the board and/or the player the entire situation changes. *

You can see that it isn’t very close to bet this flop so. Remember, you aren’t going to get him a mistake and you aren’t going to encourage this opponent to make mistakes in the future by calling with a worse hand (if you AA in this spot he is still calling so he is still making a mistake). It is all about the mistakes. **

On the second hand the point you make is extremely true but there is one more step that you have to take though. The turn action.

Say you bet and your opponent says “Overcards are a part of his range here so I am going to make a bluff(or a semi-bluff) and try to get him off that hand”. Also, say that you know this so you think that a call is profitable. So you bet 6BB and he raises to 18BB and you call. Now the pot is 44BB and there is 78BB behind. He makes a bet of 30BB here. Now what do you do? If you call you probably shouldn’t be folding the river as that suggest you made a mistake somewhere else. Do you feel comfortable getting all of you money in? Sure, he may have been bluffing there, but will he push all of his money in on a bluff? He may. He may not. The chances are he will show up with a big hand more often than not. You can’t just consider whether or not you can profitable call here. You have to also consider whether or not you can profitably get all-in (or at the very least you need to feel confident about being able to fold to one more bet).

As you can see, if you get raised it puts you in a much tougher spot so you want to avoid a raise unless you feel confident about getting it all-in.

If your read is that you opponent is hyper aggressive then it is ok to bet the flop with the HOPE of getting check-raised so that you can then push the turn (this is assuming he is TOO aggressive and he will bluff and/or get all-in with a worse pocket pair often). However, this isn’t the guy that I am describing. He is aggressive enough to bluff but he probably isn’t going to go bet-bet after this and show up with 99 very often because he knows that once you call the flop you probably have an overpair.

* He may fold AK that is tied with you and him folding AQ is not a big gain.

** If you are betting the flop then you need to bet the turn and THEN maybe you can make him make mistakes. However, you need to have a read that your opponent will not get all-in with a pocket-pair in this spot(which a lot of opponents correctly shouldn’t). You can see that betting two streets with unimproved AKo is definitely getting out of line so you have to be sure.

At any rate, I think that we need to take a couple more things into consideration here when considering appropriate post-flop action here. I have been going back through Harrington’s book and one of the sections that I found most interesting is the section on your OWN table image. He’s saying that not only is it important to be cognizant of your opponents tendencies and hand ranges but to also consider your table image.

In the first hand, if we are assuming that this person actually has more than a giant piece of poop between their ears and in light of randomization, maybe firing a bullet at this pot to try to clean it up on the spot isn’t a bad thing. If you’re assuming that you have the best of it pre flop and that sorta flop rolls out, ::reluctant Phil Gordon citation:: there’s somewhere between a 30-35% chance that he missed that flop to. How much can it hurt to probe bet/continuation bet to see where you’re at? I’m all for giving up small pots in hopes of molding an image that will allow aggressive-tight play to pay off in future hands.

In the second hand, I’m not sure I understand the rationale here and maybe its because I’m still somewhat enamored with the concept of overpairs. You stated “we probably have the best hand at this point” and present a very narrow range of hands that this person could have. Assuming that we c-bet the previous hand and our every vigilant opponent saw this and thought to himself “that wily bastard is trying to take it down here with two overcards” would it not be a calculated risk then to possibly put this rascal on a stone cold bluff knowing that he is fully capable of raising with complete trash in this spot? I’m quite sure I follow the rationale to cough up what appears to be a pretty decent against a small subset of potential raising hands.

That is all.

Lots of good thoughts in here. Allow me to clarify a bit.

I agree that the fact that the second hand has a paired board makes the check much better. I constructed this hand because it is just a clear example where I believe a check is the most correct play, but players often rationalize betting. However, my point is not that checking this board here will give you enough randomization to fool an opponent. I am arguing that this flop is a check and that many opponents would bet it as part of a balanced strategy. I hope that clears it up.

Also, I do believe that some occasional checks with good hands, that are often correct, will tend to randomize your play more than you think. For example, when I use a randomizing strategy I often make my ‘incorrect’ randomizing play 10-25% of the time. I would guess some of these correct checks would have you making the check with a good hand percentage somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20%.

I don’t mean to say that we should often be checking the flop when we make a good hand. We should merely consider that sometimes it is the best play and that players who bet in these spots ‘for a balancing strategy’ often have some fuzzy thinking going on.

Let me know if that doesn’t clear it up or if you think I’m leaving something out!

I wanted to write some reply that would relate to the article, but didn’t really come up with anything interesting what I could say. I am a habitual continuation bettor when the flop is heads-up, but recently I’ve been spending more thought on when to not C-bet. I’ve found myself checking more low flops, since I think my bet is much more likely to be called since the opponent thinks its unlikely that I hit. If I check and the turn is a face card I get a lot more respect with a bet.

I’m not too fond of checking behind when the flop hit me, but I do see your point in inducing a bluff as in hand 2 where the opponent will bet with hands that you don’t think he’d call with.

But the second hand kind of relies on the fact that the board is paired IMO. I’d be much more inclined to bet in case there was a draw or where the opponent could have made a hand that would call but that we are ahead off. So I’m not so sure if checking paired boards with an over pair is enough of a randomization to make our opponents think that my check on a low board is not a sign of weakness.

Tell me it’s not just the picture in this one is it?

I’m starting to get addicted to your blog.