Dynamic Full Ring Poker

by James Sweeney

  Bet. Betting is great when our opponent checks to us and would call with many second best hands. These boards are great against players who would call PF with a very tight range of TT+ (~3.5%). These boards allow that range to maintain overpairs, which usually want to peel at least a street on low flops. However, as our opponent’s flatv3-bet range starts to include more over cards combos (AK, AQ, KQ, etc.), the less good these boards can be as a lot of his range is folding versus a bet.

  Say we do bet for $6.5 and he calls. How we play the turn is dependent on our opponent and the turn texture. If the turn is a K and we don’t think he would ever call a bet with a second best hand, then we might check behind to induce lighter calls on the river. If we thought he were a calling station who would continue with any pair, then we should bet for value. If the turn came really dry, like a 3, we might bet again if we thought he would continue favorably. If we didn’t think he would continue in that pot size without a boat, then we might just check and induce lighter calls on the river. We notice that our decision on the turn/river is really based on our opponent and how he would tend to continue versus the turn card and his calling frequencies.

  Check. Checking is an option in special spots. Say we thought that he would fold everything but a set here, then we might consider a check. A check does get us one street closer to SD, and might induce some bluffs, lighter bets, or lighter calls later in the hand. Running into players like this is very rare. Most players, if they are going to call a 3-bet, are doing so with a range that they feel is strong and thus would peel this flop. But if we run into the kind of player who is just set mining in this spot, then we might 3-bet him more liberally PF and small CB a lot of flops (assuming that a check wouldn’t make us any value in any way later in the hand).

  We are IP and see a K94 flop

  Again, being IP gives us added flexibility, and we should use that to maneuver ourselves profitably to SD. These boards are different because they hit the big card range of our opponent (assuming that he calls those kinds of hands versus a 3-bet, which a Callv3bet larger than 20% will usually hint at), and brick more of the small pairs. We need to consider combos in these situations. If we have AA, it makes it harder for our opponent to have hands like AK here. If we had KK and our the board came Qxx, it makes it harder for our opponent to have hands like KQ. Let’s explore our options:

  Bet. If we think that our opponent is going to call with second best hands here, like TT-QQ, then a bet is going to be great here. He continues with hands like that, AK and KQ if he has them, and gives us lots of direct value. If we thought that he might fold hands like TT-QQ if we bet, then we might consider taking a different line to ensure we get value from that part of his range as well.

  Say we bet $6.5 and he calls. Our action on the turn is based on how he would react to it and his C-Range on the flop. If he would only call the flop CB with things like AK, then we should just keep betting if he would keep calling it (as most players aren’t likely to fold AK in a 3-bet pot once they catch TP). If we thought that he would peel the flop with TT-QQ and AK, and then peel the turn with it, we should keep betting for value (around ½ PSB should keep him continuing). If we weren’t sure, then checking behind the turn and inducing bets/calls on the river is usually the default. There is no reason to make a large pot if we don’t know if it’s good. However, if we know it is good and favorable, then bet as large as he would call.

  Check. Against an opponent who wouldn’t continue favorably versus a bet, we could just check here in an effort to induce and minimize loss. A bet, against a player like that, would just turn our hand into a bluff, and would be something we would want to do with JTs, not with AA. If we were to check, our standard line would be to call the turn bet and feel the river. If he checked the turn, then we would bet if we thought he would call favorably, or check again if we think the turn bet wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  Playing these spots is usually quite easy with regards to range. Most good players rarely flat 3-bets, especially from OOP, so we don’t usually have to make these postflop decisions against difficult opponents. We usually get postflop in these spots against players who are setmining in a 3-bet pot, fish who call too liberally against 3-bets IP and OOP, or against players who peel too liberally PF IP. Once we can adequately put our opponent on a range of hands and logical actions with those hands, our line selection is simple. Bet if we think they continue with second best hands, check if we think we might be behind a lot, check if we think our bet doesn’t accomplish anything, or check if we think a bet is useless while a check might induce favorable action later in the hand.

  The Squeezed Pot

  Squeezed pots usually don’t come up all that often, but knowing how to handle them can help the overall profitability of the play. Let’s look at two spots that usually come up:

  MP1 is a 17/15 with a Foldv3bet of 72% and opens for 3x. The CO is 12/10 and calls the raise. We are on the button with Ad5d and squeeze to 12x. It folds around and the CO calls. The flop comes off and he checks to us. Let’s look at some flops against his logical 22-QQ calling range:

  We can see that broadway card boards are bad for his range. Even just a single broadway card flop tends to miss him completely assuming he only continues versus the CB with an overpair or better. Of course, sometimes he will call a hand like 99 on a J high flop, but it usually won’t be the standard action of a 12/10 type player who plays this postflop spot fairly fit-or-fold, especially from OOP. And even if we add a 15% call buffer to every “overpair or better” C-Range on a broadway board, we are getting plenty enough folds to show profit. Couple that with the fact that broadway boards look like they should hit our 3-bet range, and these become good flops to attack.

  However, when boards get lower things start looking worse for us. On the three low card boards he is hitting an overpair or better about 50% of the time on a 9 high board, and the number just increases as the high card gets lower. At this point bluffing is usually futile. We don’t expect to get folds enough of the time on average and also represent very little. At this point we should just consider our 3-bet the potshot bluff, and cut our losses. Of course, we could always improve on the turn, but the CB itself on these boards just won’t do much more than set our money on fire. However, if we know the player would call the flop with a massive percentage of their range and only continue on the turn with a set or better, we could CB and double barrel bluff. But again, we need information for that play to be worthwhile.

  The other spot that comes up often is when we squeeze with a big hand and go postflop. Let’s take a spot where a 14/10 raises from EP to 3x, MP1 calls who is 43/9, and we squeeze KK from the CO. Only MP1 calls and we see a HU flop where he checks to us. At this point putting MP1 on a range is very difficult. He clearly falls in the P-Fish category and probably has a wide range. We will have to decipher his postflop actions to more accurately put him on a range. Usually his massive gap in VPIP and PFR, plus the fact that he has flat called twice preflop, means we can assume any aggressive actions will indicate a strong hand.

  Let’s look at a few boards that could flop:

  J96. There are plenty of hands that this player could call on this board. Hands like QJ, T9, or 88. P-Fish are notorious for calling too often and with too wide of ranges postflop. If he check/raises us we have a decision. But, would a passive player really check/raise light? Of course he would sometimes, but does he do it enough to warrant getting involved in that large of a pot? If we think not, then there is nothing wrong with bet/folding here. Our goal against these P-Fish is pretty much to VB and fold non-nuttish hands when they put pressure on us.

  A87. What does a bet here accomplish? Sure he probably calls things like 98, 76, and 65, but he also has a fair chunk of Ax hands in his range that beat us. We could check here, which opens up his calling and betting range on the turn and river, while minimizing loss against the Ax part of his range. By checking we also don’t have to worry about facing the CR which can put us in a very odd spot.


  733. This is a board that a P-Fish loves. He usually calls a very wide range with everything from 44 to AJ. We should certainly bet here and start building the pot. If he check/raises we have a decision, but there aren’t many hands that he can have that beat us.

  Pretty much our plan is this: bet if the board is good, and check if our hand became SDV (aka, on an overcard board). Of course, this is against a P-Fish and our line could change against different player types. However, this is often times how big hands happen against most players. From OOP we might check a little more often to induce bets, especially if we think our CB would get raised and we don’t know how to optimally handle it. Simply put, when in a 3-bet pot we figure out if our hand is a bluff, SDV, or value. We VB value hands if we can, try to get SDV hands to SD, and bluff bluffs if we can get enough folds to justify it. Poker is easy, right?

  15. Playing Big Hands On The Flop

  There are times, although seemingly rare, that we flop a big hand. Being that a lot of our winrate (WR) comes from maximizing our monetary gain on our winners, playing these hands optimally is incredibly important. As with anything in poker, being in position will make this much easier, but we don’t always get that luxury. So this chapter will talk about things like when to CR versus donk, bet sizing, and general plans for hands.

  The Big Hand Considerations

  We have talked a lot in this book already about considerations for different plays. Because the goal of this book is to equip you with the ability to come to an optimal play, it is important that we know what goes into getting to that decision. If we can come up with answers to these basic questions we can often times get to a correct answer very quickly. Here are some things we want to consider while deciding how to play these hands:

  Our opponent

  As obvious as this will sound, every opponent plays differently. We need to remember that just because we do X versus player A, doesn’t mean X will be the best line against player B. This is even more important when talking about our lines with big hands. Many beginners don’t allow opponents to make the mistakes they are the most prone to making. If a player has a large propensity to double barrel as a bluff, then why are we mindlessly raising our flopped sets? If a player has a large propensity to call flop raises with overpairs and fold to turn bets, why are we sizing our flop raise so small? It may seem obvious, but every play we make should be unique to the situation at hand.

  Their range

  Like always, we are focused on ranges. However, there are times when we might raise the flop knowing that our opponent might not have hit it often. We are taking the parlay that we make a lot more money at a lower frequency than making less money at a higher frequency. We can run simple $EV equations to check which line is best.

  Board texture

  In general it is going to be better to play faster on wet boards and more acceptable to play slower on dry boards. On a board like QJ9, with QJ we rarely want to flat call. Whereas if we had QJ on a QJ4 board we might be much more inclined to flat and consider raising later in the hand. This is for a couple reasons:

  Scare cards. Scare cards don’t just scare us, but they can scare our opponent. Take the QJ on QJ9. Any 8, T, K, A is a potential scare card. Even a Q or J could be a scare card to our opponent. When there are lots of these scare cards that could, and would probably, hinder good action, we usually want to consider raising sooner rather than later. Even a situation where we have 88 on an 873 board can make for a good flop raise, as slight over pairs like 99 or JJ should feel most comfortable before straight fillers or over cards hit the turn.

  Mistake potential. This couples slightly with the scare cards, but many players have a higher mistake potential on the flop than on future streets. A player with a flush draw (FD) is more likely to stack it off on a flop than most turns because their draws have more equity with two cards to come versus only one. Plus, they might brick the turn and decide they aren’t getting a good price and fold.

  What we rep. Like anything that involves hand reading, we only care about this against players that can think. Against a fish we don’t need to worry too much about what we represent. As a fish only looks at their cards and thinks about their hands strengths in an absolute manner. However, against thinking players, we need to consider what we represent. For instance, say we have 66 and the board comes 762, raising might look like we have a set. In poker, representing the hand that we have is usually not something that we want to do. We would probably flat that flop with TT or float with a hand like 54. So a raise here is most likely a set. Where as if we raised 66 on an A65 board it might look like we are attacking the A high board (as we would flat a hand like AQ). This section could ramble on about balancing and such, but just think about what we represent, and whether or not we want to represent that.

  Relative position. When considering different lines we want to consider relative position. Relative position is our position based on the preflop raiser and other players in the hand. Because our goal with big hands is to make the most amount of money, we like situations that put more money in the pot. Let’s look at a spot that should help us visualize this.

  Here we have bad relative position to the PFR. If it gets checked to him and he bets, we can CR, but it probably closes out hands from the fish in between. However, we have decent relative position overall due to the fish. If we were to donk out here, we give the fish a chance to come along and create a bigger pot size in the event the PFR raises. Even if the PFR folds to the donk bet we stand a better chance of getting more money in the pot in the long run.

  MW versus HU

  We play our big hands much differently in MW versus HU pots. In MW pots we heavily focus both on relative position and ensuring that we exploit the times that we can “sandwich” callers. In HU pots we really focus on exploiting the tendencies of the player we are against. Like usual, being IP will make everything much easier in a HU pot, whereas in MW pots relative position to everyone is very important.

  Elasticity

  How elastic our opponents are can change our bet sizing significantly. If we are in a HU pot with a set and trying to stack our opponent’s AA, we might have to finesse an elastic player. If that same opponent was inelastic, then we could simply make bigger sizes right from the beginning. Remember that our goal with big hands is to maximize value. Sometimes if we threaten a player’s stack, especially an elastic player, they shut down. So against players like that our best bet might be to aim for a slightly smaller pot. Of course bet sizing is very situation and opponent specific, but keep in mind that while getting stacks is good, it isn’t always going to be feasible.

  Pot Geometry

  When players start out they tend to use too small of sizes when they raise. While this isn’t in and of itself a leak, it can hinder our possible winnings if we do it in incorrect spots. Let’s take a situation where we have 99. We called a $3 raise from the SB and saw a HU flop on T94. We check, he bets $5 and it is our action. Let’s look at a few different CR sizes:

  CR to $10: if our opponent calls the pot will be $27. If we bet $18 on the turn and $45 (into $63) on the river we make a total pot size of $153.

  CR to $13: if our opponent calls the pot will be $33. if we bet $22 on the turn and $58 (into $77) on the river we make a total pot size of $193.

  CR to $15: if our opponent calls the pot will be $37. if we bet $25 on the turn and $63 (into $87) on the river we make a total pot size of $213.

  Again, we notice that different CR sizes make very different pot sizes by the time we get to SD. This information in a vacuum is useless though. We need to think about our opponents and how they would react to this initial size, while also considering possible actions later in the hand. For instance, if we think this player would always fold AA to a CR to $15 but that he is very likely to call it for $10, then $10 can be a better CR size. While it won’t easily allow for us to get stacks in the middle, it at least allows us to trap him into possibly making bigger mistakes later. Remember that,
in order to get someone to make a big mistake later, we need them to make the initial mistake.

  The Donk

  A donk bet is simply a bet that is made into the preflop aggressor. Donk betting is always an interesting topic. Some players swear by it, and others scoff at those who use it. Donk betting is a great bet to have in our tool kit, but understanding the optimal spots to use it can sometimes be confusing. So let’s talk about a few situations and where we might use or avoid it.

  A fish limps from EP, another limps behind from MP, and the button raises to $3 at 50NL. We call with 77 from the BB and both fish call as well. The flop is J75. Let’s look at our options:

  Check. We could check here. But if we think about logical happenings:

  We check and it gets checked through. We have almost no chance of getting stacks in the middle.