Dynamic Full Ring Poker
Page 18
We check and a fish bets. This will happen sometimes and a CR will probably get us good value.
We check and the button bets. A CR would pretty much blow the fish out of the hand. A call here might trap some callers and dead money, but it becomes a finesse situation on the turn/river. Also, the button probably doesn’t do much light betting here, so it won’t happen at a high frequency (unless his opening range is super strong).
Donk. A donk can be a great play here. Let’s look at some logical happenings:
We donk and a fish calls (everyone else folds). This is great. We can pretty much bet all the way down and have a decent chance at getting a big pot, if not getting stacks in the middle.
We donk, a fish calls, the button raises. This is also great. Now we have a decent chance at getting multiple stacks in the middle.
We donk and everyone folds. This will happen sometimes, but it just means nobody had anything and we probably weren’t making any money anyway.
We see in a spot where there are calling stations in between us and the PFR that donking can be a great play. Let’s look at another situation that comes up often. Say UTG is a TAG who raises to $1.5 at 50NL. A fish calls from MP, an unknown calls from the button, and we call from the SB with 44. The flop comes 964. Let’s look at our possible options:
Check. We could check here. Let’s think about logical happenings:
We check and the PFR bets and someone else calls. This should happen a fairly large percentage of the time. Most players who raise preflop from EP should have strong ranges on this board, and we should expect a bet often from the PFR. This check allows for a possible trapped caller, allowing more players to get “stuck” to the pot.
We check, the PFR checks, and someone else bets. This should happen a decent percentage of the time that the PFR checks. This board should hit a flat call range, and sometimes fish bluff stupidly on low boards. Again, this gives chances for dead money to get in the pot.
We check and everyone checks. This will happen sometimes, but probably won’t be the standard result. While it sucks and makes getting stacks in the middle incredibly difficult, if possible at all, it will happen from time to time.
Donk. A donk is an OK play here. Let’s look at some logical happenings:
We donk and the PFR raises. Lots of times the PFR won’t want to call and let other players come along for “cheap.” This action will probably blow out the fish and unknown. While we do get stacks from the PFR sometimes, we lose the chance of the even bigger pot.
We donk, the PFR folds, and a fish calls. This is of course a good happening, but the PFR will be getting involved often because his strong range should have hit this board a large percentage of the time. This line will probably get us paid well, but again, it won’t happen all that often.
We donk and everyone folds. This will happen sometimes, but it just means nobody had anything and we probably weren’t making any money anyway.
Both plays are valid here, but the check should get us paid more often. Again, pay attention to where the dead money is sandwiched. It should also be noted that donking sets every time would be very exploitable to opponents that are paying attention. This doesn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t still want to donk in good spots with sets, it just means we want to be aware of how face up we make ourselves against players that can hand read. We can also use this information against our opponents. There are times when regs donk in an MW pot and we can fold over pairs (or call the flop purely for implied odds) against players that only donk sets in these situations.
The Big 3-Bet Hand
Hitting big in 3-bet pots can sometimes be odd (given the way that ranges continue in these pots). Let’s look at a few examples of the spots that come up the most often (and again, most every spot can be extrapolated from these examples).
At 100NL the button steals to $3 and we resteal to $10 with J8dd. He calls and we see a HU flop. Let’s look at a few big flops we could smash:
Ts9h7s. Like always, we want to think about our opponent. If we think he flats a resteal with a very strong range, say TT+ and some AK, then we should probably just bet this all the way down. He won’t be folding any of his pairs, a CR might scare him, and this board could get ugly in a hurry. Remember that just because a spade on the turn doesn’t scare us, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t scare him. Same with an 8, J, or similar card.
If we think that he flats preflop with a range that would bluff more often, we can consider a check/call, check/raise, or even a smaller bet to try and induce a bluff. Both actions are valid against this kind of player, and again, it boils down to our reads on our opponent’s frequencies. If we don’t have any reads, defaulting on betting our big hands is the standard play.
Kd7d5d. While the K on the board is a scary card to our opponent, it is still a very wet and dangerous board. Most players tend to play very fast on monotone flops. So if we bet, and our opponent has a K, we should probably expect that stacks are going in the middle very quickly. However, whether we CB or check is again dependent on our opponent and his frequencies. If he would make more calling/drawing mistakes, then a bet is great. If he would bluff/bet like every part of his range, then checking is great.
The high card is important. A K high monotone flop is much different than a 9 high monotone flop. On the lower board we can expect aggressive players to stack in overcard+FD combos more liberally. On the K high board they don’t tend to feel as comfortable with AxQd as they would on the 9 high board. Because of this, expect players to play a 9d7d4d or Td4d3d flop much faster.
883. There is no better feeling that restealing and flopping trips. The paired board makes opponents do silly things, and our hand strength is usually totally hidden. Again, how will our opponent make more mistakes? As a default, betting is still the best play. Many players will float these boards very liberally, and call with more pairs due to the safety the flop offers. The interesting part of the play is on the turn.
What we do on the turn is the important part, and also dependent on what we think of our opponent. If we think he is a tricky and aggressive player who would float the flop a little more liberally, going for a check/call on the turn (with intentions of letting him bluff the river) is great. If we think he would only call the flop with comfortable pairs, then we should bet again and set it up so that we can shove the river. If we don’t know, just assume they will probably make more calling mistakes and bet the turn again (as we see they like calling given they called the 3-bet and the flop bet already). If the turn comes a scary card, like an A or K, that could scare most of their range, then we can use a small bet size or check and try to induce bluffs now or lighter calls on the river.
While some of this section might be a little frustrating (getting the answer “use reads on our opponent” can be frustrating when you don’t have good reads), defaulting on betting when we hit big is always going to be fine. While it might not be optimal to the exact situation, we can’t make optimal decisions without reads and good range analysis. These are things we get in time, both with experience and volume.
Let’s look at another 3-bet situation that comes up, when we 3-bet a big hand and smash the flop.
MP open raises to $.75 at 25NL, we 3-bet AA from the CO to $2.5 and only MP calls. The flop is A98 and he checks to us. Let’s break this down by player type:
Nit/TAG. This board totally whiffed them. They might have hit 88/99 sometimes (assuming they even flatted that preflop versus our 3-bet), they might have AK (although there are very few combos of it), and more often than not they have things like JJ or KK. A bet probably doesn’t induce anything, not even a comfortable call from QQ, so a bet is pretty useless. A check might induce a bet on the turn, or maybe a more comfortable call with JJ or QQ. While 3-betting and smashing the flop is always good, it sometimes sucks when we hit it so hard that there are so few combos of hands that could possibly pay us off.
LAG/A-Fish. This board probably misses them, though they do have some more AQ/AJ type hands in
their possible Flatv3bet range. Because they are more apt to make betting mistakes than calling mistakes, a check on the flop to induce some bets later in the hand can be good. It also makes our hand look like a scared QQ or KK, looking for a cheap SD, so we can sometimes induce bets on the both the turn and river.
P-Fish/Unknown. While this board probably misses them, they are a little more apt to make calling mistakes. We could consider making a small bet on the flop. This bet can get looked up a bit wider (because smaller bets are more comfortable), and can help with pot geometry later in the hand. While checking the flop is also fine, the small bet is another option that has some validity. Again, smashing the flop makes extraction difficult at times, and all we can do is make the best play given the information that we have.
Now catching top set on an ace-high board is a little different than catching JJ on a jack-high flop. Because more pairs will naturally feel comfortable on a smaller high card board, betting becomes better and better. The same as checking usually becomes better as the high card gets bigger and bigger. Of course, these are just basic default lines. Whenever we have information we should use that to create optimal lines as default lines are just for situations where we are at an information deficit.
Let’s look at one last spot in these situations. Say we raise to $3 with JJ from the CO. The button 3-bets us to $10 and we flat call. A few different flops comes off:
J63. Like always, we care about ranges. If our opponent probably 3-bet us with a very strong range of QQ+/AK, then he maintained an overpair about 50% of the time. Because it is a 3-bet pot we can expect most opponents, at 100bb or less, are going to stack those off by default. Going for a CR here would be standard. Let him CB with his overpairs, but also let him CB with his whiffed AK (about 48% of his range). This allows us a good chance at maximizing from the entirety of his range. If for some reason he is the kind of player that would check a hand like KK behind, then we could donk here, but we would need a lot of information to make that a standard action against him.
If our opponent were the type to 3-bet lighter IP, then we might be looking at a range of QQ+/AK and some bluff hands. We talked earlier in the book about “blind spots” and this is a perfect example. We don’t know if 33 would be in that bluff range, 54, or 84s, we just know it is non-premium. If we look at Flopzilla we see this:
We see his overpair range just shrunk from 50% down to 32% This range shrinks more and more as his bluff range gets wider and wider. Because of this, we can assume he would probably want to CB this board with his bluff range, and thus we face a bet from him often. But extraction is going to be harder as his bluff range gets wider because less and less hands are able to continue in a big pot. Against players like this, we might check/call the flop and donk the turn if we think they wouldn’t double barrel their bluffs. We might check/call the flop and check the turn if we think they would double barrel their bluffs often. We might check/small raise the flop if we think it would be interpreted as bluffy and induce some good action. As a default, going for a CR is fine. We would want to take the inducing lines if we knew what we were inducing. Otherwise, attacking his strong hands (which still makes up a sizable percentage of his range), is usually best without information on how he would play the weak part of his range. Again, the default with our big hands is to start making the biggest pot possible.
QJ7. If we bring the tight QQ+/AK range back to flopzilla we see this:
We see this time that there is a 10% range that beats us (QQ for a higher set), and about 40% of his range is overpairs. He will probably CB his AK using the scary board and his equity to try and pick the pot up. Against this range a CR is usually the standard line. We should get his stack about a third of the time, lose about 10% and pick up his CB a very large percent of the time. A check/call can make for lots of odd spots on the turn, including bad cards like the T that fills straight draws and cards that improve/scare his overpairs (A, K, Q, etc). Again, we could consider donking against players that would raise it with their entire range or players that might check KK behind, but information is necessary for that play.
Now, if we bring the bluffy range back we see this:
We notice that only 5.5% of the range beats us, and his overpair range drops to almost 22%. Now almost 70% of his range has whiffed. Checking becomes the best play here as we need to let him continue with his bluff hands, which dominate his range. But is this a good board to go for a check/call or a check/raise? Well most villain’s don’t tend to run complicated bluffs on these types of boards, assuming that once a player calls the flop here, in the pot size that is created, they aren’t folding. Because of this, he is relatively unlikely to bluff again, and a check/call line doesn’t really encourage further mistakes from his bluff range.
While it’s unfortunate that a CR only gets action from about 28% of his range, the other part of the range just doesn’t bluff enough of the time go for the check/call. Because the value side of his range could feel uncomfortable on certain turn cards (again, the K, the A when he has KK, the T or Q, etc.), a CR to attack the 22% of his range that we beat is probably best. If our opponent would double barrel here a ton with his bluffs, then we could check/call, check/raise turn. But again, we usually don’t have enough information to go for that kind of line.
AJ9. These flops, the definitive A high or K high flops, are always interesting when we talk about our lines on them. Let’s bring out Flopzilla first:
We see here that about 44% of his range is top pair, and about 11% of his range beats us (with AA). We can usually expect that most players, at 100bb or less effective stacks, are not going to be folding TP in a 3-bet pot. Because of this, we are in a great spot with such a strong hand. But our line here is interesting:
Check. A check isn’t a terrible play, but is he going to bet the entirety of his range? If he understands SDV, probably not. He will check hands like KK or QQ behind in an effort to get to SD ASAP. So he bets when he has AK or AA, and that is probably about it. But is the check bad? Will the check induce him to call the turn with KK, and maybe a small river bet with the same hand? If so, a turn check has some validity. We allow ourselves to make maximum value against AK and KK (assuming he bets AK), which is of course a good thing.
The bad part of checking is when he starts checking AK behind on the flop. The more often he does that, the worse checking the flop becomes. At that point we only get 2 streets of maximum value from AK, maximum 2 smaller streets of value from KK/QQ, and lose the most against AA. This is not a great parlay for us, and would veer us away from checking the flop.
Donk. A donk here can be a great play. If our opponent would check behind things like AK or KK, then a bet here is mandatory to maximize value from the largest part of his range, the AK. Yes, we might lose KK and QQ sometimes with this bet, but we almost never lose AK on the flop or later. Because checking to collect the standard CB can lose value on these definitive flop textures, we should consider donking our strong hands a little more often.
Things start to get a little different as his range starts getting more bluffs in it. And this is where blind spots can become tricky. If a villain tends to use hands like A4s or A5o our play can be much different than if he uses a hand like 54o or T6s. Let’s use a blind spot of low hands:
Now we see his top set range drops to about 6% and his top pair range drops to about 24%. A lot his range now lies in air, at roughly 47%. Let’s look at our two options:
Check. This allows our opponent to throw out a CB with the air part of his range. He can continue with his bluffs and we can allow ourselves to maximize versus that part of his range. Whether we check/call or CR is dependent on his turn actions and CB range. If we think he would continue his bluffs a large percentage of the time, then check/call the flop and check the turn is a good line. However, we most likely have no idea how he would continue with his bluffs, but we can assume that most players will not keep betting once we check/call this flop (as it is very definitive).
Donk. A donk
here doesn’t allow his bluffs to continue. It does still get direct value from AK, although there is still the chance he sometimes folds out KK and QQ. We would donk if the value lost from him checking AK behind wasn’t made up from the value of collecting the CB from his air and residual calls from KK/QQ later in the hand.
Our line here can be slightly confusing. If we donk out for $12, we almost always stack off the AK part of his range (23% of his range), which counts for a lot of value. We sometimes get two streets from hands like KK or QQ, which counts for some value as well. The issue is that we lose value from the bluff part of his range, and always stack off versus the AA (6%) part of his range. However, if we would only expect to win the CB (thinking he wouldn’t bluff the turn if we check/called the flop), we wouldn’t make enough extra value to counteract the times we don’t get stacks from AK. Because of this, our default line should actually be to donk out here, unless the bluff side of his range contorts his range so much that checking to collect the CB becomes more valuable. But if he would also bet AK on the flop, rather than checking it behind, it can make going for a CR even more valuable as we collect bets from the bluffs and still get stacks from the AK part of his range.