What’s Your Play? Small Pot, Big Hand

Thanks for all the comments on this week’s What’s Your Play? There was a lot of disagreement, which is understandable since multiple players are defensible. The important thing is your reasoning behind your choice.

Brief Comments on Earlier Streets

The nut flush draw is an extremely versatile hand, and there are a lot of options for how to play it. I see nothing wrong with betting the flop, check-raising the flop, betting the turn, etc. In fact it’s probably good to do all of those things some of the time in a heads up match. That said, I do think the hand has enough showdown value that I don’t have to turn it into a bluff on the flop, and when I believe I have a significant edge in a well-structured heads up match I’d prefer to play smallball. I’ll be checking and calling a lot of hands, so I default to playing nutted hands that way as well when I think it’s close.

There was some speculation in the comments about whether Villain will or won’t expect me to have to have the Ah based on the action so far. I don’t know, it could be either, which is I why I think it’s important to be capable of both betting and checking the turn. If I knew he’d expect one, then I’d do the other, but when I don’t know what he’d expect, I want to be balanced and do both sometimes.

What to Target?

Trentbridge summarizes the problem nicely: “how can you get him to commit more chips to the pot with such a scary board?”

Those of you familiar with my hand reading process know that I tend to group hands into one of three categories: monsters that are actively trying to build pots, marginal hands that are trying to showdown cheaply, and weak hands that can only win by improving or bluffing (and of course on the river only by bluffing). I also believe in having a target in mind when trying to get value from a hand. Villain’s range is extremely wide and probably includes all three sorts of hands, so which should we target?

Monsters – The nuts is not entirely impossible for Villain, though I think there’s a good chance he’d bet the turn with a straight flush. Of course he can’t have the Ace, so there isn’t a lot here. A player who leans a little to the passive side may get squeamish about value betting, say, the 8h or even the Th, though I think both would be good bets for him. Even if he does, he may not call a raise without a quite good heart. These are hands that would bet or call a bet. On the one hand, we might prefer betting if we’re going to bet large because our bet would be bigger than Villain’s bet, but on the other hand checking enables us to check-raise and occasionally get a much bigger bet paid off.

Marginal Hands – These are hands like small hearts or decent pairs that has some showdown value but that Villain won’t consider good enough to value bet himself. It’s an open question how many would be willing to call a bet and probably will be highly dependent on Hero’s bet size. Still, it’s clear that against these hands it’s better for us to bet than check. The only question is how much.

Weak Hands – These can’t call a bet, so if we’re going to get value from them, we have to induce a bluff. Several commenters suggest that betting could induce a bluff raise, and against a more aggressive player I’d consider that. I highly doubt we’re going to see that play with any frequency from a player showing any passive tendencies at all, so it’s better to check against this range.

Well that was fruitless. Against marginal hands we want to bet, against weak hands we want to check, and against monster hands it doesn’t make a lot of difference. Actually against monster hands I think we’re indifferent between betting big or check-raising; I think betting small would lose value from them because a slightly passive player probably isn’t value raising many hands we beat.

Or was it? Even a slightly passive player will raise a lot of hands on his button in a heads up match. He’ll also c-bet a lot of them on this flop, and check a lot of them on this turn. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he could have half the deck on the river. Five hearts are accounted for, and several are good enough to bet themselves, so there are only so many ways that he could have a marginal flush. This means that many of his marginal hands are so marginal (weaker than a flush) that they may not call any bet, and that he has a lot of complete air. Even passive players will recognize small pairs as having precious little showdown value on this board, especially given my flop call, and may be willing to turn them into a bluff.

I don’t particularly want to bet small, because it costs us a lot of value against the top of his calling range relative to check-raising. If we bet big, though, I fear it will shrink his calling range considerably. So I think it’s best to target both his few monster hands and his very wide range of weak hands by checking. A passive player may not bluff as often as we’d like, but his weak-hand range is so wide that even a somewhat low bluff percentage will result in a lot of bluffs.

Matt Glassman argues that, “this is an easy hand to talk yourself into bluffcatching with really minimal holdings, like even Q high,” but I disagree. I actually think it’s somewhat difficult for Hero to represent a bluff on the river. The only thing we have going for us is a stubborn reputation that could extent to floating flops out of position. Otherwise the flop call represents either a pair or a flush draw, which the latter got there and some percentage of the former aren’t going to feel they need to bluff. This is part of why I dislike betting big: it’s hard to balance that with an appropriately wide bluffing range, and I don’t see a lot of reason for Villain to hero call.

That said, if I were to bet, I would bet really big, probably 3x to 4x pot. This is because my primary target would be his monster hands, not his bluff-catchers, and I think those are going to be relatively insenstive to bet size. In other words, his range for calling full pot is probably quite different from his range for calling 1/3 pot, but his range for calling 3x pot may not be too different from his full pot range.

Still, I prefer check-raising to induce all those bluffs and still get a good bit of value from his monsters. There are some intangibles to check-raising as well. For one thing, I rarely check strong hands on the river, so I like the idea of strengthening my checking range when I can. For another, I often win the pot without showdown, which can confuse and frustrate my opponent even if he’s pretty sure he made the right fold. Let’s be honest: folding to a check-raise is a lot more annoying than just folding to a river bet, and makes you feel a lot more “owned”.

Swallsjr summarizes it well: “A bet will shrink his range down to value hands he can call with, where a check expands his range to include lots of bluffs based on our weak line. Also, i think our opponent’s value betting range if checked to is similar to his calling range.”

Results

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 150/300 Blinds 35 Ante (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com

SB (t29,370)
Hero (BB) (t23,130)

Hero’s M: 44.48

Preflop: Hero is BB with A♥, 9♣
SB bets t600, Hero calls t300

Flop: (t1,270) 7♥, J♥, 5♥ (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t645, Hero calls t645

Turn: (t2,560) 9♥ (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: (t2,560) K♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t1,220, Hero raises to t4,444, SB calls t3,224

Total pot: t11,448

SB didn’t show Q♥, 9♠
Hero had A♥, 9♣ (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: Hero won t11,448