Hand of the Week: The Nut Pole

Thanks to everyone who’s participated in the Hand of the Week so far. Today’s post deals with playing top pair on the turn.

Hero is UTG+2 with a $2500 stack, and most of the table covers. Action folds to Hero, who opens to $30 with 8s 7s. The hijack, button, and SB call.  For discussion of the preflop action, see this post.

Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. Hero checks. Button checks. For discussion of the flop action, see this post.

Turn ($118 in pot) 7h 6d 3s 3d. Action checks to Hero. Now what?

If you know your opponents are seeing the flop with wide ranges, and then you watch everyone pass up multiple opportunities to put money into the pot, your first thought should not be “Better be careful, what if someone has a monster?!”
Remember how eager everyone was to bet our 8s 7s on the flop? For the same reasons, it’s safe to assume that most bigger pairs, 7s with better kickers, etc. will have bet by now. The logical conclusion here is that our Villains are more or less capped at marginal hands weaker than Hero’s.

Moreover, Hero has plenty of viable bluffing candidates, from turned flush draws to weak, unpaired overs like Jack- or Queen-high. Thus, Hero can start betting big with a polarized range to put pressure on those weak bluff-catchers, and believe it or not, 76 is strong enough to go into the “nut pole”.

It’s not impossible for someone to have a huge hand, which is why we’re not going to make some massive overbet of the pot. Facing a large but reasonably sized bet, though, your opponents will be forced either to pay off with many hands weaker than 87 or fold often to your bluffs. Either way, you win.
If you think you can guess which they’ll do, great. Go ahead and exploit that. Bet your 87 and not your bluffs or vice versa. Checking both for fear that your opponents will somehow call you down frequently and also be ahead of 87 is simply wrong.

It’s not relevant that 87 is a less nutty hand than, say, A3. Whether you are ahead 60% or 90% or 100% when called, you’d still prefer to make the largest bet that you can.

Results and next discussion point coming in the next post.