Making Tough Decisions

by Andrew Brokos

You are playing a 6-max no-limit hold-em (NLHE) game with $1/$2 blinds and $200 effective stacks. One player folds, and you are next to act holding Kc Tc. You open the pot with a raise to $7, the player to your left calls, and everyone else folds. The flop comes Kh 9h 5d, you bet $11, and your opponent raises to $30.

Now what? Does he have a pair of Kings, too? If so, is his kicker better than yours? Did he flop something huge like two-pair or a set? Or is he semi-bluffing with a flush draw or a gutshot straight draw? Could he even have a worse pair or a pure bluff?

This is one of the most difficult commonly encountered situations in NLHE. You have a relatively strong hand, but not a monster. You are out of position with a lot of money behind, facing a raise that probably represents either a bluff or a hand that has you drawing to three outs or less.

I wish I could tell you that there were a simple, one-word solution to this problem. If there were nothing more to say than “Fold”, “Call”, or “Raise”, though, this wouldn’t be such a tricky situation. To find the solution, you will need more information and a whole new way of thinking about poker problems. The remainder of this article will outline a thought process and general approach to the game that will improve your results when faced with this and other tough decisions.

Know Thy Enemy
The more you know about your opponent and his tendencies, the more effectively you can handle tough situations such as the example above. Against some opponents, I’d feel confident holding T9 on that board. Against others, I’d be nervous holding a set of 5’s. The tricky part, of course, is determining whether your opponent is a rock, a maniac, a savvy bluffer, or something in-between. If you’ve been playing with this guy for years, you can probably answer this question for yourself. But what will you do with your top pair, weak kicker against an unknown opponent?

For one thing, I believe that you can very quickly form reasonably good assumptions about an opponent’s play if you know what to look for. Your read will not be rock-solid, but then again they rarely are. Poker is a game of limited information, and even slender evidence is better than none at all when you have a tough decision to make.

The first thing to consider is your opponent’s capabilities. Some players rarely, if ever, raise on a bluff. Others will never raise with medium-strength hands, and still others will usually choose to slow-play big hands like sets. Does your opponent fall into one of these categories? You can’t know for sure, but you can make a guess based on what you’ve seen.

If you have ever see an opponent slowplay, then assume that that’s how he usually plays his monsters until he shows you otherwise. If you’ve never seen him bluff, then assume he usually doesn’t. Of course all players mix it up a little bit, and the best do so often, but you’ve got to make the best decision you can with what you’ve got. Think about it this way: if your opponent plays a set one way 80% of the time and another way 20% of the time, and you’ve only seen him showdown a set once, then there’s an 80% chance that what you saw is reflective of how he usually plays. Remain open to revising your read based on new information, but don’t be afraid to act on what little you do have.

Next, try to get a read on what your opponent does and does not see. These days, the flop continuation bet is a widely practiced tactic. If your opponent realizes that you would bet at this flop with almost anything, then he may be more inclined to raise you on a bluff.

How do you know whether your opponent is familiar with continuation betting? Consider what information you’ve given him about your own play and also how he himself plays. If you’ve been betting at a lot of flops and sometimes giving up or showing down missed hands, then you should be more inclined to continue with a marginal hand when you get raised. If you have seen your opponent betting at most flops after raising pre-flop, then you should assume that he knows about continuation betting and may expect you to do it as well. Conversely, if you have seen him check and give up in a spot where most players make continuation bets, then you should be less inclined to think he is bluff-raising you since he may not realize how often you will have nothing when you bet this flop.

Knowing what your opponent sees and what he is capable of can help you make better decisions when in a tough spot. You can never get completely inside his head, but it may surprise you how quickly you can form some reasonably accurate assumptions about him once you know what to look for.

Know Thyself
That’s all well and good if you’ve had the opportunity to learn something about your opponent. However, if you aren’t sure how he would respond in the above situation, either because you haven’t seen enough of his play yet or because he is a very good player and tough to read, then you are back to square one. Your best defense will be to know your own tendencies and play in a way that prevents your opponent from taking too much advantage of your tough spot no matter what his strategy.

There are two things to worry about in a spot like the one in the example: giving up too many pots to bluffs and losing too much money to hands that dominate you. To avoid falling into either of these pit traps, you must take a step back and think about more than just how you play this particular hand. You must protect your marginal holdings with all of the other hands that you could have in a spot like this.

Since your opponent cannot see your hand, he must adopt a strategy against the entire range of hands that you could have when you bet this flop. Let’s say that based on your pre-flop raising range, a flop like this gives you one pair 20% of the time, a flush draw 5% of the time, and two pair or better 1% of the time.

Notice that if you always bet at this flop, then you are bluffing 74% of the time and KT is one of the best hands you could have. If you fold it to a single raise, then you give your opponent the opportunity to steal the vast majority of pots from you with a bluff-raise. His $30 wager will win him the $28 pot more than 75% of the time. Many opponents will not realize or take advantage of this, and against them folding KT to a flop raise would be correct. However, if you do not know what your opponent is capable of, then you take a big risk by folding a hand as strong as KT.

Defending with KT will reduce the profitability of a flop bluff raise. You can further impede such a strategy by re-bluffing. Since your opponent may also have a big hand, it would be wise to choose hands that will still have some equity when you re-bluff. One option would be to make a pot-committing 3-bet with your flush draws. This way you will further discourage bluff raising and still have some chance of winning the pot if your opponent does happen to have a set.

The opposite danger is that if you call a raise with KT, you risk drawing nearly dead against a better top pair or a set. The thing to realize is that you either got unlucky to run into the occasional set and can expect to catch a lot of bluffs in the long run, if your opponent will also bluff raise here, or you are getting away with a lot of bluffs yourself, if your opponent is only raising on the rare occasion that he flops huge. The presence of all those bluffs in your range turns your marginal hand into a strong hand, and your willingness to go to the felt with a marginal hand protects your bluffs. In short, if you want to bluff at all those pots, you will have to occasionally suck it up and pay it off with KT.

Further Application
Let’s say that you do call the raise with KT. You will still need a plan for dodging pitfalls on future streets. A similar strategy can be extended to the turn.

Once again, we aim to avoid either folding too often to bluffs or losing too much money to dominating hands. Begin with what you know about your opponent. If you’ve played with him for a while and have never seen him make multi-street bluffs, then you can confidently check and fold on the turn. If you know him to be capable of following up with a turn bluff, however, then you need to check-raise all-in with some of your range as well.

You can feel most confident doing this with a set. That means that when you bet the flop with a set and get raised, you would need to flat call, just as you would with KT. Then, when you check the turn, your opponent will not know whether you have a marginal hand that you may fold or a monster that you are itching to raise.

However, sets do not make up enough of your range to counteract turn bluffing. Thus, you should consider calling the flop and check-raising the turn with AK, AA, and flush draws.

Also think about how various turn cards will affect your equity. Perhaps you will give up even with AK and AA if the turn brings a heart and completes a possible flush draw. But perhaps you will check-shove instead of check-fold if you have Kd Td and you turn two-pair, a flush draw, or a gutshot straight draw. These hands have better equity if they run into a real hand and thus are ideal candidates for protecting the one pair hands with which you are calling a raise to check-fold the turn. Again, the thing to see is how the various components of your range work together to prevent your opponent from exploiting you with any one strategy, whether it be bluffing or fast-playing.

Conclusion
Handling tough decisions requires keen perception and the ability to think holistically and strategically. There is far more to it than how you should play any one hand in a vacuum. Learning to think in terms of ranges and limited information will help you craft a strategy for a situation, not just a hand, that will prevent your opponents from exploiting you.