Since last I posted, it’s been a bit quiet on the poker front: I’ve been doing pretty well at 10/20 HU over a very small sample size: some player whose name I recognized 4-tabled me and I took about 14k off of him; I was playing very good poker and running pretty well. This morning I saw a short-stack specialist I’ve played against in the past and played some 100/200 vs him; it didn’t go well, i lost 3 shortstacks (4k each), and was getting ready to call it a day when I got a new opponent at 10/20. I played, won 7k, and he left. That’s the cliff’s notes, but who cares about 10/20 results right? Instead, I’m going to show you a hand that I think illustrates very nicely the idea of working through an opponent’s range and perception of your range and how they relate to the board texture.
Full Tilt Poker $10/$20 No Limit Hold’em - 2 players - View hand 536784
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN/SB): $11048.00
BB: $2080.00
Pre Flop: ($30.00) Hero is BTN/SB with 9
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Hero raises to $40, BB raises to $140, Hero raises to $380, BB calls $240
Flop: ($760.00) K 7 6
(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $320, BB calls $320
Turn: ($1400.00) 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks
River: ($1400.00) K (2 players)
BB bets $1380 all in, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $1380
Final Pot: $4160.00
Hero shows 9 9 (two pair, Kings and Nines)
BB shows 8 T (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
Hero wins $4159.50
(Rake: $0.50)
Now this is not an easy river call; my opponent is likely jamming every better hand for value and there are a lot of combinations of full house and flushes he could have, so I had to think to myself what my hand looked like to him and what his range was. My range here was very wide: I’d been 4betting a lot because my opponent had a 32% 3-bet percentage and did not often 5-bet bluff. Because of this, I would 4bet him very wide for value with hands that are very playable postflop that make good top-pairs such as JQ and TJ as well as pocket pairs that I thought dominated a lot of his mid-suited connectors such as 88 and 99.
Now, as a result of my wide 4-betting range, I thought that he would bluff the turn a lot of the time and when I just call, my hand sure looks like it’s got some showdown value. A hand like 99 or AJo (which I would definitely call the turn with against this opponent). So I wasn’t quite sure what level villain was on; would he try bluffing me off a marginal made hand? The river made his value range significantly wider; while it made combinations of Kx less likely by putting another K up, it also made the backdoor flush so now any hearts he may have would be jamming: yes, it’s a double paired board but that second K actually reduces the combos of Kx I can have, so if he has a flush he should jam because I may call with a hand like 99 and very rarely have him beat (especially if he assumes, which he should, that I would jam a 7 but may call with a rag K on the turn since the 7 is less likely to be drawing dead vs his value bet/call range than a hand like KJ would).
So the river seemed to make him more likely to bluff because he could rep a flush as well as a full house, but it also increased the chance he had a better hand than mine. So I had to start thinking about what his range was. His 3bet percentage was 33.3 and his fold to 4-bet was only 30.8, so that means he had 60.2% of the top 33.3% of hands in his range for continuing against a 4-bet; that means about 20% of hands. But since he jams most of his big hands, we can discount those. Now it so happens that he 3bet/called with suited connectors on a few occasions and I hadn’t seen him 3bet random Ax hands, so his 20% of hands range was more skewed towards middling cards and suited Ax than just Ax. This is important because it vastly increases his bluffing cards; if he had A9 (non-spades and non-hearts) he probably wouldn’t lead the turn because he’s got showdown value and few outs if called whereas people semibluff more when they have outs. So the drawy nature of the board combined with the fact he could have TONS of draws that he’s leading with made me think he was bluffing.
When the river made the flush, I figured he could easily have me beat, but I didn’t think he would play spades any different from hearts; he would probably go for the check/raise on the flop and then double barrel me. Since there are more combos of spades than hearts (there are 3 hearts out and only 2 spades), I figured that even if I gave him a 7 or K for a full house from time to time all those spades combos would neutralize his hearts combos. And since if he can have a 7 it would have to be a suited connector and he would thus be able to have hands like 45, 58, 9T, 8T, etc., there were just too many combinations of possible bluffs for me to fold getting better than 2:1. So, I called and won. Yea!
EDIT: One last point; in analyzing this hand, I misread the hand history and thought I had checked the flop. This confused me because I remember at the time thinking that I could rule out a K because he’d have check/raised the flop with it (I’d seen him c/r JQ on Jxx after calling a 4bet so assumed he would do the same with a K), so at the time I played the hand I (obviously) realized I’d bet the flop but when analyzing it I just had a brainfart. I think everything in my original post is still true except for the part “I probably have a hand with some showdown value but not enough to bet the flop.” Thanks to Andy for catching that
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