Playing the blinds with a good (but not great) hand

Id like to start a discussion about a fairly common situation that I feel like Ive never really understood fully. This hand crops up time and time again, and playing it well or badly must have a huge effect on peoples long term winrates. Im going to start this fairly vague and see where people take it. Hopefully it will generate some discussion that will, at the very least, be useful to me.

We are in the big blind. It's folded to the button who opens for 3 or 4 bbs. The button is a player with tendancies that we know, but which are a variable in the question. In each case he has a reasonably wide button opening range of say 30%+. There are 3 kinds of hands we can have.

a) Hands which are ahead of his range, and he will call a reraise with worse. We are usually reraising for value e.g. AA.

b) Hands which are bad enough that calling and playing the hand out of position will not show a profit. In addition, we believe he will fold often enough to make a profit reraising. We reraise.

c) Hands which are strong enough to be played for a call, but if we reraise and he calls then we are crushed. This usually includes hands like KQs. These hands will be just as profitable as b hands if we reraise, however they have the potential to be more profitable if we just call.

Its the C hands that give me problems. I can profitably raise them, but that essentially turns them into a bluff. According to a number of poker books and articles hands like KQs or AJs, if played well, can be even more profitable as calling hands here, but Ive never really properly understood where it is the money comes from and as a result, Ive usually just reraised. The following questions are very vague, and the answer to most will be "it depends". Never-the-less it would help me a lot if I could get some opinions of what we are usually hoping will happen when we call these preflop. Any hand histories to illustrate the points would be great. Some general questions then:

1) According to accepted wisdom, floating out of position is usually fairly horrible so what is our general plan? Do we tend to give up the times we miss and just hope he spews into us when we hit a top pair hand?

2) If, as I suspect, we are planning on attacking some flops, do we prefer to attack dry or wet flops (this probably depends a lot on what level we think our opponent is thinking on), and do we tend to donk, check/raise or *gasp* float OOP.

3) Generally, do we make more money calling these hands preflop against people who are passive and likely to give up after a cbet when they miss, or people who are aggro and will fire 2 or 3 barrels at scarecards (like a K or Q) with air.

4) (Very) Roughly what percentage of the times that we call, miss and face a cbet do we just give up.

I know these questions are very vague, and I dont expect a comprehensive answer. But any hand histories or thoughts people could give that would give me more of an idea of where these hands are hoping to go in bread and butter situations would be very useful to me, and probably to a few others. Thankyou FTR.

Of course, this could just be a stfu and raise.

Originally Posted by Pelion

Id like to start a discussion about a fairly common situation that I feel like Ive never really understood fully. This hand crops up time and time again, and playing it well or badly must have a huge effect on peoples long term winrates. Im going to start this fairly vague and see where people take it. Hopefully it will generate some discussion that will, at the very least, be useful to me.

We are in the big blind. It's folded to the button who opens for 3 or 4 bbs. The button is a player with tendancies that we know, but which are a variable in the question. In each case he has a reasonably wide button opening range of say 30%+. There are 3 kinds of hands we can have.

a) Hands which are ahead of his range, and he will call a reraise with worse. We are usually reraising for value e.g. AA.

b) Hands which are bad enough that calling and playing the hand out of position will not show a profit. In addition, we believe he will fold often enough to make a profit reraising. We reraise.

c) Hands which are strong enough to be played for a call, but if we reraise and he calls then we are crushed. This usually includes hands like KQs. These hands will be just as profitable as b hands if we reraise, however they have the potential to be more profitable if we just call.

Its the C hands that give me problems. I can profitably raise them, but that essentially turns them into a bluff. According to a number of poker books and articles hands like KQs or AJs, if played well, can be even more profitable as calling hands here, but Ive never really properly understood where it is the money comes from and as a result, Ive usually just reraised. The following questions are very vague, and the answer to most will be "it depends". Never-the-less it would help me a lot if I could get some opinions of what we are usually hoping will happen when we call these preflop. Any hand histories to illustrate the points would be great. Some general questions then:

1) According to accepted wisdom, floating out of position is usually fairly horrible so what is our general plan? Do we tend to give up the times we miss and just hope he spews into us when we hit a top pair hand?

2) If, as I suspect, we are planning on attacking some flops, do we prefer to attack dry or wet flops (this probably depends a lot on what level we think our opponent is thinking on), and do we tend to donk, check/raise or *gasp* float OOP.

3) Generally, do we make more money calling these hands preflop against people who are passive and likely to give up after a cbet when they miss, or people who are aggro and will fire 2 or 3 barrels at scarecards (like a K or Q) with air.

4) (Very) Roughly what percentage of the times that we call, miss and face a cbet do we just give up.

I know these questions are very vague, and I dont expect a comprehensive answer. But any hand histories or thoughts people could give that would give me more of an idea of where these hands are hoping to go in bread and butter situations would be very useful to me, and probably to a few others. Thankyou FTR.

Of course, this could just be a stfu and raise.

Well, first, a big caveat. At HSNL most regs play between 45-100% of btns for an open. So hands which seem like optimal defending hands against a 30% opener become value 3betting hands against (an exploitably?) wide button range. e. g. KQs, even QJs KJs AJo. That really only pushes the problem back a step further though, with hands like QTo and QJo and A8s and whatnot becoming defends etc.

These postflop situations are very dynamic. Our strategy is going to change vs many opponents with identical preflop frequencies (say 40% of hands), and there are a lot of variables to consider.

a few quick pointers- I don't like donking except when my goal is to deny them a Cbet because their cbetting, callling CR frequencies and chking back frequencies play well against my specific hand. So sometimes I'll lead to avoid facing that scenario. The only flops which make a lot of sense to donk as part of a balanced strategy are ones which are great for our range, maybe JT8hh, 986dd etc. And if you do indeed decide to donk, it is probably best to eliminate check/raise and probably check/call altogether and just play 80% lead and 20% C/F or some frequency like that. cliff nots: leading sucks.

floating oop is kind of a misnomer. A pure oop float only occurs when equities are WA/WB for whole ranges. Example: btn opens we flat call 98s flop comes A44r. If the button cbets hands like 76o and A8o+ then this is a spot where we have the opportunity to float oop, but we aren't floating oop if we call K7o, since if the turn and river don't get bet we can expect to be good over 50% at showdown, and we can also turn our hand into a bluff if we think that it is going ot be better than checking. Similarly, check/call KQcc on 9c72 is definitely not an oop float, since we flop tons of equity on 17 (club/T/Q/K) turn cards where we have no intention of folding and on another 12 (8/6/5/A) we can prob bluff river if turn checks through. This same logic applies if we CR flop, since we can prob barrel on 29 turn cards + he might fold flop himself somewhere between 20-60%.

So to answer question 4, once you start to think of how to play your hand/range in a more aggressive way (we don't need pairs to continue !) you don't end up folding flops that you 'miss'. like 972, all that often, particularly against an aggressive cbettor. Even at HSNL, where players are more balanced and more tenacious, I still probably only fold a third of the time to cbets, and the bulk of those folds occur on dry boards, and another large chunk occur when I'm facing preflop min raises, where getting 3 to 1 on my preflop peel I end up playing a weaker range.

The other huge piece of the puzzle is how often can we bluff turn after a flop chk/chk. If someone bets all their pairs+draws, and checks back their air, then we can check/fold flop maybe 70% of the time to a cbet and then fire turn 100% after they check. You may also note about this last point, that we can be holding napkins to fire a turn when our opponent tells us he has nothing, which means against severely unbalanced players you can play every hand if you want to if they don't change their strategy to counterexploit you.

Originally Posted by sauce123

a few quick pointers- I don't like donking except when my goal is to deny them a Cbet because their cbetting, callling CR frequencies and chking back frequencies play well against my specific hand. So sometimes I'll lead to avoid facing that scenario. The only flops which make a lot of sense to donk as part of a balanced strategy are ones which are great for our range, maybe JT8hh, 986dd etc. And if you do indeed decide to donk, it is probably best to eliminate check/raise and probably check/call altogether and just play 80% lead and 20% C/F or some frequency like that. cliff nots: leading sucks.

Sauce - your posts are awesome.

It's interesting that you say this. I used to lead a TON and now I hardly lead anymore. Though I do think leading is good against people that check behind a lot of flops. I also think its good on boards where our value range is conceivably wide, but where a c/r reps like nothing (ie: 943ss - A c/r here in terms of value doesn't rep too much, but a lead can be very wide (all 9x+, FDs, combos) - also gives us a chance to continue on a lot of turn cards).

How do you feel about the flop c/c, turn lead lines, vs players that pot control turns a lot? I also like this line sometimes, because it looks kind of BS so people will float the turn bet, and their river range when you check and give up initiative again is very wide with a lot of air.

i think leading can be good, but it creates a lot of balance problems. check/deciding turn auto balances, and i think it makes our opponent's hand easier to read in some ways.

leading turn is a bit weird because it forces us to eliminate turn c/r and river c/r from our game almost completely, and it becomes really difficult to balance ranges on the river as well. for that reason i find that it's sort of impractical, specially since game theory suggests we probably don't lose a ton by checking everything on the turn.

This is a great post. Thanks. That at least puts me on the right track to figuring out these spots.

So generally, im playing on if I catch *anything*, where anything can be backdoor draws + an overcard or something but im still usually folding if I dont (player dependent obv).

im really happy for sauce's posts and imma let him finish, but 'dont be a pussy' is one of the best pieces of advice of all time

One thing I didn't see addressed in Sauce's post: Often people have much wider calling ranges to 3bets in position than OOP. Even vs a 30% BU opener, 3betting hands like KQs or AJs will not be turning them into a bluff even though technically these hands will have better equity against his opening range than his 3bet calling range. Other factors such as being able to bluff more easily when we miss postflop, fold equity preflop, and metagame of 3betting more often (especially at lower stakes) can sway our decision to 3bet rather than call.

Amazing post sauce. thx

Can you give your thoughts on following common occuring theoretical spot:

We are PFR with the lead, outofposition, in HeadsUp pot, vs default mt 24/20 reg, or actually anybody for that matter (like COvsBU or SBvsBB etc, i know ranges change slightly, but they are relatively wide anyways) and we end up having a medium-strong showdown value hand (either on the flop or on the turn):

1) EX: we open AJ on CO, BU ccalls, flop comes KJ2ss, we cbet he calls, turn bricks off (3o), we - ???
what are our thoughts/general strategy in this spot, how often should bet bet, and if we bet, do we bet and ch-fold rivers or chcall rivers some % time? how villians tendecies should change in order to create an appropriate strategy with these medium SDV hands oop with the lead?
I feel kinda dirty when i Cbet this hand (2nd high pair, good kicker type) and C/C turn to ch-fold river, or ch-fold the turn to a big "float" bet

2) we Open QQ in SB vs BB and flop comes K73ss or K86r - again, we have medium sdv hand, that is probably worth 1, maybe 2 bets of value at best, but we are OOP for 3 streets.

3) How often should i Check AJ on KJ4 right on the flop oop, or QQ on Kxx or Axx to induce bets from opp (i think i end up C/C ch-folding, or C/C C/c ch-folding too often in these spots), or eliminate 1 street by trying to potcontrol OOP...

I`m always lost and find these common spots extremly difficult

lance- too vague. as a default you should probably bet bet chk/call the AJ and check/bet/bet the QQ

hehe, i understand that the answer is prob a bit too long

maybe if you have a free time sometime, you could write sort of an article about this spot, would be awesome

All this talk about leading or not leading the flop seems like a good opportunity to ask something I've been wondering about for a while...

Two situations:

1) We open in the CO, button calls, blinds fold.
2) Button opens, SB folds, we call in the BB.

Standard advice seems to be leading lots of flops (and turns) in (1), compared with almost always checking to the raiser in (2). Can someone explain why, referring only to position and ranges after the flop?

(I understand the difference in ranges between the two situations, but not why it implies the difference in strategy.)

in 1 we have the initiative and a stronger range than the caller on most boards so we bet

But in 2 we also have a stronger range than the raiser on most boards, don't we? (To be more concrete, maybe someone's stealing 50%+ on the button and our 3 bets are polarized, then our calling range is pretty strong).

"Initiative" isn't a reason for anything! I've seen it in lots of expert posts so I think it must be a code word for something I don't understand and everyone else does. The pre-flop action tells us what our range and their range are going to the flop, but aside from that it is in the past (from an equilibrium strat pov; obv it affects opp tendencies).

I'm guessing something like: "the difference between 1 and 2 is that in 1 our range is wider than theirs so we should be more aggressive and in 2 our range is narrower than theirs so we should be more passive"?

robin- you're underestimating the value of having JJ-AA in your range with a high frequency, as well as AK to a lesser extent, and ofc this depends on board texture. most of your profits in hold em come from the top 2% of hands, so when you're range doesnt contain the top 2% very often, you are kind of treading water even if his range is wide

Ah ok, that sounds pretty convincing, I'll have to think about it a bit. Thanks!

wow sauce you should write a book

robin, here's a typical example from hu nlhe.

say the button raises with 100% of hands and gets called by a BB playing 34/12 (3betting 12%).


Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

616,686,285,600 games 485.175 secs 1,271,059,484 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 42.137% 40.75% 01.39% 251288103876 8562370222.00 { random }
Hand 1: 57.863% 56.47% 01.39% 348273441280 8562370222.00 { 88-22, A9s-A2s, K9s-K8s, QTs-Q8s, J7s+, T7s+, 98s, 86s+, 76s, AJo-A7o, KJo-K9o, Q9o+, JTo, T9o }


I think it's a bit counterintuitive that the BB has only a 5.7% equity edge in this situation, especially since in my assumptions I had the button playing 100%, and the BB playing a tight 22%.

equity wise these 22% hands don`t do that well vs random hands, but they play much better postflop wise, like "flopability", since we flop much more guthsots/SDs/bdfds/FDs to play back at villians Cbet etc and flop stronger pairs to get to SD, so looking at pure hot and cold perflop equity is probably not correct here

You also have to remember that if someone raises 3x otb and you are in the bb you're getting over 2:1 on a call. Think about how many hands you can win with postflop 33% of the time. Then think of some of the even worse hands you can have that may not be profitable in a vacuum, but can add EV to your entire range therefore making them profitable. This is basically how you decide what to call.

Originally Posted by lancelott_

equity wise these 22% hands don`t do that well vs random hands, but they play much better postflop wise, like "flopability", since we flop much more guthsots/SDs/bdfds/FDs to play back at villians Cbet etc and flop stronger pairs to get to SD, so looking at pure hot and cold perflop equity is probably not correct here

yea for sure, but playability generally gets overestimated relative to other factors in the literature/vids etc etc.

Hmm, interesting stove, thanks again sauce. I guess I'm nitty calling from blinds which is why I always give myself credit for a strong range - it looks like the higher stakes folks (esp. HU, obviously) play more hands and 3-bet bluff less than me. Dunno if this implies anything about how I should play in my 50NL 6-max games though?

i think the phrase hot and cold equity is opponent dependent and vs someone like sauce youre not going to get as much extra value out of your 'playable' hands as you expect

I don't agree with leading being bad. I think its perfectly fine in any spot where you want to see the turn for w/e reason (i.e. you have a lot of backdoor draws), but don't believe a c/r is profitable, and don't want to c/f. I think its also often the optimal play with weak flush draws and gutters, because you don't really want to c/r them, but you don't want to c/c and face barrels either. By donking flop and turn you get essentially free cards and two chances to take the pot down, instead of having to c/c c/f and having little chance to win the pot. It's also pretty easy to balance too because there aren't a ton of combos of such hands.


One thing I wanted to clarify in pelions original post is that its not so important that the c) hands be "more profitable" calling. They only need to be profitable, period. Everytime you 3-bet a call hand, it takes up a combo slot in your 3-bet bluff range that could have been otherwise occupied by a crappy hand you are now folding.

Originally Posted by Renton

One thing I wanted to clarify in pelions original post is that its not so important that the c) hands be "more profitable" calling. They only need to be profitable, period. Everytime you 3-bet a call hand, it takes up a combo slot in your 3-bet bluff range that could have been otherwise occupied by a crappy hand you are now folding.

This kind of comment inevitably leads to the standard debate, "is it better to 3bet KJo or T4ss?"

Yes, as immediate fold equity becomes a smaller proportion of the profitability of the 3-bet, the equity matters more and more. However, pelion's post presupposes that "These hands will be just as profitable as b hands if we reraise," and given such a condition what I say is true.

renton- when you're takling about leading you are probably overestimating the frequency of facing a barrel on the turn, underestimating the value of not facing a barrel on the turn, and overestimating the value of firing multiple barrels when our lead is called in position.

also, what do you mean by 'leading is often the optimal play with ... '?

Sauce, maybe I am. I should add that I play in mid stakes full ring games, and people tend to play pretty terribly to leads there. Vs good aggressive opponents leading might not be as great, and I find it to especially be bad vs people prone to raise the donk instead of call.

By optimal play I mean I think it's as profitable or more than c/cing or c/ring, and often better for your ranges as well (i.e. prevents you from having a super weak c/c range).