Some post-flop analysis

My friend is playing $2/4 NL Hold'em 6-max on PartyPoker when he gets involved in the following hand:

The player first to act (Under The Gun), who has $827, raises to $12.

It folds to him on the button ($852 stack) with black Kings and he raises to $44, UTG calls.

The flop comes 8h 4c 2h, UTG checks, he bets $55, UTG raises to $164.

At this stage we have to try to work out a range of hands he can be doing this with. Without any reliable reads it's impossible to know whether he can be doing this with no pair and no draw, but that would be rare. I'd include some hands like AQ with the ace of hearts as possibilities some amount of the time. We also need to consider whether this player would be calling a big reraise with a low pair like 22 or 44 in the first place. Most solid players won't, so we'll just reduce the percentage chance of those showing up in his range.

So lets say his range includes any three of a kind, QQ, AQ and AJ of hearts, 56 and 67 of hearts and the AQ with just the ace of hearts. I'll also throw in a trickily played AA and the occasional low equity bluff because our opponent may be tilting or decide a bluff would work for whatever reason. I'm going to reduce the likelihood of 44, 22, AA, AJhh, 56hh, 67hh and AQ with the ace of hearts because a lot of players won't be calling with the first 4 hands before the flop and of course a lot of players will not elect to check-raise with AQ with just the ace of hearts. I'm also assuming that our opponent will always reraise with AK before the flop because that is how the cash games play online.

Now I'm going to cheat. I'll use an online software program called PokerStove to calculate our equity against the range we've given our opponent. Obviously we can't do this fast enough in the middle of the actual hand we're playing, or indeed not in live poker, but in order to be a top class poker player this is really the kind of study we should be doing away from the tables so that we have a better ability to approximate real time decisions in the future.

I can tell you that PokerStove calculates our equity against our perceived range of our opponent to be around 33%. So does this mean we should be folding to his check-raise on the flop? Well, not quite. We have to consider other factors. If we are bet/folding kings here, this means that we are bet/folding on the flop a ridiculously high percentage of the time since it's not often we're going to have a stronger hand than kings in this spot. This in turn means that perceptive players will pick up on our tendency to fold a lot and start bluffing us a lot more - and indeed, had we folded in a similar situation earlier in the session, our opponent's bluffing frequency here may be a lot higher in which case our equity would be a lot higher. So, what do we do, do we get all in with around 30% equity (we will fold out his bluffs) and take the ~$300 in the pot the few times he is bluffing, rendering us unexploitable and meaning we will be able to pick up more money later with lighter continuation bets, or do we fold, saving ourselves a small amount of money considering the hand in a vacuum?

If that was the question, we should choose the former, since we will more than make up for whatever equity we lose (assuming our range is close to accurate) later. We do have another option though of course, we can just call. When you consider that we think our opponent's range consists mostly of sets and flush draws and that we have position, this should be clearly the best play. Since our opponent has to act first, were he to miss his flush draw on the turn, it would be almost impossible for him to not still bet and commit himself to the hand, since he must imagine there is still a chance that we can fold and he still has outs to win the pot. However, now against these hands our equity is much much higher with only one card to come, in fact we'd be a considerable favourite. We can safely fold on heart turns since we think it is only rare that he should bluff the flop without hearts in his hand, and even if he only had the Ace of hearts or a different kind of hand, he is likely to have picked up additional chances to improve against our kings. So when we call on the flop, we are moving all in on all non-heart non-ace turn cards - we should fold if an Ace hits since that also connects with a large part of the perceived range of our opponent.

The reason calling is so effective in position here is that our opponent doesn't have a choice but we do; he must commit his chips on all turn cards since he acts first, whereas we get to see if we like the card to the tune of $620 or not. As it happened, the turn card came the 8 of spades, making the board show 8h 4c 2h 8s. This was a great card for our hand - the most likely three of a kind our opponent could have had, 8s, now became severely more unlikely, and now his range would be weighted far more towards flush draws and bluffs, making our decision an easy one. We have even stolen one of his outs since the King of hearts would give us a flush! Our opponent bet $272, an obviously committing bet but a futile attempt to look strong rather than just moving all in. My friend moved all in for an additional $346 which the opponent called, showing 67 of hearts. The river bricked and he took down the $1660 pot.

___________

This was a copy of a recent article for PokerNews magazine, you may be interested to see it here.

Cheers,

James