Hands

Turning a Medium Pair into a Big Bluff

(Villains flaw)

(Difficulty rating)

(Heros exploit)

Great hands and terrible hands are easier to play than other hands. If I
were dealt 27o every hand, then all night I would only lose the blinds. If
instead I was dealt AA every hands, I would make a killing, and it would be
relatively easy. However, give me lots of playable hands that keep making
middle pair, and I am going to have a very difficult evening of decisions.
These decisions will either lose me a lot of money or build up my stack.
Learning to play middle strength hands can take a good player to great.
A middling pair can be bet for value, turned into a semi-bluff, folded to
aggression, or brought to cheap showdown. Assessing the relative merits of
these basic plans is a complicated yet important poker skill.
$1-$2
Venetian
Friday
9:00pm
UTG+1
Cutoff

Image:

Action:

Hand:

Starting
Stack:

Predictable
TAG
Hero

$10/Call

Covers

$31

$261

Regardless of the day and time, there are good tables, and there are bad
tables. This table had been degrading quickly and was turning into a nit fest.
We already have talked to the floor, asking for a table change when this
hand comes up. The early position, predictable TAG open-raises and
covers our $260 stack.
The Villain is a TAG player both pre-flop and post-flop. His ranges
and actions are predictable, and we do not expect much creativity from
him. We have been at this table for about two hours, and over that time he
has faced a few three-bets pre-flop and he has folded against each of them.
So right now we decide to turn our T8s into a semi-bluff three-bet to try
and fight for the pot.
Before three-betting here, we should think about a few things. First,
what did he likely open-raise with from UTG+1? Well, we had seen him
open-raise from early position earlier in the session with 33 and stack a fish
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Red Chip Poker: Late Position

on a T93 board. Given that information, we can likely assume that he openraises from EP with hands like 22+/AQ+ or 22+/AJ+/KQ. That is
something between 8% and 11% of hands. We can just average it to a 10%
range.
Secondly, how often would he fold if we three-bet pre-flop? We have
seen him fold to a few three-bets already, and given his general player type,
we can expect he would only really continue with stronger hands. If we
assume he would continue with 99+/AK, then he continues, either by fourbetting or calling, with 3% of hands. We would always rather he fold preflop, but if he is going to give action, we would rather he call than four-bet.
When he calls, we get to actualize some of our equity, whereas when he
four-bets we will likely have to fold (unless we get a read or great
information).
If he open-raises 10% of the time and only continues 3% of the time,
then we can expect him to fold about 70% of the time pre-flop. The
necessary breakeven percentage looks like this:
BreakEven% = $RISK/($RISK+$REWARD)
BreakEven% = $31/($31+$10+$3) = 70%
Villain folds about 70% of the time, so we are at our breakeven point.
Were he to fold more often than we expect, we would do better than breakeven immediately. Very reasonable questions to ask here are: Why bother
with this bet? Will this increase our swings for no reason? Should we wait
for a better spot?
There are a few reasons for marginal bets like this. Being bored is not
one of them.
A moment of philosophy here: Typical bad players slowplay their big
hands to disguise them among their poor hands. They often lose with these
premium hands because more opponents are in on the hand. When they do
win, it is a smaller pot because it was not played aggressively.
We take a different philosophy: Disguise your big hands by raising
with more junk hands. We assure you, bring a hand like this to showdown
to win a big pot and you will get plenty of action with your premium hands
later.
The other thing to think about is that this bet is break-even immediately.
The formula from before is assuming that the reward is only what is in the
pot right now. If Villain calls, we go postflop with position, initiative, skill,
and some equity with our cards. We would much prefer to have a blocker
hand like Ax or Kx, but sometimes you do mix in less ideal three-bet light
hands.
Playing a hand like this is rather optional. You only need to do it every
a couple of times a session. If they see this hand from you at showdown,
your opponents will remember it the next time you raise and they hold
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Hands

something like Q9o. Even though they are out of position and easily
dominated, there will be doubt in their minds. They will more likely make a
mistake by calling out of position with their poor hand. Truth is they should
never have been in the hand in the first place and now they have
compounded their error.
What about the rest of the players? The players behind us, on the
Button, and in the Blinds are a mix of nits and TAGs, neither of which we
expect to get out of line. We also do not think that the TAG will four-bet
each time with even his premium pairs, so we do expect to see the flop a
reasonable amount of the time when we raise.
If he does not raise, we will see a flop versus his range. The following
chart shows our hand and the range that we estimated he would give us
action with:

All-in pre-flop equity

24%

vs. 99+/AK
Best hand on flop
10%

T8s has 24% equity versus 99+/AK and will have the best hand on the flop
10% of the time.
We will always fold to a four-bet. If Villain would always four-bet
KK+, that means if he does not, then we are doing better than we thought
when he only calls because his range does not have AA and KK in it
anymore. This means he comes in with a weaker range, which has more
unpaired cards. That makes it much easier for our T8s to win.
vs. 99-QQ/AK
All-in pre-flop equity
Best hand on flop
30%

17%

We do not know how he will play this, so we need to go with the more
conservative assumption that he has 99+/AK here.
Pot: $65

Range:

Predictable TAG

Check/???

99+/AK

Hero

$38

(UTG+1)
(Cutoff)

Starting
Stack:
Covers
$230

51

Red Chip Poker: Late Position

This is a low paired board. If we analyze the texture using 99+/AKs in

Flopzilla we see that his range is an overpair 90% of the time and misses
AK 10% of the time. We can also figure out the breakeven percentage using
the same formula as above:
BreakEven% = $RISK/($RISK+$REWARD)
BreakEven% = $38/($38+$65) = 37%
We see our bet of $38 needs folds 37% of the time to breakeven. If we
assume that he would never fold an overpair here and would always fold
AK, then our bet is not outright profitable. We are behind and unlikely to
catch up. Are we crazy? Why would we bet into this range?
Let us think ahead to the end of the hand. If the Villain calls the flop,
he has a pair. He likely thinks we have an overpair too, possibly AK. We
three-bet pre-flop, so we very well could have the bigger pair. There is only
one way for his pair to improve: catch a set to make a Full House. There are
lots of very scary overcards that can come and weaken his hand. We are
playing a game of Chicken right now. What is going to make us win? What
will make us lose?
Helps Hero win
Overcards
Villain thinking we
have a bigger pair from
beginning

Helps Villain win

No overcards
come
Hitting a set

What would the TAG do if he check-called the flop with JJ and the
turn was a King? What if he check-called the flop with 99 and the turn was
a Jack? Not only does the overcard scare him, but so does us holding a
higher pocket pair. With our three-bet pre-flop, a bigger pocket pair seems
very reasonable.
A tighter player, like a nit or TAG, rarely wants to get involved in a
huge pot with second or third pair. Of course, if we had any history or had
gone to war against each other, that would influence things. Up to this
point, however, we had been staying out of each other's way. We do not
think he will want to call turn or river bets on cards that push his flopped
overpair down to second pair.
We are not getting enough folds right now to make this flop
continuation bet outright profitable. But, by looking ahead, we see that a
decent chunk of cards can be good for us. For instance, we could bluff on
an overcard. We would prefer to bet on an Ace rather than a Jack, because
an Ace applies pressure to hands like 99-KK, and a Jack only applies

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Hands

pressure to 99 and TT. Keeping in mind that we have a Ten in our hand
which blocks the combos of TT from six down to three betting on a Jack
would only apply pressure to nine combinations of hands.
Here is something interesting to consider:
Turn

99+ is not
overpair or
set

% of this or
higher card
on turn

90%

8%

70%

17%

50%

25%

30%

34%

This means if we bet on a turned Jack, we can expect about 30% folds.
However, if we bet on a turned King we can expect about 70% folds. If we
make a two-thirds pot-sized bet on the turn, then we need 40% of folds to
breakeven. We can expect that 40% fold rate if we bet any Queen, King, or
Ace on the turn. Again, this makes the assumption that he will actually fold
those second pairs on the turn or river. If he would not fold second pairs at
any point in the hand, there is no real reason to even bet the flop.
We also know that a Queen, King, or Ace will hit the turn 25% of the
time. To recap, we will win on the flop about 11% of the time. For the
times Villain calls the flop, we will be able to win a profitable chunk of the
time on 25% of turns. That is good. Unfortunately, we are also going to
double barrel into an overpair some of the time.
This barrel-on-overcards plan relies on a set of assumptions:

Villains open raising range from early position

Villains call vs. four bet vs. fold range
What range he would check-call on this flop
How his flopped overpairs would react to a second barrel

If any of these assumptions are off, it will change the expected value of
our play significantly. Against a TAG, these are fair assumptions. We doubt
a TAG is going to check-raise the flop with 99-QQ types of hands if he just
called them pre-flop. We doubt a TAG is going to love facing a committing
turn bet if we three-bet/continuation bet/commitment bet on a scary turn

53

Red Chip Poker: Late Position

card. We assume that when a TAG does not love something, he is likely to
just fold and back away.
That all being said, this is not the most profitable play ever. While we
can contend for the pot on certain turn cards, we will also pick up some
equity on other ones. For instance, if the turn is an Eight or Ten, we then
pick up two outs to a Full House going into the river.
A single pair only really helps against the Villains 99 holding and then,
only against the Tens. There are some very sneaky backdoor flush and
straight possibilities. We likely cannot bet those backdoor equity cards since
they are not scary unless they are the face cards of Clubs. Backdoor equity
is always nice to have and pays the best when it gets there. No amount of
hand reading can help Villains KK when we hit a backdoor straight after
three-betting pre-flop with a suited one-gapper like 8Ts.
TAG calls the $38.
Pot: $141

Range:

Predictable TAG

Check

99+/AK

Hero

Check

(UTG+1)
(Cutoff)

Starting
Stack:
Covers
$192

The turn is an Eight, giving us a medium strength pair. But against the
range of hands we thought the TAG would call our continuation bet with
(99+) our pair of Eights does not do anything but give us two more outs.
We do not have any showdown value right now.
Once the TAG checks we only have two options: check or bet. A bet
does not really do anything here other than put more money in when we are
a huge dog to improve. A bet on the turn would make our hand into a
bluff. This is only valuable if we expect villain to fold often. So if we think
Villain can fold his 99+ here often enough, then fire away. But if we think
Villain will not be folding those overpairs, then check behind and try to
improve for cheap or pick up a great bluff card.
Pot: $141

Range:

Predictable TAG

Check/???

99+/AK

Hero

$106

(UTG+1)
(Cutoff)

Starting
Stack:
Covers
$192

The river is an Ace of Spades, putting up an overcard and also filling up

the backdoor flush draw. If we recall the chart from earlier we see that an
Ace pushes 90% of a 99+ range down to second pair.
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Hands

The Ace is a great card that applies a massive amount of pressure to the
majority of Villains range. The TAG has a very realistic story he can piece
together. We three-bet with AK. We continuation bet on the flop. We then
gave up on the turn only to hit a miracle on the river. Villain can hate
himself for letting us get there and lament checking the turn. Someone with
reasonable hand reading skills will be able to come up with this theory and
possibly fold because of it.
How deeply can the TAG think? For instance, if we did in fact have
AK or AQ, would we take this line and bet $106 on the river? Would we
choose a different size on the river? Would we maybe just check behind
because the bet on the river is not likely to get action from any worse
hands? How well we expect the Villain can think about this hand influences
how many levels of thought we need to consider.
In this hand we decide to bet the river for $106, going just a hair over
the $100 price-point. This is a big, healthy bet and one that does not offer
Villain a good price to try and hero call us. If the Villain is going to call us
with a bluff catcher, he needs to be right at least 43% of the time. If we can
expect 90% of folds from Villain here, then this is a hugely profitable bet. If
we can even just expect 75% of folds, this is a hugely profitable bet. In fact,
if you have never looked at the expected value of this hand, let us assume
Villain would fold 75% of the time here:
Expected Value = (0.75 * $141) for the 75% he folds or $105.75
Expected Value = (0.25 * -$106) for the 25% he calls of -$26.5
Total expected value = $105.75 $26.5 = $79.25
You cannot ever complain about a bluff that wins you $80 on average.
It is even more if you expect more folds.
These perfect bluffing cards are improbable, but you should be looking
for them. The more you run this kind of math away from the table, the
easier it becomes to recognize them at the table. For example, the perfect
bluffing card might be an Ace on the river, or it might be a fourth club
bringing in a flush that devalues all other hands. Watch for these kinds of
spots and then do something about them.
Many players are tempted to think their pair of Eights has showdown
value. In this case is does not. You should not make a hopeless bluff simply
because it is the only way you can win. However, you should also not pass
up a bluff because you have a pair. The showdown value of Eights is an
illusion in this case.
Villain tanks for a while then folds.

55