As part of the Ask SplitSuit a Question series, a couple people did ask hand history questions and this one came privately via Facebook. Corey S. wanted me to look at a hand and he prefaces it by saying that it was played on Bovada Zone poker, so he didnโt have good reads on any of the players, so letโs look at the hand:
This hand is from 10NL Online, Hero opens out of the gun with A6s and he says that he was prepared to mix it up and hoping to get position on the big blind. In my opinion, this isnโt the greatest situation to do that, simply because itโs 10 No Limit and itโs Bovada Zone poker and Iโm not even 100% sure that Iโm going to get the big blind heads up to myself in a situation like this. There are still a lot of players to contend with and three of them can take position on me and itโs just a kind of situation where I probably donโt like this and I would just default open fold this. There are situations where I will open up my under the gun range, but I wouldnโt say that this is the exact situation and exact environment in which to do that.
As played, we end up getting called by the cut off, goes heads up to it and end a flop and top pair on this very, very wet connected board. Here are continuation bets and faces a raise. So in this situation Hero decides to call and I want to talk about this call for a moment because I think itโs kind of important and I think some players may hit but thereโs a lot of issues that people have here.
So just looking at it, once we call pots about $3, we have about $8 going into the turn and river and when Iโm in a situation like that, itโs very easy for my stack to get exposed, right? If he bets two on the turn, rest on the river, itโs very, very easy for my stack to get in the middle. Given the fact that heโs raising here, itโs realistic that that could come up from time to time.
If Iโm ever going to put myself in a situation where I think my stack can realistically get exposed, I really want to create a plan for my hand. A lot of players will call here and then try to reevaluate on turn and rivers but in my opinion, thatโs going to be kind of a junky idea. If we just think about what turn and river run offs are going to look like, theyโre either going to be over cards to our hand on the board, theyโre going to be four straight bakers, theyโre going to be flush fillers, thereโs going to be a lot of uncomfortableness going into the turn and river. If we face bets and any sort of pressure on those cards, I really want to have that plan right now.
…think about what turn and river run offs are going to look like…
There are situations where Iโll call this and Iโll feel comfortable. Say I thought the cut-off wouldnโt raise sevens plus and they would really only like be raising here with a couple combos of sets but more realistically raising with a lot of like busted over card stuff, like jack/ten and king/queen and that sort of stuff. Itโs the kind of situation where I like calling more and my plan is definitely to get a little bit sticky or actually a lot stickier going into turn and rivers. But you notice that Iโm calling with a range idea, with a plan going forward, and sometimes Iโll be wrong and Iโll run into a set and thatโs all well and good, but I definitely want to have that plan before I just start calling every single flop raise and even more so when youโre out of position and itโs going to be more and more difficult to play those future streaks.
Now in this exact situation, Iโm not really sure that I love calling the raise simply because playing out of position in a relatively unknown environment is going to be very, very tricky to figure out when you should be calling down and when you shouldnโt and how you want to handle, again, all those really awful turn and river run offs. The other thing you want to keep in mind is that itโs something like 10 No Limit, I do assume he can be raising here a set, I do assume that he can be raising with flush draws and flush draws are going to have very, very good equity against our hand, at least with one over card most of the time, usually two.
The other thing is that at a limit like this, Iโm not shocked if he raises something like sevens, eights, or nines, which again puts more and more reverse implied odds on our hand. Iโm not really sure that Iโm loving this exact spot. Hero did say that he thought he was ahead and okay, that makes me feel a little bit better but Iโm not 100% sure that we can really think that weโre ahead enough of the time here, so this makes me pretty uneasy. Iโd rather make maybe a little too tight of a fold on the flop than put myself in an exposed situation where Iโm really unsure and itโs very possible that it could be negative.
In this exact situation, Hero does decide to call, picks up more equity on the turn, checks, faces a bet, and Hero decides to check shove. Corey said that he thought he was ahead here on the turn and I think that we can be ahead here, but I think that when we shove and get called, that weโre rarely, if ever, ahead. Itโs a situation where weโre essentially semi-bluff shoving on the turn and itโs really, really important that when youโre making any sort of shove like this that you understand if itโs more for value or more as a semi-bluff. If youโre only ever getting called by hands that beat you, itโs definitely going to be more of a semi-bluff.
The good thing about semi-bluffing is that we can proof it very, very easy mathematically and there are two tools that we are going to want for that. Weโre going to use our fold equity calculatorโand remember we did a full video on this in the Quick Play Series, if you want to look that upโand then we also need Equilab. In our fold equity calculator, just need a couple pieces of info, need the effective stack, which is how much weโre shoving, and you notice here that weโre actually shoving for $8.41, but in real life, weโre actually not because the effective risk is only the starting stack that he had to start this streak, which was the $8.27, so weโre actually only risking that much when we make this shove. Then we need our estimated equity, which weโll get in a second, pot size, which is 5.45, facing a bet of 2.32, and we just need our estimated equity, which we can get from Equilab.
So I plugged in our hand against a range that I thought was reasonable, which includes sets, it includes eightX made with diamonds, so nine/eight of diamonds and eight/seven of diamonds and thatโs it. Evaluated that, we get 21%, plug that in here, calculate it, and you notice that we need him to fold at least 43% of the time for this to break even.
I donโt really think thatโs going to be particularly good. If you thought that he were going to call here with worse flush draws, whether thatโs in clubs or whether thatโs in something like diamonds, well, that can certainly change matters quite a bit, but if you donโt think that he has that, then you have this really reduced chunk of equity where youโre really just hoping that outs when you get called and then itโs just one of those situations where does he really have that much junk in his range when he decides to raise flop bet turn? If he does, do we need to check raise that or could we possibly check call and again, continue with that check call download with our pair thinking that our pair is beating his range enough of the time.
Another thing to keep in mind here is when we shove, he needs 30% equity to break even. Iโm assuming that most players are not going to call that with naked flush draws, which again is why Iโm assigning the range that I did when we check, shove and get called on. Again, thatโs the really strong stuff which has a severely reduced in equity, which means that we need more folds in order to make this a profitable all-in. Again, if we needed that many folds, is this necessarily the best line?
As played, itโs actually kind of a funny result. We actually do end up running into clubs and thatโs all well and good and the result isnโt nearly as important as just understanding, again, what goes into it, thinking about how to face that flop raise, super, super important, so many people mess that up and again, donโt think about how theyโre going to play turn and river run offs enough of the time. Then as played, again, understanding if youโre going to check shove that turn, what itโs really accomplishing. You could be ahead on the turn when he bets, but if you shove and only get called by a better hand, youโre still left in a semi-bluffing situation.
