Drawing With Zero Fold Equity

In this hand we’re playing 25NL, 6-Max online. There’s a raise UTG. Hero decides the 3bets, and in this situation seat four is a 17/13 over 24 hands. I don’t hate the 3bet in the sense that I love being aggressive – but we really want to consider if the 3bet is going to be optimal or if flatting would prove to be more fruitful.

Now a 24 hands is not a huge sample size, this dude has been playing pretty snug over those 24 hands but not in a way that we confirm that with any sort of degree of certainty. This is just one of those where, okay if you’re trying to set a dynamic sure, otherwise flatting here is totally acceptable as well. I’m not really going to fault you for either one too heavily. We end up getting called, go to the flop, check and Hero decides to CB for five bucks. Situations like this heavily boil down to hand reading. Let’s think about what seat four can possibly have here. If we think about preflop, one of the big things I ask myself is, at what point does he stop coming over the top with big pairs?

Does he only 4bet preflop with with kings plus, is it something like queens plus, is it tens plus whatever. I’m trying to get a good feel for that to see if, okay can I remove things like sets from here or are sets totally possible? Also things like pockets tens, are there going to be things like tens, nines, eights, sevens in their flat range or would they consider 4betting a preflop. Again these are just all the things that we have to consider. The other big thing I think about is if this person has a lot of things like sixes through tens with ace king and that sort of stuff, there’s probably a decent chuck of hands in his range that he can just check-fold in which case cool. If that’s the case do we really need to risk $5 to get that done or could we just go to $3.75 or four bucks instead? Definitely make sure you’re considering that stuff.

The other thing I ask myself is if seat four has something like ace king, ace queen, king queen anything like that. Is this person likely to check-call or check-shove? Because if they’re going to check-shove more often it puts us in a situation where we’re going to end up bet folding our equity a large chunk of the time, and that’s not really something that I ever want to be doing. Really heavily ask yourself, how they’re going to play things like over payers, top payer and obviously there probably aren’t over payers in this exact scenario but just in general that’s a question you want to ask yourself.

The more likely they’re going to check-shove do you really want to be bet folding draw equity. But as played seat four just decides to check-call, and then think about what they would check call with. Are they going to check-call with things like ace king high or are they most likely going to be check-calling with things like queen X or jack X, like maybe ace jack or that sort of stuff. Definitely make sure you’re thinking about. Many players just get so blinded by the fact that they have a draw. That they have been told to play draws aggressively, that they do things like this even though it may not necessarily be the best play.

If you think about the range of hands that seat four would check-call to flop with, are they going to check-fold any of that here? If they have something like queen x or jack X, are they really going to say, “You know what? Now is probably a good time to fold when I’m getting roughly two to one.” No, probably not. I think this is a situation where Hero is putting himself in a really bad spot. Rather than just checking behind and taking the equity, because the the check-call range from seat four unless it includes a tremendous amount of ace king is probably going to be calling you a large chunk of the time. Not necessarily that there is a huge number of combos in there, just more that there is probability not a lot of fold equity in that range as a whole, because remember it’s a 3bet pot, they call it a 3bet out of position.

Ranges and frequencies here are just going to be pretty narrow in this situation, so finding fold equity I think is going to be really difficult and you can prove it mathematically using a fold equity calculator. I just don’t think that you’re going to end up finding a lot of folds here unless you thought there was a tremendous amount of ace king or I don’t know, pockets eights that might check-fold the turn here. I just don’t think there is going to be a lot of combos that can get away once the math roles off the way that it does.

Yes, we have a decent of chunk of equity but we’re always behing when it gets all-in. It’s just a scenario where again I’m not really in love with Hero’s line. I think sizing on the flop is not the best. I think you can get away for cheaper if you’re just trying to get fold equity from things like pockets eights and sevens and all that stuff on the flop. It has played I think turn shove, well yes I love the fact that we’re being aggressive I think is a bit overly optimistic considering the fact that the check-call range and the flop should be pretty strong and actually probably gives very little fold equity if any.