What Are Fish Betting The Turn With?

This is going to part 3 of analyzing hand 15 from the Hand Reading For Live Players Workbook.

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If you need a quick refresher to remember where we are in this hand, the cutoff opened $10. We called on the button. The SB called as well. We analyzed small blind’s range at that point. The SB decided to lead out for $20 on JJ7. We raised to $60. They decided to call. Of course, now we are analyzing the turn.

So the turn in this spot is a brick 3, and the SB again decides to lead out. So in this situation, hero just decides to call. Let’s break it down and see if that was the best play based upon the range that we assigned.

As always, we can start by plugging everything into Flopzilla and going from there. In this situation, we’ll just plug in the 3 of spades for the turn and continue. By the way, I prefer Flopzilla. You can do this kind of work in other pieces of software, I just think Flopzilla is the best for it. And if you like Flopzilla, but don’t have it yet and you want the workbook as well, you can always pick up both at www.splitsuit.com/workbook.

With that said, let’s start with the prompting questions in the workbook. So think not only about the fact that SB leads into you on the turn, but also for the fact that the size is about half pot. Does this line, or does this size indicate hand strengths like full houses, flush draws, marginal pairs, any of those kind of things. So let’s start with those in mind when we’re building this range.

Backing up into Flopzilla let’s start with the really, really big, monster stuff; the full houses. Do we think that they would do this again? Do we think they would do this for this size? Well, we don’t think there’s a tremendous amount of combos of them, right? We kind of gave discounted combos along the way. By the time they get here, sure, maybe they would and there’s not a ton of combos. It’s not going to influence things a ton. So I’m going to put the full combos of full houses in this possible range. Next, let’s think about the other stuff because pretty much everything else just involves hands that we absolutely annihilate. Flush draws, pocket pairs below top pair, middle pairs, all that kind of stuff, we just absolutely crush.

Would the SB take this line with something like 8s, 9s or 10s? I think it’s pretty reasonable. Now, yes, you look at a half pot size and you say, “Well, that’s a silly size. I would never use that size.” That’s probably pretty fair, but you’re probably not someone who gets labelled as someone who never folds. The SB is here and the original assumption we made is that the SB was probably a bit more on the fishy side of the spectrum.

Fishy players are going to pick awful sizing just in general, and then, I think they would take this kind of line with 8s, 9s or 10s because they would know what else to do with it. Yes, maybe they check-call it sometimes, but I think they’re going to lead here a decent chunk. Let’s say they would do this 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, we think they would check call and we’ll go from there.

Next, let’s think about middle pairs. The middle pairs essentially are the same kind of thing. If this kind of person had 88s, is there much of a difference in their head if they have A7s or 97s? I don’t think so. So again, I’m going to include those in there as well. I’m going to include these probably just a little bit lower. Let’s just call it 65% and we’ll go from there. Because, remember, they did decide to bet-call the turn, so I think some percent of the time they’re certainly just going to check to the aggressor, but sometimes I think yeah, they’re going to lead those kind of hands.

Then the rest are things like weak pairs. Well, weak pairs are made pretty interesting because they’re going to be made with flush draws. So I think, yeah, those hands are definitely going to lead out. If this kind of person has something like A3 of hearts or 43 of hearts, yeah, I think them leading out actually makes a sense. Ace high naked, no, I don’t think a ton. And then flush draws, again, I’m going to weight these – let’s just call it about a third of the time give or take. We just accept that.

This is what I think they’re going to be leading with in this scenario. You notice it’s “only” 61% of the time. Yeah, you probably don’t lead into the aggressor 61% of the time and that’s okay, but I think this is probably a pretty fair representation of what we can expect, both for the action and the specific size in this scenario.

There’s a couple of big takeaways here after we fill out the templates. So, as always, we’re going to turn this screen because that just carries through all the hands that we selected. We’re going to plug in the 61% for the percentage of previous range. We’re going to hit tab and go into combo mode, get that one down to 71 combos.  And, that is the entire range that we are assigning on the turn.

Now, there’s a couple of things that we want to keep in mind here. This is the kind of work that we want to do off table or analyzing hands. Whether we won them, whether we lost them, whether we think we played well or think we played them like garbage, we should still do the hand reading every step of the way and then sit back and say, “Wait, was the line that we chose best in this exact scenario?

Check our what other poker players are discussing in the RED CHIP POKER Forums: “Think checking to the raiser on the flop was an ok decision but could have done better on the turn and/or river. Just not sure what the best line would be.”

If I’m analyzing the line that hero took in this scenario, I think I would raise here a very, very large chunk of the time. It’s strictly for value. It’s strictly to get more value from the flush draws that can’t fold, from pair and flush draws that can’t fold, from middle pairs that can’t find the fold button. Yes, we’re behind a little bit of the time, but that’s such a small amount that I really don’t care that much. What I really care about is punishing the SB when they have a sticky draw, when they have a sticky pair that they can’t fold.

I don’t need to shove here. I can probably honest just put $100 on top, which isn’t a huge size, but it gets the SB feeling sticky. They call the first time and then they probably call the river as well. Now, all of a sudden, we got most of the stack inside considering we started this with more than 200 big blinds.

I think this is a great scenario to raise, and when you’re analyzing hands, again, you’re breaking it down step-by-step, street-by-street. This is the kind of stuff we can see more clearly when we have an objective range to start with.

Now, again, maybe you disagree with some of the assessments. Maybe your range that you’re assigning the SB is a little bit different, maybe quite a bit different every step of the way. That’s okay. You would just sit there and say, “Okay, this is a range that I’ve assigned. This is why I assigned it. This is logical” etc. And then based upon that, is my line going to be best? What are some other lines that are available to me? What is the profit of those lines? What’s the EV of this line versus that line? And then, of course, there’s always choose the most profitable one available, but you can only do that when you’ve taken an objective look at exact ranges. You’ve built them out, you understand what goes into them, and then you’ve decided to attack accordingly.

So in this scenario, yes, I think hero made a pretty bad play by just flatting here. Maybe he did that because he thought the SB would barrel a ton of rivers. But I don’t think we can expect that 100% of the time, and based upon the fact that we just saw a bad call on the flop and then he decides to lead into us on the turn for half pot, I don’t think we’re going to see a river bet bigger than half pot a lot of the time.

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I think this is just a scenario where we’re leaving money on the table against a range that would probably gladly draw or call inappropriately, given bad pot odds, and I think we’re leaving money on the table by just flatting here.

Again, we can only get to that assessment by actually analyzing the ranges and going forward from there. It’s not just, “Oh, LOL, we have trips” it’s, “We have trips and this is our opponent’s range and this is how we think they’re going to react if we decide to raise or flat”. Again, in this scenario I think raising is far better.

Hopefully you enjoyed part 3. We’ll see you back soon for part 4 where we’re going to analyze the river. As always, pretty weird action by small blinds, we’ll go forward, analyze some more ranges, have some more fun, talk about hero’s line and go forward from there. If you’re enjoying this work and you want to do some more exploration and you want to do it on your own time, again, www.splitsuit.com/workbook. Pick up your copy today, start having some fun, start exploring, and start figuring out how to get your lines looking even stronger, and, of course, more profitable.

I’ll see you back soon for part 4. In the meantime, of course, good luck out there and happy grinding.