Lead Out To Find Out Where You Stand
1. You can put your opponent on a very precise range 2 Despite having a large number of top pair
combinations, your opponent’s overall range is quite vulnerable
Put yourself in your opponent’s shoes for a moment. He’s bet flop and gotten called. Now he bets the turn and gets check/raised. Unless he holds a set, he can only beat a bluff. He has no draws to call or re-bluff with. You could be bluffing, but does he think you’re doing that often enough to justify calling the turn raise and likely river shove? Unlikely. There are no semi-bluffs in your range. You would have to be turning a made hand into a bluff or floating out of position. Few players do either with any level of frequency. It’s true that you’re representing a narrow range, since you basically have to have slowplayed a set or hold ace-ten. That’s a drawback to this play. But if he thinks there are no bluffs in your range, then he has to give you credit for that narrow range.
Putting your own shoes back on, this awful turn card actually looks like a pretty good place to bluff now. Even if your opponent always calls with top pair or better, he’ll still be folding two-thirds of his range. And there’s a good chance that he’ll bail with his weak aces, knowing that he can only beat a made hand that was turned into a bluff.
Your check/raise risks $250 to win $235, so it needs to succeed just over half the time. Unless your opponent suspects that you’re getting out of line, you’re likely to win the pot immediately over two-thirds of the time. The play is clearly and immediately profitable. Even if your opponent calls, you have a 4% chance of spiking an eight, giving you a good chance to win your opponent’s stack. That’s not a major factor, but it does provide a small discount on the bluff.
“But hold on,” you might say, “assuming that the button is open-raising the 55% range recommended in this book, then betting the flop and turn with 100% of that range, don’t pocket eights have 51% equity on the turn? What about check/calling?”
That’s a reasonable question, and we’re glad you asked. If there were no more money left to bet on the river, check/ calling this turn would be a profitable play. Getting 2.6-to-1, you only need 28% equity to justify a call. But there is one more street to play. Your opponent can draw out on you and value bet the river. He can give up with his bluffs. Check/ calling the turn can be profitable, but check/calling the river can be a costly mistake that cancels out the profitability of the turn call. In other words, you suffer from reverse implied odds here.
“But what about calling the turn and folding the river?” you press. Well, now your opponent can bluff the river and get you to fold the best hand. As we’ve seen in earlier examples, it doesn’t matter how much showdown value you have if you can’t get to showdown.
The trouble here is that you don’t know which approach your opponent will take. If you have a strong read on a particular player, then you can try to play the leveling game. But you’re playing with imperfect information on the river. On the turn, you should have a very clear vision of your opponent’s range. This almost perfect information gives you the opportunity to grab some value now. You should seize it.
Note that if your opponent does call your turn check/raise here, you should usually give up on the river.
You won’t always have such a clear idea of your opponent’s range. So how do you reduce your positional disadvantage then? There’s not a lot that you can do. Your best course of action is to try to get to showdown for a reasonable price, and keep your eyes peeled to take an occasional shot at an off-balance foe.
Misconception #30
Don’t Donk
T
here are successful players who suggest that you should never, ever lead out with a bet when you just called the street before. The notion is that your opponent has the initiative after betting or raising on the previous street, and you should let him keep the initiative. If you want to get more money in the pot, you should check, let him bet, and then raise. Never lead out into a player who has initiative. Never donk.In the last chapter, we saw that there are spots where leading out is a bad option. It would be easy enough to generalize and say that it’s always a bad option. But it’s not. Sometimes it’s your best option.
Poker is all about playing against ranges and knowing how your opponents will respond to your actions. In the flop scenario we looked at, your opponent was not going to respond to your flop donk the way you wanted him to. That’s not always going to be the case. Sometimes a donk
will accomplish what you want it to.
A common situation occurs when your hand improves on the turn. You’ve called with A♦ J♦ in the big blind against a hijack raise. You check/call a flop of A♠ 8♣ 2♦. The turn is the J♠ . You should donk. Just lead right out into the preflop raiser/flop bettor.
The idea of checking to the raiser or the player who bet the previous street comes from the fact that you don’t flop a lot of monster hands. More often than not, checking is the correct play. You usually want to keep the pot small or plan to give up. Your opponent’s range is wide, and if you hold a marginal hand you want to keep it that way. You want to encourage bluffs.
When you turn top two pair on a dry ace-high board, these concerns do not apply. You have a strong hand that wants to get money in the pot. There’s no need to keep the pot small. If your opponent happens to have a set, you’re going to go broke no matter how you play the hand. There are only 8 combinations of sets7 and nothing else beats you,
so don’t worry about the few times you get busted. Taking a line that results in a fold would be awful. There are too many weaker hands that you can extract value from.
The only reason to check would be if your opponent’s betting range is wider than his calling range. That’s unlikely. Unless he’s very aggressive, your opponent is unlikely to bet the turn with garbage on this board – your flop call indicates a desire to show down. You have a better chance of getting money in the pot by putting it in there yourself.
You may be tempted to check/raise, perhaps thinking that’s the best way to get value from hands like ace-eight and ace-deuce. Along with ace-king and ace-queen, these are the primary hands you’re looking to get value from. If 7 There are 3 combos each of 88 and 22, and only 1 each of AA and JJ – the ace and jack in your hand significantly reduce your opponent’s chances of holding trips.
you check/raise, your opponent is likely to fold these hands since your hand looks very distinctly like ace-jack or pocket jacks. There’s nothing he beats that you could be raising for value, and your play would be a very unusual bluff.
By donking, you’ll collect turn and river bets from all of your opponent’s strong hands, and sometimes get all the money in against his weaker two pair hands.
NO LIMIT HOLDEM: $5/$10 blinds – 6 players STACKS: $1000 effective
READS: BTN is passive PREFLOP: You haveQ♥J♥
3 folds, BTN raises to $30, 1 fold, you call
FLOP: T♥5♥2♦ ($65 – 2 players)
You check, BTN bets $40, you call
TURN: K♣ ($145 – 2 players)
You check, BTN bets $110, you call
RIVER: 3♥ ($365 – 2 players)
You bet $350
The scenario is even more pronounced when you improve on the river. Let’s begin with an example:
You call the flop, planning to fold the turn unless you make a flush, top pair, or pick up a gutshot to go with your draw. Against an aggressive player, you would raise the flop as a semi-bluff, but it’s better to let this player check the turn and save your bluff for the river. If the passive button bets a
blank turn, you should fold. His range will be very strong, you will need to make a flush to win the pot, and even your implied odds will not justify a call.
The K♣ on the turn gives you a straight draw to go with your flush draw, so now you have an easy call.
When the 3♥ shows up on the river, you lead straight out, even though your opponent bet the turn. As a passive player, he’s likely to be scared of the flush and check back. You’re also unlikely to induce bluffs by checking, since his turn bet almost always represents a strong hand.
By donking, you also get to set the bet size. Even if a bet goes in just as often when you check as when you bet (it won’t), there is more value in making a well-sized bet yourself, since your opponent is unlikely to make a big bet on the scare card. Not only will he be afraid of you having a flush, he may also realize that you will be concerned that he has the flush. He will still be afraid of the flush when you donk, but passive players like to call. His range will contain mostly sets and two pair, none of which will fold to your pot sized bet. When you complete your hand against a passive player, make sure the money goes in and he calls as much as he’s willing to pay.
Lest you think that you should only donk when you improve (a hideously unbalanced strategy), here’s an example of how you can balance the play:
NO LIMIT HOLDEM: $5/$10 blinds – 6 players STACKS: $1000 effective
READS: BTN is solid regular
PREFLOP: You haveA♠J♣ in the big blind
3 folds, BTN raises to $30, 1 fold, you call
FLOP: K♥T♥8♦ ($65 – 2 players)
BTN bets $40, you call
Like in the previous hands, you check/call the flop with the intention of donking if you hit your gutshot. But your plan is also to donk when a heart comes off. This gives you 7 or 8 fake outs here and balances the times you would lead out after actually making the flush.
Whether you’re looking for value or an opportunity to bluff, you should often lead right out on the cards that will discourage your opponent from betting. The philosophy of “check to the raiser” mostly stems from the expectation that the previous aggressor will continue betting. But when the board comes out in a way that will slow the aggressor down, checking becomes a terrible way to get money in the pot.
Misconception #31