In this continuation from Part 1 we are looking at 6Plus hold’em hands from a session on 25NL on PokerStars.
We pick up the action in the Video here:
Hand #3
Playing weak King high hands can be a blend of knowing when to fold and when to get aggressive.
In this hand we play the bottom of our range here to a small raise of $1, this is pretty much the most action we are ever going to put in with a hand like K9o.
We see a flop of K Q 6 and decide to check, this is our best action as it will allow us to see how much money our opponents want to put in on this type of flop, we have to tread carefully with this hand as against large bets we are probably crushed a lot of the time and might be drawing nearly dead.
What unfolds is that the first opponent to our left bets under half pot, a weak looking bet on such a wet board, players with strong holdings here should be looking to bet around the size of the pot or even overbet to protect against flush and straight cards hitting for a cheap price.
The UTG player, the initial raiser, then calls this bet, this action is also weak, any value hand should need to raise this small bet in a multiway pot.
So now we can call, and try and get to showdown, but this can be tough with many bad cards for our hand, even making two pair with a 9 hitting makes a straight for example. Or we can get aggressive and push all in here risking around $20 to win just over $10 in the middle.
A couple of good things can happen here, we can push out better hands possibly like KT and KJ possibly, we can push hands off their equity like gutshots with an over such as AJ and AT. Also, we can get called by worse hands like AQ, JT, K8, K7, K6, QJ, QT. Occasionally we will have read a little too much into the bet sizing and just get called by hands like K6, AK, QQ for example, but this is going to be less often given the action preflop and on the flop.
So with all this in mind, we make the aggressive move, with fold equity and look to either win the pot right now or take this one heads up and win. We fire off $19.70 into the middle with the initial bettor folding, we then get looked up by a gambler with an open-ended draw holding JTo.
The good news is we block one of the nines they need to hit to make a straight, so they only win this hand 43% of the time, whereas typically in Short deck Hold’em an open-ended draw gets there around 50% of the time.
Luckily for us the board bricks out, with the final board reading K♠ Q♥ 6♠ 7♦ K♥ and we get to drag the $45.40 in the middle.
Hand #4
We are dealt J♥ 8♥ in early position, the UTG player limps in and we limp behind.
This is a fine way for us to enter the pot as we will be balanced in this spot to hands we will limp with that are strong enough to move all in over aggressive action, along with hands we will simply limp fold and hands like this which we will usually limp call raises, depending on the action, as these hands flop well multiway.
The whole table ends up limping in and then there is a small raise put in by the player on the button, raising the bet to $2.75. It’s worth noting that if this is us playing from the button in a 5 way pot, we want to make our raises very large here, the idea of raising in any poker game should be to build a pot, but also try and get the pot heads up, by making a small raise like this you are enticing everyone to call. I would have liked to see a raise of at least $4 here from the button, as this puts a lot of hands in a tough spot.
As expected, we take the flop multiway, with only one player folding making there 4 of us in total.
The flop is 9♥ A♣ K♥
A good flop for our hand, we have a flush draw as well as a backdoor straight draw.
We are playing fairly deep stacked at this point with us having $50.14 behind and our opponent to our left covering us.
UTG checks and we check also. The button then bets $6, around half pot with $12 in the middle at this point, the UTG player to our right then calls. This gives us two options, call or raise, folding is out of the question, it is hard to flop this well with a suited hand so we are likely going to the river here, we will have around 40% equity in a heads up pot even against a hand like top two pair. So even in worst case scenarios we are drawing very live in this spot.
Looking at this spot in hindsight I would like to see an All in here. with the UTG player flat calling the $6 in the pot this makes there $24 in the middle for the taking with the button only having $23 behind left. Pushing all in here with our at worst 40% equity is a winning play, having fold equity is huge here!
If we can win this pot even a small percentage of the time without a showdown with Jack high, that is amazing. Then for the times we are called we will be risking $29 to win $76 giving us around 1.6/1 meaning we will need 38.46% in equity if we are always called, however, we have 40% equity even against two pairs here and with our raise getting folds at least a small percentage of the time, this makes this play +EV.
However, in game, I was slightly unsure on the math of flush draws with undercards in Short Deck hold’em. So I didn’t know to play this aggressively with my equity, so in-game, we continue with the second best option a call.
The Turn
T♣ Hits, a good card for us with the board now reading 9♥ A♣ K♥ T♣
We now not only have a flush draw but an open-ended straight draw also. Meaning any 7 or Queen hitting gives us a straight, as well as the heart giving us a flush. This is a good card for our flop call range, with hands like QJ, AT, KT all in our possible calling range in our opponent’s eyes. So we continue with a check after the UTG player checks and the button checks back.
Looking at this spot the way played, I think if ever a flat call is taken on the flop now is a good time to semi-bluff against the button with our nut advantage on this board, he has no QJ in his range when playing this way preflop and on the flop, this is a good opportunity to steal with the back up of us having our equity if we are called.
My reasoning for this is that what do we do against a button jam on the turn here, do we call off? With still a big draw and getting a good price… but then we have to make our hand on the river. We would be in a horrible spot playing like that, luckily this didn’t happen, but it’s worth noting that we didn’t play this hand optimally and could have got into a tough spot.
Q♦ Hits the river, making the final board 9♥ A♣ K♥ T♣ Q♦
This gives us the nuts, with a Broadway straight. With $30 in the middle, it’s off to value town. We cannot just go betting huge here as we need to try and get calls from two pair hands, so offering these hands a good price is key. We decide on a $9 bet for just below one-third pot and our opponent on the button looks us up with A♠ Q♠ for two pair.
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Make sure to check out the other parts in this series of hand breakdowns…
PART 1 PART 3