In this post I am going to run through a hand from a live video I recorded playing $2.50/$5 SNAP poker on 888Poker, we start the hand with $103.00 in our stack, so we are playing at around 20big blinds effective and four-handed. We pick up the action 10 minutes in here, click play to watch the action!
PreFlop
A player that we have marked as a Maniac for some of his earlier plays opens up the action with a minimum raise from under the gun (UTG) to $10 and we look down at 9♣ 7♣ in the big blind, with already having $5 invested in the pot this is an easy call with this suited and connected hand. These are the type of holdings that play well, you can either flop a huge piece of the board and look to play a big pot or miss and you will be in no danger of losing any more than this extra $5 investment.
In technical terms, we will only need to have around 22% equity in this pot to justify calling a minimum raise here as we are putting in $5 to win $22.50. So even if the player had hands like pocket Aces and Kings we are still getting the right price.
Flop Action
So we flop the dream J♣ 2♣ 9♥ this gives us a pair of nines and a flush draw, so even if we are technically still losing at this moment to hands like overpairs to the board our equity is in fact 51% to hands like pocket Aces on this flop, so we are actually favorites.
We opt to continue our hand with a check, this a good starting point with most hands out of position as it lets our opponent put in continuation bet’s that we are ahead of such as straight draws, Ace high and King high hands that may just want to bet to try and take down the pot.
Our intention with this check with our stack depth is to simply check raise our opponent and either play for all the money and see all five cards as a favorite against nearly all his holdings, or we can simply win the pot there and then, denying equity of any overcards hitting that improve our opponent’s hand. However this plan fails and our opponent checks his hand, usually a sign he has missed this board completely as if he had a hand like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 10 10, A9, AJ, KJ, QJ, J9, 99, 22 he would surely bet this board. So his hands are then more weighted towards high cards that have missed this flop, hands like AK, AQ, KQ and some low pairs such as 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88 that did not want to bet this flop.
To the action Turn
After a disappointing street of no action from our wild opponent, BINK, we hit the gin turn card for our hand the A♣ rolls off! Meaning the board is now J♣ 2♣ 9♥ A♣ This means we have the fifth nuts as there are four higher flushes out there, however, we would have to think that our aggressive opponent would have bet his flush draws on the flop nearly always.
So what do we do now!? Should we lead out and bet, well that is one option, but I would prefer to have leads with my drawing hands like Q♣ 10♠ hands that want to bet to try and win the pot but not have to check and call a large bet, so with hands with say one club I may lead this turn. Other hands I like to lead out with in this spot are two pair hands like AJ, A9, A2 I would pick up the lead on this turn to protect my hand against any flush draw my opponent may have in case he checks back the turn card and gets to hit his hand for free.
With a hand as strong as a flush here and with my opponents range so heavily weighted towards including an Ace, I love going for the check raise again here, there are a few reasons, it lets me play for stacks if my opponent bets I can easily shove the river if the check-raise gets called, also if my opponent has one high club and still has equity against my hand I want to charge their draw.
My opponent bets $11.25 and I raise to $38.75 and luckily enough my opponent decides they like their hand enough to go all in here for $107.74. They table A♥ Q♠ and lucky for us they are drawing dead in an over $200 pot with the river coming a meaningless 5♠.
Sum Up
Although this is just on the face of it a very lucky hand, we make a flush, easy right?
Very true, but the mindset we are looking at here is getting the most value from our opponent’s suspected holdings, on the flop we are looking to give hands with very little equity a chance to put more money in the pot. When we make our hand on the turn, then we are looking for how we are going to get the most money from our opponent when he has hit an Ace here a high percentage of the time.
Please check out the full strategy video HERE
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