So we are still diving down the rabbit hole of playing from different positions, in this post we are going to look at the art of playing from the Hi-Jack, this is when we are going to have a wider range than in Early or Middle position, but still nowhere near as wide as on the Button.
Playing Off-suit Ace’s and Flopping good
Blinds 100/200 Tournament with 10,000 starting stacks effective so 50BBs deep
Hero, Hi-Jack: A♠ 8♦ Raise to 600
BB: Calls
Flop: A♣ 6♠ 8♥
BB: Checks
Hero: ?
Well, we for sure want to be betting here for value, there are a few straight draws for us to protect against and we have a huge hand that wants to put a lot of money in the middle.
So betting here makes sense, let’s think about sizing, we can use a very small sizing here and we could do this with huge range here because we have such a big advantage on this board.
We have all the good hands, all the top pair hands, two pairs and sets. Whereas our opponent is limited in what hands they can have here, so even if we didn’t have such a strong hand on this board, it still makes for a good board to go on the attack.
Hero: Bets 500
BB: Raises to 1,900
Hero: ?
This is a pretty good spot for us, we have flopped the near nuts with the only real possible hand that has us beat right now being 66 as we have AA and 88 blocked. So how should we continue against a check-raise?
Well, I like just calling here, we want to keep all our opponent’s possible bluffs in the pot and because we have all the good hands blocked so it’s likely our opponent is more weighted towards bluffs in this spot.
So we smooth call and see the next card…
Turn: J♠
BB: Bets 3,000
Hero: ?
Ace Jack just got there, but not much changed on this board. We have two options here, call or move all-in.
There are merits to both plays, but we get a little bit of equity denial if our opponent still has some drawing hand, so I will mix my play here between moving all-in and sometimes smooth calling.
This time though we decided to move all-in and our opponent quickly mucked their hand. This is the problem with denying equity we do stop certain hands that are just bluffing on the Turn following through on the River, but we also stop them from getting there some of the time when they have a decent amount of equity with say a flush draw here.
Small Pairs in the Hi-Jack
Quite often there are going to be limps in front of us when we are playing from these later positions in weak games.
To maximise our win rate we want to take advantage of ot these spots typically by isolating players, so let’s look at this example…
Blinds 100/200 Tournament with 10,000 starting stacks effective so 50BBs deep
UTG+2: Calls 200
Hero, Hi-Jack: 7♣ 7♦ Raise to 800
UTG+2: Calls
Flop: Q♣ Q♠ 2♥
UTG+2: Checks
Hero: ?
We have hit a pretty good flop for our hand here and after isolating a relatively wide range pre-flop we have a decent spot to bet here, betting serves a few purposes, we can get called by some worse hands on this board, as our opponent could easily have 33-66 with this type of action.
The other good news for us is that if we bet here and we face some aggression it’s likely that our opponent has a strong hand and want to play for all the chips.
We bet and our opponent makes the call of 1,200 chips.
Hero, Hi-Jack: Bets 1,200
UTG+2: Calls 1,200
Our alarm bells should be sounding now, our opponent is still not deterred by our raise pre-flop or our bet on this flop. So it’s very likely they have a pocket pair in their hand at this point.
This is when your reading ability and history with a player is going to come into play, sometimes the margins are so fine here our opponent could have 88 and have us beat or they could have a hand like 66 and we have the winner at the moment.
Our goal in spots like this is just to reach showdown by risking as little as possible, we raised to isolate a weak range pre-flop. We stabbed at a board that is pretty good for our hand, but we are unlikely to get two streets of value from this specific holding.
So we pump the breaks a little on the Turn…
Turn: 3♦
UTG+2: Checks
Hero, Hi-Jack: Checks
We check back and look to realise our equity on the River even though the Turn is pretty good for our hand as it’s still an undercard to our hand.
River: 7♥
UTG+2: Checks
Hero, Hi-Jack: Bets 3,000
We hit Gin! Lucky us, now we want to go large and get maximum value against pretty much any two pair hand here. So we wager 3,000 chips and our opponent instantly calls us!
UTG+2: Shows 9♠ 9♥
Hero, Hi-Jack: Shows 7♣ 7♦ and wins with Full house, Sevens full of Queens.
Luckily for us, our read in this spot was pretty much spot on and we managed to get lucky enough to hit our hand on the River and get paid off by a hand that did have us beat the whole way pocket Nines.
Sum Up
We can play a wider range from this position as most of the time when we raise we will position for all of the post-flop play and this is a huge edge.
With that in mind look to widen your ranges and play aggressively on flops that hit your range better than the Blinds ranges when they defend.
Also, look to isolate weaker players or limpers who enter the pot before you, this is printing money in the long run as we have a big edge, the betting lead and position in these spots.
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