written by sweetjazz3 DeucesCracked Contributor
published about 3 years ago

You're playing a game of heads up limit hold em.In this hand, you have the button (which is also the small blind) and you open raise with J :club: 4 :club:.The big blind reraises you, and you elect to call.This is a fairly typical way this hand may play out in heads up limit hold em; J4s is a strong enough hand to open raise with on the button and most strategies employed by your opponents will involve a fair amount of three-betting before the flop.What I would like to do is analyze postflop play in a situation where you flop a strong hand -- but far from a powerhouse -- on a dry board.In many ways, this situation is much simpler than the average hand you will play, but nevertheless there is a great deal of complexity in this spot.

In the situation we analyze, the flop comes J :diamond: 5 :spade: 5 :heart:.The big blind leads out and we have our first post-flop decision.The first important point to make is that we should be developing a multi-street plan right now.Our decision for what to do on the flop should come with a basic plan for what we want to do on later streets.Obviously, that plan will be a conditional one, depending on what cards fall and what actions our opponent takes.It is clear that our hand is much too strong to fold, so our flop decision is whether we should raise or just call.

What factors should we use to base our decision on?First, we need to consider our opponent's range for three-betting before the flop.Against a player who reraises only premium starting hands, we should be inclined to proceed somewhat cautiously.For example, if our opponent's range is 88+, AJo+, KQo, ATs+, KJs+, our equity on this flop is only 58%; against a very aggressive player who is three-betting about 45% of his hands (any pair, any ace, any two cards 8 and above, a few other smallish connectors), our equity is a much better 75%.Against a more middle of the road player who three bets about 20% of his hands weighted toward medium+ pairs, big broadway cards and some suited connectors, our equity is 66%.We should note that we are assuming that our opponent is going to continuation bet his entire range on this flop; this is by far the most common strategy, but you should be aware that you will need to make necessary modifications if your opponent deviates from this standard.

The next consideration we have to make is how will our opponent play his range of hands, both if we continue to just call and if we show aggression with a raise.First, we should note that the board texture is such that we are unlikely to get reraised at any point in the hand by a worse hand that is betting for value.Against a very straightforward player, we might consider raising at some point in the hand with the intention of folding if we face a reraise; given the large pot odds we will be getting to see a showdown, we will have to be near certain that our opponent is not capable of bluffing in order to make a fold.(You should not assume that someone whose doesn't three-bet much preflop will play this snug; often they will get out of line with a hand like AK postflop because they are frustrated by your aggression with your "rag" hand and sometimes they will just have hit a point where they are tilt-raising with garbage.)On the other extreme, we might be involved with a maniacal player or be involved in a game dynamic where there has been a fair amount of bluffing and rebluffing going on -- in this case, we might raise with the hope of inducing a bluff reraise and happily call down from there (or possibly even four-betting if we think we can continue to induce our opponent to get out of line).The more common middle ground is that we will not be happy if we face a three-bet, but we will feel compelled to call down because of the pot odds we are getting, even though our money will be going in very bad when we do face the three-bet.

As relevant as our equity is when we get three-bet, we also have to estimate how likely better hands will be to three-bet us rather than just call down.Some villains love to try to get thin value and might happily bet/3bet a blank turn with JT if you wait until the turn to raise them, figuring you might be raising a worse jack or that you just paired the turn card and not be concerned about losing extra bets when you do have trips; other opponents might elect to just call down with a hand as strong as AA on the turn.In general, opponents are more likely to have a wider range for reraising for value when you raise the flop than the turn, and in this hand that is actually a point in favor of waiting for the turn.If your opponent will 3bet the flop and lead the turn with AA if you raise the flop, but just call down if you raise the turn, then you end up losing the same amount either way; but you gain an extra small bet of value against his range of worse hands that call down (actually you only get a large fraction of a small bet, since your equity versus his calldown range won't be 100%).

Another advantage of waiting until the turn is that if an overcard to our jack hits the turn, we may well be glad that we didn't raise the flop and decide to just call down.Let's go back to that typical player whose three-betting range was 20% of his hands.We had 66% equity on the flop.If an ace hits the turn, our equity drops to 50%; if a queen hits, our equity drops to 54%.By contrast, if a blank such as the 3 :club: rolls off on the turn, our equity increases to 72%.Again, our analysis assumes that our opponent will fire 100% of turns if we just call on the flop -- while this is very common in many heads up matches, you have to pay attention if your opponent deviates from this and estimate his hand range for firing a second barrel.If your opponent is a thinking player, his decision to fire the second barrel will have a lot to do with what range of hands you peel the flop with.Some players just give up with 87o on that flop, others choose to peel.Some players would call the flop with K4 and possibly even intend to showdown.How your opponent perceives your flop range may affect his turn decision.

This perception may also shape the range of hands your opponent will call down with.The most typical approach in a spot like this is that your opponent will call down with A high and fold worse hands.This has a certain amount of merit to it, as it is a balanced strategy that prevents the opponent from getting run over by a frequent bluffer.The wider your opponent's three-betting range preflop, the more incentive he has to make marginal calldowns.Some opponents use a preflop three-bet to announce that they are going to see a showdown; other thinking opponents may be more inclined to give you credit for a strong range if you raise after having played fairly snug to that point and may decide to lay down a hand like A high or a small pair.Given our actual holding, this means we will get considerably more value from raising the player who is committed to showdown.

If our opponent does not have a hand that beats us or a worse hand that merits seeing a showdown, he has a hand that only has value as a bluff.The wider our opponent's three-betting range, the more his range is weighted toward such junky hands.In this case, it is very valuable to give our opponent the rope to keep bluffing when he is drawing close to dead.A typical default strategy might involve continuation betting every flop and turn.Against a chronic barreler who unthinkingly bets every street when he is the aggressor, we might decide to just call the flop and turn and decide whether to raise or just call the river based on the final board texture.It can be quite enjoyable to see someone barrel T8o as the board comes out J55 - 2 - 8 and watch them call the raise on the river after they made the hand that they were drawing (dead) to.

Lastly, it is worth contemplating the metagame affects of the various lines we can take.If we plan on using aggression to try to take away pots when both players miss the flop, then we should be inclined to play our made hands very aggressively, even sometimes willingly putting money in when we have slightly the worst of it to make it clear to our opponents that it will be expensive for them to see showdowns.On the other hand, if we are planning to play a more value-oriented game where we are going to avoid getting too far out of line and take advantage of the fact that our opponent is not willing to adjust to our decision to bluff infrequently, then we may be more concerned about inducing bluffs and be more inclined to appear weak so that our opponent tries to run us over when we have marginal hands worthy of showdown.For example, against a player who three-bets preflop with a wide range, we are often going to want to at least peel the flop with a wide range of pretty marginal hands.If we raise all of our strong hands right away and just peel with our weaker ones, we give away a lot of information to our opponent.We could try to raise the flop with a lot of weaker hands in our range; against many showdown-oriented players, however, we end up playing into their hands by making their frequent calldowns a correct strategy.The alternative way to balance is to peel the flop with stronger hands as well that can punish an aggressive player by inducing him to put in multiple big bets into the pot on the later streets when he has very poor equity; if he adjusts by folding a wider range of hands to our aggression, we can mix in some bluff raises as well.

The concrete conclusion we can draw from this analysis is that given how typical midstakes heads up matches play, the best default line is probably to wait until the turn and raise a safe card.But I hope that you take away from this something much more valuable -- the large number of considerations that should be floating through your head as you start to develop your flop plan.A good default strategy is a reasonable first step to becoming a solid winner, but becoming adept at recognizing when game conditions are such that you should adjust your line will bring about a significant increase in your winrate.