We recently covered the strategy for defending BB on ace-high flops and playing on high-card boards, and now we will analyse low-card textures.
In this article, we will analyze examples of both dry and connected flops and see what the best way to proceed in different situations is. After analyzing these examples, you should have a good idea of what hands you should fold, call, and raise on low-card flops.
Defending BB on Dry Low-Card Boards – 9s5h2c
We will use the PeakGTO solver to analyze low-card flop textures in situations where you call from the BB vs the BTN open and see a dry flop with all low cards.
Key assumptions about the hand:
- The hand is played 100 bb deep
- The button opens, small blind folds, and we call from the BB
- We check to the preflop aggressor and face a bet
To kick things off, it is worth checking our preflop calling range from the BB so we can build a comprehensive strategy on top of that. While we 3-bet most of our strongest hands like premium pocket pairs and top ace-high holdings, we still call a bit over 25% of the time.
Let’s take a look at an example of 9s5h2c and see how we should respond when facing a c-bet from the button. If you are facing a small c-bet, then you should defend quite a lot of hands based on MDF in poker.
To be more precise, you only fold around 26% of the time. In this situation, you need to call over 53% of hands and check-raise almost 21% of your holdings, which might look surprisingly high at first glance. To reach that, you need to add a lot of your top pairs to the raising range and put the pressure back on your opponent.
That being said, you will mostly face a large bet from the button according to GTO poker strategy, so let’s see how your defense range changes when facing a two-thirds pot size c-bet.
We need to continue with fewer hands when facing a large bet from our opponent, but we still need to defend almost 57% of our range.
In this situation, we are check raising almost two times less often but still have 11% of the hands, so our raising range is mostly compiled from our strongest hands and weakest draws. We are raising sets, two pairs, and our strongest top pairs for value and balancing it out with gutshots and bottom pairs with some runner-runner draw potential.
All other hands that have showdown value mostly go into our calling range, but we still fold lower ace-highs that do not have any additional equity.
Key takeaways
- Check your entire range from the Big Blind
- Defend over 73% of hands vs small c-bet and 57% against a big bet
- Check-raise very aggressively against small c-bets with over 20% of your hands
- Build proper check-raising range with top pair+ and weakest draws like gutshots
- Call with all one-pair hands and other holdings that have additional equity
C-Betting On Connected Low-Card Boards OOP – 8h7h5d
You actually have a significant range advantage on low-connected boards in Texas Hold’em, so you will play a lot of hands after the flop, and we need to build proper ranges for that.
Key assumptions:
- The hand is played 100 bb deep
- The button opens, small blind folds, and we call from the BB
- We check to the preflop aggressor and face a bet
Your opponent on the BTN should only bet one-third of the time and use a small sizing of around 31% of the pot. In this spot, you will need to defend over 70% of the time, so let’s look at an example of 8h7h5d.
As you can see, we are check-raising around 20% of the time. While we use a mixed strategy for hands that we call and raise for the most part with no pure check-raises, we usually do some raising with sets, straights, guthost with overcards, openedners, and flush draws with a small frequency.
Your calling range should mostly consist of hands with good showdown value like top and middle pairs, some bottom pairs with overcards, and even underpairs. Combined with the strongest hands that you only raise some of the time, this makes your calling range unexploitable.
While you won’t be facing c-bet a lot since you have a significant range advantage, you still want to play quite aggressively when you do face a bet and put your opponent to the test.
Key takeaways
- We check all our hands from the Big Blind, even on connected boards
- We check raise very aggressively on both dry and connected flops
- You almost always call with any pair and any hand that has additional equity
