It’s hard to make an extremely strong poker hand. I mean, in hold’em it’s hard to make a strong hand. In 5-card PLO, it’s really easy – the problem is that your opponents find it just as easy, and sometimes make an even stronger hand.
But on those rare occasions in hold’em when you do make a monster, you want to get full value for it. Here’s a hand I witnessed a friend play – it’s a good example of finding a balance get max value while avoiding a brick wall.
Setting the stage
My friend Mark and I were playing a $5/$5 no-limit Texas Hold’em game (two cards, not five) in the Los Angeles area. We got into an interesting hand, by which I mean Mark got into an interesting hand – I don’t remember what trash I folded. Mark was in the big blind, and his opponent in this hand was the small blind. We’ll call the opponent “Sam” for convenience.
Sam was relatively new to the table, and had intended to be in the smaller $3/$5 game. But there were no seats in those games so he opted to stay in the $5/$5 game. Already we have some information about Sam – he prefers to play smaller, and this may be somewhat out of his comfort/expertise zone.
The hand begins with a classic L.A. set piece: four people limp, Sam limps in the small blind, and Mark wisely checks with A♠️6❤️ in the big blind. Sam has run his $300 minimum buy-in up to $800. Mark covers him by a bit.
In what is now known as “Texas heads-up,” they go six ways to the flop with $25 in the pot after the drop. The flop is 3♦️-7♠️-T♠️. Sam and Mark both check, Mark planning to fold his cards at the first whisper of a bet. But that bet doesn’t come as the flop checks all the way around.
The turn makes the board 3♦️-7♠️-T♠️–2♠️, and suddenly Mark is interested again. Again, Sam and Mark check, but this time the UTG player bets $20 into the $25 pot. A middle-position player calls the $20, the button calls, Sam calls in the small blind, and Mark calls too.
Mark and I would later discuss this hand in excruciating detail over excellent bowls of phở. This was the first decision point that I wanted to challenge. Did he consider check/raising the turn? He, alone, knew where the nuts were. And the SPR was extremely high for a pot that went 38 ways to the flop. Suppose he made it $150 to go? Who would dare call such a raise? It sure looks like nobody has a very big hand – anybody who flopped better than one pair would certainly want to bet such a wet board.
As I noted at the beginning: it’s hard to make a monster, and Mark currently has ace-high. If he maximizes his fold equity and makes it $150, he’s risking $150 to win a $100 pot. His raise only has to win the pot 60% of the time to be profitable, and that’s ignoring his actual equity in the hand. I bet that raise clears the field more like 80% of the time.
Let’s do some turn math
Suppose Mark makes it $150 on the turn. 80% of the time, everybody laughs at his enormous raise and folds. Mark profits $100 x 80% = $80. 20% of the time, he gets called by somebody. Let’s agree that Mark isn’t going to fire a second barrel on blank rivers because anybody willing to call a raise that big must be strapped in. So 20% of the time, Mark gets called and needs to get there. Of course, 80% of the rivers he whiffs completely, and his $150 turn investment is lost. So he loses $150 x 20% (the times that he’s called) x 80% (that he whiffs the river) = $24 loss. Still, he’s showing an $80-$24 = $56 profit for his $150 raise.
Ha, I see some of you out there waving your hands. You’re absolutely correct – there’s one little pie slice we haven’t covered. That’s where Mark gets called on the turn but then gets there on the river. There’s $325 in the pot, and Mark is likely to get a small bet called – let’s say $75. This outcome is a long-shot – 20% of the time he gets called on the turn, times 20% of the time he gets there on the river. So it only happens 4% of the time. But hey, that’s 4% of the $400 pot he wins when gets there – another $16 in EV. So his total anticipated profit from check/raising the turn is $56 + $16 = $82.
Note that when he calls the turn, as he did, he still gets there 20% of the time. And he probably wins a small bet on the river when he does. So his equity in the pot on the turn is 20% x $105 = $21. Maybe he can get a $40 bet called on the river when he makes his flush (noting it will be a one-card flush). So that’s 20% equity in that extra $40 he’ll get – $4. Thus Mark’s expected win is $25, for his turn investment of $20, for a net profit of $5.
It’s a profitable call, but man, the fold equity and pot odds of check/raising the turn looks a lot more profitable.
By the way, Mark didn’t believe my “You clear the field 80% of the time with this 7.5x check/raise.” He felt the probability of success was lower. Of course, that’s fine, and Mark’s welcome to plug in his own percentage and see how the EV stacks up.
However, I claim that the $20 bet and calls can represent a giant array of trashy hands. $20 is not a big absolute number in a $5 blind game, and folks are willing to pay that much for a lottery ticket to the river. However, $150 is a big absolute number in a $5 blind game, and is likely to fold out everything except very big hands that are trapping. Since Mark is looking at the ace of trump, the most likely trapping hand (the nut flush) doesn’t exist – 80% is a perfectly reasonable estimate of ending the hand on the turn.
As played, to the river
Of course, I didn’t know any of this as I watched the hand play out – I just knew that when the river card was the 6♠️, making the board 3♦️-7♠️-T♠️–2♠️–6♠️, I thought, “Now there’s a fifth street, right there.”
Sam in the small blind checks, then Mark checks.
“Wait – what? Mark checked his one-card nut flush?”
Yeah, I know. Everybody at the table, and the passing chip-runner, could see the four-flush on the board. I don’t know why in the world Mark thought he was going to get a bet from behind him. Five people saw the river – did he think that a set or the queen-high flush would actually bet?
I really dislike Mark’s check – when you make a one-card nut flush, you have to value bet it for yourself. I would go for a chunky B60 ($75) bet, targeting the king or queen of spades.
Of course, I say all that, but then the most L.A. thing ever happens: it checks to the button, who bets $30 into the $125 pot. This bet might as well have a giant arrow pointing to it saying, “Cheap bluff!”
And that’s when the hand turns weird. Sam, in the small blind, check/raises to $130. When he did that, I thought, “Well, there’s the ace of spades.” But now Mark is contemplating his options, and I’m all, “What in the world is going on here?”
Finally Mark calls, and the button immediately folds (cheap bluff confirmed).
Sam says, “Do you have the ace?” and turns up the K♠️ and some other card. Mark nods and tables his A♠️6❤️.
The aftermath, and monsters under the bed
This hand kept us busy at the post-game Vietnamese restaurant. With basil-infused steam wafting to our faces, I offered my post-mortem on the fifth street play.
I explained why it made no sense to check the river – there was an awfully good chance that it would check right through, and Mark would sheepishly table his hand. Maybe Sam would quietly slip the K♠️ into the muck and Mark would never know the value he missed. It was only because of the button’s silly min-bet hopeless bluff, and Sam’s “adventurous” check/raise that Mark managed to get some extra added value for his near-nuts.
Mark said that he was thinking about raising to $350 or $400, but he worried that maybe Sam had the dreaded 9♠️8♠️ for the straight flush. He decided that he would try to bring in the button by flat-calling Sam’s check/raise, limiting his loss if Sam had the actual nuts.
Mark’s poker buddy Don was with us – he and Mark got into a spirited discussion about whether Mark could fold if he made it $350 and Sam shoved.
I wanted to spray them both with sriracha sauce.
“We know that Sam has already, by definition, made a serious mistake. If he had exactly 9♠️8♠️, then he flatted a nine-high flush on the turn in a five-way pot, knowing that any spade except the 6♠️ or J♠️ would almost certainly cost him the pot. If he didn’t have the straight flush, then he was check/raising a hand no better than the king-high flush with a four-flush on the board.”
Chopsticks waving for effect, I noted that combinatorically, the likelihood of the latter error (over-valuing a non-nut hand) was much greater than him having the actual-two-exact-cards-in-the-deck nuts.
Furthermore, the button was never calling. Mark was looking at the second nuts, and Sam the SB had just check/raised the button’s bet. The button was just the poor catalyst for the chemistry between Mark and Sam – his hand was two Target gift cards.
Therefore, Mark should have ripped his remaining stack in.
All three of us agreed that when Sam check/raised the river it was never a bluff. Lower stakes players, such as Sam, do not check/raise the river with the intention of folding. Mark was in an enviable, “Welp, if you have the ace of spades, you have it and good for you” situation.
“But what if Sam had the straight flush?”
“Then you lose 160 big blinds and good for Sam. Not going for stacks here is worrying about a rare monster under the bed. A unicorn monster.”
I believe that my friend Mark, hoping to avoid a bad, but extremely unlikely outcome, missed a chance to get Sam’s entire stack. Had Mark shoved, it would have been for Sam’s remaining $645. Sam would be calling $645 to win a $1,060 pot. Remember, Sam had already check/raised on the river – we know that he had already overvalued his king-high flush. Given the chance to see the showdown and win an absurdly big pot, it would have been awfully hard to fold.
One hand, three lessons
- Check/raise the turn. You have piles of equity, knowledge of where the nuts are, and opponents who are mostly denying strong value. Make them miserable with a massive check/raise. If it doesn’t end the hand, deal with the consequences.
- Lead the river when you get there. Nothing chills action like a four-flush board. Such a board should chill it – anybody, anywhere, can have the ace of trump for a dozen reasons. Expecting somebody without it to do your betting for you is unwise.
- Jam over the small blind’s check/raise. This player isn’t check raising to fold. They’ve already made a significant overvaluing mistake – give them a chance to compound it. And if they have the exact two cards needed to beat you, tip your hat to them and ask them to buy you a drink.
Mark and I respect each other’s play, and I hope he won’t object to my making an example of this hand. It’s also provably true that most of us (myself included) write and post far better than we play. For instance, there’s no guarantee I’d have found that sweet check/raise on the turn, but I’m 100% sure it would have been the correct play.
Great hand Mark, and thanks for the phở.
