Hand 2 Hand Combat -- Joey Lawrence

Event Online six-max no-limit hold’em cash game
Stacks Joey Lawrence – $1,005; Villain – $1,000
Blinds $5-$10

Joey raises to $30 from the small blind with the 10 7. The villain calls from the big blind.

Craig Tapscott: Did you have any reads on the villain prior to this hand?

Joey Lawrence: I had no specific read on him. Despite this, I did make a couple of assumptions about him. First, since he bought in for a clean 100 big blinds, I assumed that he was a regular and not some random fish. Second, since I’d never seen him before at $5-$10, I assumed that he was a thinking $2-$4 or $3-$6 regular taking a shot.

Flop: 7 4 2 (pot: $60)
Joey bets $55. The villain calls.

JL: When my opponent calls, his range is very wide. Occasionally, he will have me beat with a set, 8-8, 9-9 (10-10+ usually would have three-bet preflop), A-7, and maybe K-7 suited or Q-7 suited. More often, though, he will have a straight-draw type of hand like A-5, A-3, 6-5, or 8-6, or a weak one-pair hand like 8-7, 7-6, 5-4, A-4, 5-5, or 6-6. Sometimes he’ll have a strong high-card hand like A-10 or A-J that he figures is ahead (since I’m probably continuation-betting this flop with my entire range), and sometimes he’ll have pure floats. These will usually be hands with some backdoor equity, whether just overcards or a hand like 9-8, which can improve on many turn cards and make a move.

Turn: 9 (pot: $170)

CT: Is this a scare card for your hand?

JL: Not really. But a lot of players instinctively shut down when an overcard comes to their pair. This is a problematic habit, and the thing to always be mindful of is how the turn card actually affects your range, your opponent’s range, and your relative equities. If you think about it, the 9 is actually a fantastic card for me. It doesn’t improve any of my opponent’s likely holdings, other than perhaps 9-7 or 9-8. It improves 9-9, of course, but I was behind 9-9 anyway, and in this respect, it’s actually a good card because it makes it less likely that my opponent has 9-9. Thus, if I was ahead on the flop, I’m usually still ahead on the turn, so …

Joey bets $144. The villain calls.

CT: Scared yet? It’s very important to know what this call does to the villain’s range.

JL: When my opponent calls the turn bet, I think his range is much more constricted. He is unlikely to peel naked draws and will usually have a hand with some showdown value: a pair of fours, or A-5 or A-3 at the worst. I can also arguably rule out sets and 9-7 from my opponent’s range. While this would be a good spot to slow-play such a hand, I can say confidently that most people are simply incapable of slow-playing the turn.

River: K (pot: $458)

CT: Does this card change anything for you?

JL: The king, like the 9 on the turn, is actually a complete blank in terms of our relative hand values. My opponent cannot have outdrawn me with the king, since it’s impossible for him to have arrived here with one. Thus, if I had the best hand before the river, I still have the best hand now.

CT: Can you extract thin value at all?

JL: The problem is extracting value from worse hands. While I could bet the flop and the turn and expect 8-7, 7-6, 6-6, or A-4 to call, it is almost impossible for me to bet this river and have these hands call a third time. As the old adage goes, if you can’t expect to be called by worse, you shouldn’t bet, so, prima facie, it seems that I should not bet this river.

CT: From the start, you figured that the villain was a thinking regular. How can you use this intelligence?

JL: Well, when you get to medium stakes, you have to start thinking about what your opponent thinks you have. When I bet the turn, I could be doing it with a lot of hands for value. Basically, any hand A-7 or better, he could safely presume I would bet for value. Moreover, while a lot of players barrel [bet] scary overcard turns like aces and kings as a bluff, a 9 is generally not a card that players will bluff at, so my opponent probably doesn’t think I have too many pure bluffs in my range on the turn. However, I do have some semibluffs, like J-10, 6-5, and A-5.

CT: And since all of those semibluffs missed …

JL: … there’s a good chance that I’d continue bluffing with them on the king scare card. However, I still have a considerable number of hands in my range that I can bet for value. Thus, if I bet a normal amount of two-thirds of the pot, it’s still very hard for him to call me. He knows that I know that the king is a blank, and I therefore can bet the river with a hand like J-J or A-9 for value. So, I had to step it up a notch, and I overbet for value.

Joey bets $525.

CT: What are you trying to induce here?

JL: The purpose of overbetting in this spot is to polarize your range in your opponent’s eyes. When people overbet, they usually have the nuts or a complete bluff. People don’t normally overbet with weak made hands like mine, because, quite correctly, they figure that no worse hand can call them if they bet so big. The great benefit of overbetting, though, is that from your opponent’s perspective, it takes a lot of value hands out of your range. In this case, while my opponent might think that I could bet J-J or A-9 on this river for value, he wouldn’t think that I would overbet it.

CT: How does this affect the villain’s hand range?

JL: Well, the corollary of this is that my overbet actually strengthens my opponent’s relative hand value. If my opponent has, say, 7-6 suited and I bet a normal amount of two-thirds of the pot, he is afraid of losing to J-J, A-9, and K-K. However, if I overbet, he becomes afraid of losing to only K-K or some rare two pair or better. Moreover, bluffs like J-10 or 6-5 become proportionally a much bigger part of my range. This means that, pot odds aside, my opponent is actually more likely to call an overbet than a normal bet of two-thirds of the pot. From his perspective, a hand like 7-6 suited is now equal in strength to a hand like 10-10 or even A-A. They are all just bluff-catchers. He wins if I’m bluffing and loses if I’m not.

CT: I can understand doing this with the nuts to induce a call, but with just third pair?

JL: This is where hand reading becomes really crucial. If you are confident that you are ahead, it doesn’t actually matter whether you have the nuts or merely outkick the guy. Either way, you want a call. By overbetting a hand that is only slightly better than my opponent’s, I am technically doing a “range merge.” But the point remains that I am trying to trick him into thinking his hand is stronger than it really is, and elicit an otherwise elusive call.

The villain calls and reveals the 8 7. Joey wins the pot of $1,508.

Joey Lawrence is a fourth-year commerce/law student at the University of Sydney. He specializes in six-max no-limit hold’em cash games, and can be found playing anywhere between $5-$10 and $25-$50 online. He is also an instructor at CardRunners.com.