Shooting at Their Range

When you make a wager, you usually are hoping that either a better hand folds often enough to make the bet worth it or a worse hand calls often enough to make up for the times that you are called or raised by a better hand or get bluff-raised out of the pot. Quantifying poker situations accurately enough to make these types of determinations takes a great deal of knowledge, reading ability, and feel. When you can actualize these equations with a reasonable degree of accuracy, you’ve taken a huge step toward playing the game on a professional level.

It was Thanksgiving weekend at Bellagio, a weekend when the games are great. The $30-$60 limit hold’em game I was in was hopping. A loose tourist limped in from up front, and two limpers flat-called behind him. In the small blind, I looked down at the 6 5 and tossed in a chip to call. The big blind knuckled, and we took the flop off five-handed.

The flop was a favorable one, A 6 4. The loose tourist was the type of player who often bet when it was checked to him, so I checked, looking for him to bet and thereby get a feel for the holdings of the two callers behind him, and how the hand might play. The big blind also checked, and, dutifully, the loose tourist bet; one caller folded, and the other flat-called. Thinking my hand may be good or I might get a better hand to fold by raising, I check-raised.

Even if I didn’t succeed in getting anyone to fold and my hand was beat, I wasn’t getting a bad price on the raise strictly on the strength of my draw against multiple opponents. In terms of expectation, I hadn’t given up much, if anything, in regard to the price to raise. And if I succeeded in getting a better hand to fold or stopped someone from drawing out on me and won the pot because of it, I would have created huge equity for my hand. Plus, raising with drawing hands makes me a much harder read in the future.

The big blind folded, and my remaining two opponents both flat-called.

The turn card was the 3, adding an open-end straight draw to my hand; 20 cards now gave me a unique two pair or better. As planned, I followed through with a turn bet, believing there was some chance of winning the pot right there and knowing I would call all bets anyway. Again, there was little if any expectation loss with a draw that big. They both called. I still had little in the way of a read on the strength of my opponents’ holdings. Their range of hands was wide.

The river was the 8, a total blank for my hand. I thought about betting again, but neither of my opponents had it in him to fold an ace, and given my opponents’ range of hands, there was not much I could not already beat that would fold to my bet. Plus, the likelihood of getting called by a worse hand was slim. Feeling there was not much value in betting, I checked my hand, as did both of my opponents.

I rolled my hand over first; the loose tourist held on to his hand for a while, as if he was looking to slow-roll me, then shook his head and tossed his cards into the muck. The other caller turned over the 10 6, sixes with a higher kicker.

“You forgot to bet the river,” the local pro next to me condescendingly stated while laughing. Based on that scenario, he was right. Betting the river might very well have won me the pot, and had I known my opponents’ holdings, I would have bet.

But I didn’t know what they held, and just because a play would have worked, it doesn’t mean that it was the right expectation play based on the information available at the point of decision. Even though in hindsight a bet in that spot might have won me the pot, I still was correct not to bet. Analyzing your decisions based on whether or not they would have worked out is no way to maximize your expectation.

Good poker players base their decisions on their opponents’ plausible hand ranges. Sometimes, unbeknownst to the decision-makers, their opponents may be at the top or the bottom of their ranges.

Assuming that you are reading your opponents’ hand ranges approximately correctly, winning or losing can often be a matter of running into the bottom or top of your opponents’ ranges. This is why players who don’t understand the game conceptually, and/or don’t have the mathematical capabilities to compute the likelihood of running into given hands based on an accurate reading of their opponents’ hand ranges, can easily get thrown off their decision-making game when they run into streaks when their opponents’ ranges are a statistical anomaly.

Before you make any bet, you should have some idea of what you want your opponents’ responses to be. Know why you are betting. How do your opponents’ possible responses affect your price and your expectation? As I have said before, millions of data points affect each poker decision, and you have only seconds in which to weigh them.

Longtime poker pro and author Roy Cooke’s Card Player column has appeared since 1992. A successful Las Vegas real estate broker since 1990, his website is www.roycooke.com. Should you wish to inquire regarding real-estate matters — including purchase, sale, or mortgage — his phone number is (702) 396-6575. Roy’s longtime collaborator John Bond’s website is www.johnbondwriting.com.