Semibluffing With Two Pair

I keep thinking about this hand from my 2012 WSOP main event. Although I lost the pot, it’s not a bad beat or a mistake that keeps running through my head. My play on the river was debatable, possibly even a small mistake, but what I find interesting is what didn’t happen, plays that weren’t made with cards that neither I nor my opponent held.

In my seven years as a serious player of the game, I’ve experienced many “quantum leaps” in my poker thinking, moments when a new concept changed the way I thought about the game. One such leap was when I learned to think in terms of ranges. I stopped asking, “What should I do with these two cards I’m holding?” and started asking, “What should my betting range be in this spot? What’s my check-raising range? What could my opponent do to exploit those ranges? Where does my current hand fit?”

This invites further questions: “If I want to have certain hands in my betting range in this spot on the river, how should that affect my turn play? Should I play certain hands differently on the turn (or the flop, or preflop) so that I can have them in my range when I get to the river this way?” And so the next quantum leap: learning to think ahead about what I will want my ranges to be on future streets.

Learning to ask these sorts of questions enabled me to recognize new holes in my game. When I see spots where I know I would never have the nuts, or I would never be bluffing, that’s an invitation to investigate my strategy for earlier streets. It may mean that I need to play some hands differently on early streets so that strong holdings can’t be excluded from my range. Or it may mean that I can get away with bluffing or value betting some unconventional hands.

Let’s back up. I’ll tell you about the hand, and then you’ll see what I mean. Blinds were 150-300 without an ante. The first player to act folded, the next just called, and by the time it got around to me there were five limpers in the pot. I was in the big blind holding A K. I raised to 1,800, the first limper called, a player in middle position called, and the rest folded.

With 6,300 in the pot, we saw an A J 9 flop. This flop presents an interesting decision point, thought it’s beyond the scope of this article to get into all of it. We discussed whether to bet or check at some length on my blog, which is syndicated by Card Player.com: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-blogs/39-andrew-foucault-brokos/entries/560969-what-s-your-play-wsop-2012-flop-results. For now, suffice to say that I checked, and the others checked behind.

The turn brought the Q. I bet 4,000, the first player called, and the second folded. The river was another queen. Here I think it’s rather close between betting for value or checking with the intention of folding to a strong bet. I ended up betting 8,000, which in retrospect may be a small mistake. My opponent called with 9-9 for nines full of queens.

My first thought was that my opponent should have raised, since I’m extremely unlikely to bet the turn with a hand that could river the full house. In other words, my turn range is polarized to either strong flushes (probably just the K and straight flushes, and even the latter I probably would have bet on the flop) or bluffs representing those hands. I wouldn’t have bet the turn with a bigger set than his or with two pair, preferring to play those hands as bluff-catchers and full house draws. Thus, he’s almost certain to have the best hand.
Then I realized that since I would have folded my hand instantly to a raise, he probably shouldn’t raise, and in fact if I don’t have any full houses in my betting range then he should only raise with the nuts. In other words, my bet/folding range consists of bluffs and the K, and my bet/calling range (or bet/raising range, if his raise isn’t all-in) consists of straight flushes. Even with four-of-a-kind queens, he wouldn’t beat any hand that would call a raise.

Of course I will have a straight flush quite rarely, so this is actually a good spot for him to bluff-raise even if he believes he has quite a bit of showdown value. In fact, if he holds the 10, I can’t possibly have the nuts, so he’d be much better off turning that hand into a bluff and raising with it rather than calling and hoping to beat a bluff.

To be clear, I didn’t expect this particular opponent to turn a strong made hand into a river bluff shove for all of his chips in the WSOP main event. I just find it enlightening to think theoretically about how some sort of robot super-opponent ought to play if he knew my strategy exactly.

Such musing led me to the realization that there was a big, exploitable hole in my play. My aversion to betting sets or two pair on a four-flush turn leaves me vulnerable to bluff raises on paired rivers. In itself, that’s not a big problem, since few opponents are capable of recognizing and exploiting such a leak, but it got me thinking about the other advantages of betting the turn with these sorts of hands.

Two pair is actually a good semibluffing hand on the turn. Either of my opponents could hold some random small diamond. If I allow them to check it down when I hold A-Q, I cost myself a large pot that I could easily have won by betting. Unlike sets, which have ten outs to boat up on the river, A-Q has just four. With two pair, you have a lot less to lose if you bet and get raised off of your draw, and a lot less to gain by seeing a free or cheap river. Those four outs still give A-Q some equity when called, which makes it better than bluffing with air.

In a heads-up pot this would be less of an issue, since the odds of someone holding a random small diamond would be cut in half. In a multiway pot, though, there’s merit to making your opponents fold weak diamonds, plus they are actually more likely to do so! You look stronger betting into two people, and the first of your opponents will have a harder time calling a turn bet with a small diamond because even if you don’t have him beat the third player easily could.

Thinking through the entirety of the situation, rather than just the cards that my opponent and I happened to hold, led me down a very interesting path. Even though I’m unlikely to find myself in exactly this situation again, I ended up coming to several valuable realizations about playing four-flush boards, which do come up regularly. The depth and complexity of this game continue to amaze me. In a nice synergy, I also believe that my ability to be constantly amazed by poker is what enables me to keep exploring it in more depth and remain interested in the game after so many years. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He’s a member of Poker Stars Team Online and blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.