Out For A Nice Run

I was playing the other day and the following happened: Player A was the aggressor in a hand of $20-$40 limit hold‘em. He raised preflop and bet every street before checking the river on a 10-7-3-9-K rainbow board. When he checked, his opponent bet and he called. Opponent showed Q-J and Player A frustratedly tabled his A-10 and exclaimed “Runner-runner, again.” I obviously refrained from correcting the gentleman, but I filed this statement away in my characterization of him being a low-skill player. I see people make this mistake often and I understand where it comes from, but just because someone’s win happens in a runner-runner fashion (where the person’s hand is made because the turn and river came in such a way that completes his winning hand) doesn’t mean it was a runner-runner victory. In order for a hand to have been considered a runner-runner victory, that has to be the opponent’s only way of winning. If, in the above example, the aggressor had 10-10 instead of A-10, that would be a runner-runner victory and a nice little beat at that. As played, though, it’s just your average, run of the mill bad beat and not a terrifically bad one at that. According to PokerStove, (seriously, everyone, if you don’t have PokerStove by now, you’re out of your skull, it’s the single most indispensable piece of poker software there is) with no possibility of backdoor flushes for either opponent, Q-J is only a 3-to-1 dog on the flop.

You may ask, Gavin, why would this small semantic issue be a trouble spot in your game? That’s a fair question and one I’m happy to address. In my opinion, there are two reasons why this is a trouble spot. First, and most important in my opinion, is that it shows a lack of fundamental understanding of how to count outs and understand equities at the poker table. If you don’t realize that your opponent in this hand has six direct outs on the flop, you are clearly missing something when you analyze hands. In addition, your on the fly equity calculations for deciding how to play a hand will be flawed. In the above example as the person with Q-J, if you don’t realize that you’re only a 3-to-1 dog, instead thinking that you can only win with a runner-runner straight, you would fold because your hand on that flop would be equivalent to 4-2 offsuit, which has equity of about 4.3 percent. Folding on this flop is a gigantic equity disaster since (running it hot and cold against just A-10) 73.43 pecent of the time we lose one bet and 26.56 percent of the time we win six bets for an expected value of .86 bets or $17.18. I know there are some super ballers who read these articles that are willing to throw away $17.18, but I’m not.

The second factor in why this could be a trouble spot in your game is one we all struggle with at times: Emotional control. I originally wrote tilt, but you don’t have to go on tilt to have problems with your emotional control. I don’t tilt very often in the general sense of playing crazy hands or making disastrous decisions because I’m losing, but I do sometimes lose a bit of emotional control and let that affect my mood or enjoyment of the game. But I digress. The guy who lost this pot got very upset and tilted for quite a while because of his “runner-runner” bad beat.

He essentially made up a reason to tilt. Perhaps if he had known that he was only a 3-to-1 favorite, and that his opponent could have won by hitting any of his six direct outs, he wouldn’t have gone off the rails and perhaps his big losing day would have only been a moderate losing day. We focus so much on results, (I’m guilty of it at times as well) that it’s sometimes very hard to get a grasp on what has really happened in a hand. Hero in the hand with A-10 played his hand correctly, and so did Villain. Both played their hand reasonably and one hand won and the other lost. This situation comes up hundreds of times in a session and it can’t really be helped whether you win or lose. What can be helped is that you look at these situations for what they are individually, hands where you made theoretical money, instead of what they may have been collectively, a “lucky” or “unlucky” session. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG.