When the Board Is Paired

Polarization: The basic idea of polarization is that there are certain situations in which a player must have a very strong hand or a very weak hand. For example, you bet and your opponent raises on the river. Presumably he would call with most intermediate hands. Therefore he is polarized. He either has a monster, probably the nuts, or a total bluff. Say the board includes three of a suit with no pair — Q 10 3 2 7, and you have a nine-high flush with 9 8. (Technically you have a Q-high flush, but in reality you will beat him unless he has a flush with one card higher than a nine.) You bet and your opponent raises. He almost certainly has the A. If he has another heart to go with it, he has the nuts. If he doesn’t have a second heart, then he is bluffing, and your hand is good. He is polarized. I want to fold if he has it and call if he doesn’t. If there were more chips in play, I’d never reraise, since he’ll only call when I’m beaten. On the other hand, if I had only J 9, missed straight and flush draws, I might consider raising him back if I thought there was a good chance he was bluffing and would fold. (A really astute player might figure that since I can’t have the nuts — he has the A — I must feel a bluff is my only way to win. He might call with ace-high.)

In general I am not a big believer is assuming that my opponent is polarized, but there are a few situations like the one discussed above, where that is often the case. When the board is paired, players are often polarized. The aggressor has trips or even a boat or nothing. Since both players are polarized, they may both attempt to steal the pot. This is the type of situation where you see two weak hands getting a lot of chips into the middle. In cases like these, being able to read your opponent is the only way to consistently make the right decisions. These hands become a gigantic game of chicken. Eventually one player forces the other to back down. I will use a hand Sam Trickett played in a Macau cash hold’em game to illustrate this. While I have never played with Sam, he is already considered one of the toughest young players in both cash games and tournaments.

The blinds were approximately 2000-4000. Trickett had 8 6 on the button and a stack of two million. This is about 500 big blinds and is extreme deep-stack poker. He raised to 13,000. The small blind reraised to 40,000, and he called. When the stacks are this deep, the actual cards become less important, and position and ability assume primacy. Thus both players have very wide ranges, but neither is polarized. The flop brought 10 7 3. Sam’s opponent checked. With only a gutshot, it seems reasonable to check, try to hit a nine and then win a huge pot. However, his opponent’s check indicated weakness and a bet might have taken the pot immediately. Sam bet 60,000. The opponent called. The turn was the 3, which paired the board. It also set the stage for a game of chicken. Either player could have a full house or trip threes, but either one could also hold any random hand in his range. The small blind checked again. Trickett fired a second bullet — he bet 140,000. The small blind check raised to 490,000. His range has clearly become polarized. The check-raise is designed to show a big hand that wants to win a big pot. Obviously he could have the hand he’s representing or he could have something much weaker and be attempting a steal. It seems logical to give up here. Whether your opponent has a real hand or is bluffing, he is almost certain to bet again on the river. Trickett, however, read his opponent for weakness. If his read that his opponent had the bad end of a polarized range was right, he could take it away on the river. To me the problem with this call is that there is a chance that even if this read is right, his opponent will fire the rest of his stack into a pot that is now over 1.2 million, and you are holding a hand that can’t beat a bluff. If you had a hand like J-10, you could expect to beat a lot of bluffs.

The river was the J, and his opponent checked. It is possible, he had given up his bluff attempt, but it is also possible he had some reasonable hand like K-K and was now afraid that Trickett was already full or had made a straight with 9-8 or even two pair with J-10. Even a monster like A-3 has to worry about a boat or the rivered straight. But seeing the check, Trickett moved all-in for over 1.3 million. The opponent folded, and Sam took down a huge pot with eight-high. Clearly, if the opponent had made a crying call with A-3 suited, this hand wouldn’t have been a success story. As it was, he not only won a huge pot with nothing, but he created an image of someone who can have any hand at any time. Tom Dwan and other top players have done well creating this image and then getting their big hands paid off. The lesson for us mere mortals to take home is that once your opponent’s range is polarized and you read him for being on the weak end of that range, stop at nothing to take down the pot. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.