Flop Evaluation: Part Four-Suitedness

This is the fourth in my series of articles on evaluating the flop. Modern flop play revolves around focusing on ranges. You decide if the flop hits your range or your opponents range, and act accordingly. In the first column, I discussed the attributes of various flops, and introduced the type of flop features. First let’s review the attributes: Pairs, Suits, Connection, Rank, and Variability. In the second column I focused on Rank, and in the third on Variability. In this column, the focus will be on Suits.

Suits: A flop may contain three (rainbow), 2 suits (thus there is a flush draw possible) or 1 suit (a flush is already possible.) The flop will contain 2 of a suit slightly more than half the time, about 55 percent. Next most common are the rainbow flops (three suits), which occur about 40 percent of the time. The remaining 5 percent of the time the flop comes out with three cards of the same suit.

A little more than once every two orbits, the flop will contain 3 of the same suit. When this happens, there is usually not much variability if you are fortunate enough to flop the nut flush. Your flush is the best hand, it will stay best on the turn unless the board pairs (seven cards) or on the river (10 cards), and your opponent makes a full house. (In the interest of completeness, there is a small chance another card of the same suit may make someone a straight-flush, but by the time you realize that this has happened, most of your stack will already by in the pot.)

For example, you have K Q, and the flop is A 6 4. If your opponent has one Pair, with a hand like A K, you will win nearly 97 percent of the time. If he has two pair, like A 6, you will still win over 82 percent of the time. Even if he has trips, like A A, your hand will hold up 66 percent of the time. The fact that your nut hand is unlikely to be outdrawn, means you should be more willing to make smaller bets and raises or even to give free cards. Play in a tricky fashion if you think it will get more money into the pot.

We just examined the case of a nut flush. What is your flopped flush is lower, such as J 10 on the same board, A 6 4. You will still win 82 percent versus 2 pair and 66 percent versus trips. His one pair hands become more dangerous, since they may include a higher diamond. You will still win against A K more than two thirds of the time. Occasionally you may even run into a higher flopped flush. This brings us the subject of how various ranges interact with these one suited flops.

Strong, tight ranges contain a lot of pairs and big cards. Loose, wide ranges contain a lot of suited connectors (8 7) and one gap suited connectors (9 7.) If the flop has three of a suit including the ace, then wide ranges are much more likely to be helped, since the tight range includes few suited combos without an ace. For example, an under the gun raiser might only have K Q, K J and Q J, in his value raising range. A loose range might include the following suited combos-K-Q, K-J, K-10, K-9, Q-J, Q-10, Q-9, J-10, J-9, 10-9, 10-8, 9-8, 9-7, 8-7, 8-6, 7-6, 6-5, and 5-4. The loose range will flop a flush about six times as often as the tight range. If you opponent has raised UTG with a tight range and you have called on the button with a wide range, you will not only flop the flush more often than your opponent, you can also semi-bluff with hands containing one high card in the suit. You can even try some pure bluffs with hands like 7 6 on the flop of A 6 4. (This isn’t really a pure bluff since you do have middle pair and a backdoor straight draw, but it will almost never be called by a worse hand.)

The fact that that a flopped flush is very hard to overtake, makes these bluffs and semi-bluffs very effective. As we saw, even strong hands, will lose most of the time. Your opponent really doesn’t want to call your first bet or raise in a situation, where you will fire three bullets with both the nuts, the semi-bluffs, and the pure bluffs.

When the flop doesn’t contain the Ace, (Q 6 4) then the narrow range will flop a lot more flushes, since suited aces make up a big part of tight ranges. If you have the wide range, you must be a little more cautious with your semi-bluffs and bluffs. You also have to keep in mind that on rare occasions, both of you will flop a flush. Unless you have a very accurate read on your opponent, these rare situations will be very expensive.

In the next column, I will discuss the most common case-when two of a suit come on the flop. I will also mention the relatively trivial rainbow flops. ♠

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow aka Zebra is a very successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 40 years. With two WSOP bracelets, over 50 cashes, and a few million in tournament cashes, he is easing into retirement. He currently devotes most of his Vegas gaming time to poker, and can be found in cash games at Bellagio and at tournaments during the WSOP. When escaping from poker, he spends the spring and the fall in New York City where he hangs out at his bars: Doc Holliday’s, The Library and DBA.