GT-NO: Turning The Nuts With No Redraw

If you find yourself up against only one other player, there are basically three ways to decide how to play your hand at a particular juncture.

1. Play the most profitable way you should play, if he has what you think he has.

2. Assign him various possible hands, and average out the optimum way to play against that entire range.

3. Play as close as you can to GTO, which essentially is similar to no. 2, except the hands you are assigning him are the various ones he could have if HE were playing GTO.
The second option is almost always the best if you can do it relatively accurately. But it isn’t easy.

That’s because just identifying his likely hands doesn’t automatically lead you to the right play. It may well be that against three of the five hands he likely has, your best play is to fold, yet the overall average best play is to call or even to raise!

There is also the possibility that you are not adept at discerning the best play even if you knew for SURE what he had.

Another problem is that certain opposing hands are more likely to be dealt than others because certain card combinations are rarer than others.

Finally, there is the fact that in certain situations your opponent will only SOMETIMES play certain hands a certain way, while playing other combinations much more often.

Here is a rather complex example from pot-limit Omaha.

It starts simple enough. There is no bet on a flop of Q 10 7. The turn is the 6 and the villain bets the pot (say $100), everyone folds, except you. You have 8-9-X-X with no draws to a better hand. Your stack is $300.

The most important factor (after stack size) is probably the chance that the opponent has the straight as well. Next most important is the chance that he has a good draw (set or flush draw) as well as the straight. And thirdly (and possibly even the most important) is your assessment of how the opponent will play the river when a scare card comes that may or may not help him.

I won’t go into great detail but will make a few observations.

1. With rare exceptions, if there is a decent chance that the bettor has no straight, you should raise with any stack small enough to get you all in or close to it.

2. If it is almost certain that the opponent has a straight and will always bet if he does, then card combinations will tell you what the chances are that he also has a draw to beat you. It’s a small underdog, but it becomes a favorite if the player is apt not to bet without a redraw.

But even if he will bet all his straights, you should not raise with a very big stack if he has the money to put in a very big reraise. Remember that if he has a straight like you, the best you can do is profit $50. If you raise and get reraised the size of the pot you have to put in $1200 plus possibly more to get that $50.

3. If you have close to $300 and thus can’t be reraised, it still could be right to just call those times it is likely he has a straight. It depends on his likely reactions to a scare card on the river.

Simplistically, if he is likely to bet only if that scare card helped him, you should call the turn and fold to his bet on the river. If furthermore he will always bet when he improves but not otherwise you should of course bet after he checks.

There is more to say about hands like this and clearly you really have to know your stuff to get anywhere near the right counterstrategy. Perhaps that’s why the majority of the good but not elite players like to fall back to GTO. ♠

David Sklansky is the author of The Theory of Poker, as well as nearly two dozen other guides on gambling, poker, and other games. The three-time WSOP bracelet winner’s latest book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em: Help Them Give You Their Money, is now available on Amazon. You can contact Sklansky at [email protected].