Facts, Theories, Draws, and Debates

I was playing some $2-$4 hold'em at Commerce Casino recently, a nice game full of good people, including my friend George, whose visit from England had prompted a "visit" of my own, to a game whose stakes were a bit lower than I usually play.

George is a good deal wealthier than I am, but he has a theory that a player should play at the lowest stakes level that interests him, that gets him his "kick," and he finds the lower-stakes games sufficient for that. My theory was that we were out for social purposes, not financial, so that dictated playing at the same table.

George's theory has merit; many players get in trouble playing higher than they should, in part because they feel like a member of a higher "caste" when playing at higher stakes. They want to be perceived as good players, and good players play for higher stakes … so their egos get them in trouble.

Heck, I just spent the better part of a paragraph explaining why I was sitting at a $2-$4 table, so I'm not immune to these feelings myself. Fortunately, I suffer only from the "little game" side of this problem: I'm a bit uncomfortable being seen playing $2-$4. I don't suffer from the "big game" side: I don't play $80-$160 when my bankroll dictates safer and better results at $20-$40 or $30-$60.

The "big game" side of this problem is much more serious and dangerous, and here is yet another way that ego can be mighty expensive. If you find your results aren't what you'd like, a soul-searching ego check might help you find a correctable weakness. Whether you have the desire and strength to correct it is another matter, but there are many paths to improved results, and figuring out how to play specific hands isn't the only one.

Nonetheless, learning how to play specific hands correctly will improve your results, and not everyone is cut out for the soul-searching route, so let's take a look at a hand that came up at this table.

The table had no reason to perceive me as a wild man, at least as much as this (or any) table takes the trouble to perceive how anyone plays. That's another important lesson: Don't waste time or effort on "image plays" for a table that isn't paying attention to your image.

So, with whatever conservative (for this game) image I'd managed to acquire working for me, I found myself looking at the A Q under the gun. I raised it to $4, and everyone folded except the button, who called two bets cold, and George, who called from the big blind (and who wanted me to use his name for this column after reading it, so don't get on me for dissing a friend in print!).

The flop came 10 8 3, so I had the nut-flush draw and two strong overcards. George checked, I bet, the button called, and George, that scoundrel, check-raised. The button and I called. The turn brought the Q, a perfect card to trap me, because now I had top pair-top kicker to go with my flush draw. George checked, I bet, the button folded, and George called.

The river was a blank, and George check-called. He turned over pocket threes and his set took the pot. I've been trying to get him to play more aggressively, and while he did well to trap the button for an extra bet here, he missed some bets later, afraid, he said, of the straight possibility. No one said much of anything about the hand for a few minutes.

Later, I started talking to George about how the hand had played out. For a while, George thought he had called two bets cold with his 3-3. I said if that were the case, it was a bad play, but I was pretty sure George had called only one bet, and the more we thought about it, the more certain we became that George had called out of the big blind.

This period of confusion was important to the discussion, because George was insisting rather intensely that his play had been fine.

"OK," I said, "let's break it down. I think we can agree that pocket threes are fairly useless in early position, because they aren't winning anything in a loose game unless they make a set."

(Normally, I don't advocate giving lessons at the table. If uninvited, you're asking for trouble, and if invited – as was the case here, because George said he wanted the help while the hands were fresh in his mind – it can put other players off. They tend to think this means you're playing seriously, and that makes them play seriously, which usually means play better.)

"I agree," he said, "but when I have a pocket pair, I want to look at the flop, in case I hit a set. There's nothing wrong with putting $4 in there."

"For the play to be right, you have to be getting the right price to hit your set," I said. "What are the odds you'll hit a set with a pocket pair?"

"Low," he said.

"No, no, no," I smiled, "you're not getting away with a loud argument about the play with 'low.' What are the exact odds?"

He admitted he didn't know, but insisted that knowing the odds "were low" was good enough.

"Nope, that won't work," I said. "What's 'low'? 5 percent? 20 percent? People make very good livings working both sides of margins much narrower than that. You rate to hit a set about one time in eight … but that's not as important to me as seeing that you're willing to take an aggressive stance defending your play when you don't know the fundamental card odds behind the play."

"Those card odds matter," I explained, "because without knowing them, you can't figure the pot odds, and if you can't figure pot odds, you can't play this game, because poker, especially lower-limit poker, is mostly about making good decisions about returns on your investments.

You have to tear some situations and some analyses apart before you can put a new and improved game together. Yes, small pocket pairs are useful hands if you can get into a multiway pot cheaply; the multiway action is necessary to make up for the fact that you will hit your set only about one time in eight.

Getting into a multiway pot cheaply means (unless you get lucky, and you shouldn't build your strategy around a plan to get lucky) you shouldn't be playing small pairs unless you're in late position. Here, calling two bets cold to play against only two opponents would have been a terrible play, because even with the implied odds you get when you make your set and people with decent hands pay you off, you don't get paid off enough.

We eventually decided that George had been calling one bet, out of the big blind, and that changed a lot, because under those circumstances, it was costing him only one bet, and he couldn't get reraised. So, he was correct to play the hand, but he gave my bet on fourth street too much respect. He probably would have been more correct to be worried about a bigger set than the straight, but he said it was the straight possibility that slowed him down.

Even so, you don't spike a set too often, and while set over set (or straight over set) is a nasty way to lose, if you're going to play small pairs, you need to make sure you get paid off, unless the board is just too scary. A 10 8 3 Q board shouldn't slow him down. If the board had read 9 8 3 10, it would have been right to slow down when I bet into him after he'd checked-raised me on the flop. There, he'd have been staring down the barrel of a plausible flush: What other hand would call the check-raise and then fire right out on the turn?

(Had the board read J 10 3 Q, he really would have been wise to slow down, because a common raising hand, A-K, has just made a straight, and of course the flush is still there.)

Note that with a 9 8 3 10 board, the straight still isn't too likely. I would have had to have raised under the gun with Q-J (or 7-6, and while there are players who will do that in a $2-$4 game, he knows I wouldn't). An under-the-gun raise with Q-J is more likely than one with J-9, but still not likely, and more to the point, it would have meant I also would have been betting out on the flop with only mediocre overcards and a gutshot to the straight (ignoring the 7-6), which isn't nearly as good a semibluff as betting out with stronger overcards and a nut-flush draw.

If you look back at where George chose to do his check-raising and his check-calling, I think you'll see that he did a good job of extracting an extra bet from the button on the flop, but probably played too much in fear of an unlikely straight on later streets. The most important lesson, though, is that not only is it a very good idea to know basics like how hard it is to spike a set or turn a flush or straight, but it's vitally important to know these things if you are going to later debate or analyze your play. You can't analyze well without sufficient information, and you can't debate well without sufficient ammunition.

Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament poker editor, and welcomes your questions.