Flopped 2nd Pair, middle kicker vs Preflop 3-bettor

This is actually a spot where you should just call down unless Q and A or K and A hits on Turn and River but on blanky Cards there is no way to get out?

Preflop it's playable. As Korn already told regarding ORC and the kicker: You can even openraise 1kicker below the listed hand.

So T8s is ok to openraise unless BU is a LAG. I would avoid to be playing this hand against an aggressive guy oop but with no particular reads i do openraise T8s as well, especially against weak guys yet to act.

We need around 27% EQ to show down a hand in a 3bet Pot and he's got too many unimproved Overcards he could be betting through with. KTs KQ is possible for him to bet again on blanks or he does bet AK and he could also bet worse PP's like 66 77 as he feels to be in a negative freeroll situation and expect to get called by some Ax hands.

This hand is actually kind of a nobrainer calldown when the boardprogression is favourable.

Yeah I agree with everything you mention. There are some bad late street cards, and we don't need a huge amount of equity to show down given the pot size.

Thx for mentioning that point about 1 kicker below the listed hands. I didn't catch that in the articles.

I do think that this can seem like a nobrainer once you know what to do, but understanding how to think about playing a made hand that could be behind is definitely a meaty topic.

Originally posted by datsmahname
Thx for mentioning that point about 1 kicker below the listed hands. I didn't catch that in the articles.

Yes, it's very interesting. Can someone clarify the issue? How do we decide that we raise or fold preflop?

For example, we have

       Equity     Win     Tie
CO     28.23%  26.53%   1.70% { Ks5s }
BU     24.04%  22.69%   1.35% { random }
SB     23.77%  22.41%   1.36% { random }
BB     23.95%  22.59%   1.36% { random }

But there's K8s mentioned in the chart.

In gold articles we find that hands with the same EV in the distance can have difference up to 7% percent in equity, it means we can roughly add or subtract 3.5% maximum for playability, is it right?

When we defend BB not only do we analyze equity but we also take potential future investments into account so instead of playing with 29% equity we should choose hands with 35%+ equity versus one PFA. The same principle works when we decide should we 3bet preflop or not, so there's some difference between 3betting TAG (46%+ equity) & LAG (48%+ equity).

How can we decide about open-raising? Above average equity is not the only criterion obviously. We should take fold equity into consideration, that is, opponents behind us, playability of the hand. How can we roughly estimate all these variables in one equation? Why, for example, is K8s in ORC from CO and K5s not? Can we profitably play it versus fish, not only nitty players?

Hi!

I think the chart is always a bit tighter to make sure you won't go too loose. Being a bit nittier in these spots as a beginner can't do much harm but playing too many marginal hands is much worse, especially when your postflop skills aren't that good. Remember, the charts are only a basic guidelines what to do.

For me K6s+ would be a standard raise from CO. It depends alot on the players behind you. If there's a good LAG on the BU who's 3betting you 19% or if there are 3 good players behind you you should tighten up of course. But for example, when the BU and SB are tight and BB is a big fish, you could easily open stuff like K2s, J6s etc.

As for loosening up your hands for a kicker, this is a rule easy to remember though it may be not be the best balanced. Equity is important, but there are other qualities you can consider. Other important factors are playability and implied odds. A hand has implied odds when it has the ability to hit monsters often. A suited connector would be a prime example. A hand has a good playability when it helps you to avoid mistakes on the flop. This would be a hand that is not easily dominated where you have a good idea on the flop what your equity is.

T8s for example is a hand that has a very good monster hitting capability and it also has a good playability. Even if you are faced with a reraise you will likely loose small pots and win big pots. This is worth quite a lot and the charts may undervalue this a bit.

So when you wish to enlarge your range you might consider hands with a good playability and good implied odds first instead of hands with a equity that is better slightly but don't have a good playability. Small aces for example are hands that are easily dimoinated. So instead of playing another small ace you might look to play a couple of suited conncectors, suited gapped connectors or a lower pocket instead first.

As for measuring the quality of a hand, equity versus random is a bit misleading. It's not really the thing we should look for when we consider to play a hand or not. Consider this:

Full ring game, UTG position:
AQo versus 9 random hands = 15,5%
AKo vs. 9 random hands = 17,2%
JTs vs 9 random hands = 16,5%
QJs vs 9 random hands = 17,2%

If we look at this, we should prefer JTs to AQo while QJs is equal to AKo. Clearly, something is wrong. We don't like to play JTs or QJs in UTG in a FR game but we do want to play AKo and AQo. Why? Because it is very unlikely that we get 9 callers if we raise in UTG and it is also unlikely the callers have random hands.

If we see a flop it is much more likely we play the flop against one or two players if the table isn't very loose. Against one or two players and their typical ranges AKo and AQo fare much better than JTs and QJs.

The same goes for a steal position. Most of our steal hands we don't play for value. The best outcome for most of our hands is that all remaining players just fold. This will win us the blinds which nets 0,75 BB. There's not many hands that have a expectation of more than 0,75 BB per hand. For the CO Stoxtraders book Winning in Tough Hold'em Games gives us TT+, AQs+ with a expectation of more than 0,75 BB per hand and that's it. Basically these hands are the only ones with which we like to see a flop. For any other hand we prefer to just win the blinds.

This sounds incredible, but really 100% of 0,75 BB is worth more than say 65% of 2,25 BB minus our investment of 1 BB. Of course we don't mind to see a flop with 65% equity, but winning the blinds outright is even better.

When we raise first in before the flop our primary goal is to win the blinds. Playing a flop is just our fall back plan.

When we win the blinds our equity does not matter. There is no contest. When we see the flop, it does matter. Most of the time we will have just one opponent. So the equity that does matter most is the equity versus one opponent and his range.

When constructing our stealing range, we therefore should look how our hands holds up to just one opponent. The most important case is that BB calls as this is the most frequent situation if we see a flop. But a reraise is definitely a possibility so we shouldn't neglect it either.

It looks a bit complicated and it is. The next step is basically computing the expectation value of the raise with the goal of extracting the equity needed for the raise. This is not easy as a lot of things can happen if there are more than 2 players involved.

Also the calculation would be dependant on the kind of players you face. The value of initiative is another variable. On the whole there are a lot of variables which result in different outcomes. This probably is the reason why Stoxtrader tried to measure it empirically. Anyway, I'm pretty convinced the results would be near the charts. So I leave it at that for now.

So sorry, no easy answer.

Thank you cjheigl for this great posting!