Don't Lose A Hand This Way...

Hey!

Today we'll talk about one of the most frustrating ways to lose a hand, and how to reduce the times this happens to you.

No, I'm not talking about getting it in ahead and losing to a weaker hand that sucks out on you - we're past that (sometimes...).

What I'm talking about is a scenario like this:

You open the BTN, SB 3bets, you call. The flop is J69ss and SB cbets 66% pot.

You call, the turn is an offsuit 5 and SB checks. Now what?

You decide to check back, the river is a Q and SB bets 75%. Sigh.

You call and lose to AQ. Of course.

Now, even though that river call is GTO approved...

...you still question your play.

Because what about the turn? Should you have prevented AQ from getting there on the river? Should you have bet the turn?

Instead of just heading to the solver for this answer, let's look at the underlying principle here. That way, next time you're in a similar, but not exactly the same spot, you'll know which factors you should consider when making a decision.

When we're talking about whether to bet the turn to prevent your opponent from outdrawing you on the river, the keyword we're talking about is 'protection'. Or, as often preferred, 'equity denial'.

By betting the turn, you can potentially get overcards in your opponent's range to fold, securing the pot right away and thereby 'protecting' your top pair against dangerous overcards. Or, denying your opponent their equity with those hands.

However, 2 things need to be true for equity denial to be effective:

1. Your opponent needs to fold these overcards against a bet

If you bet and they don't fold, you're not denying equity. This is one of the big mistakes beginners often make when they bet big on a suited board and think they are "protecting against flushdraws". When in reality none of their opponents' flush draws fold and they're not protecting anything. They might be charging flush draws money, but they're not denying equity.

So the first premise for a bet to be denying equity is that your opponent actually has to fold hands with equity against your bet.

In this example, that is the case, at least for a big part of their hands:

Against a 25% pot bet on the turn, the SB would have to fold a large amount of hands that have either 1 overcard (3 outs), 2 overcards (6 outs) or even an additional gutshot (10 outs) against our hand JT. So we would indeed deny 6-22% of equity a decent amount of the time. Which means this premise is valid here.

2. Your opponent needs to have these overcards in their range in the first place

Now it gets more interesting.

Because in order to be able to fold these overcards against our bet... our opponent needs to have them in their range in the first place!

And what does that depend on? Well, many things.

But first, let's now have a look at what would actually be the GTO play for us on the Button against a turn check.

In GTO, the SB would bet some, but not nearly all overcards they have in their range. A lot of them would just check:

And against the check, we should actually bet our JTs - to protect against those overcards:

Understood.

But what if our opponent didn't have so many or maybe even none of these overcards in their range because they would bet all of them on the turn?

I nodelocked that scenario and made the SB always bet the broadway hands that have at least 1 overcard to the board.

Now, we can have a look at what would change in our preferred strategy when facing a check:

JTs becomes a check.

Since there are a lot less overcards to protect against (only a few suited aces are left) betting JTs becomes the inferior option compared to checking (and letting your opponent make a worse pair OTR or bluff).

Also, we see a shift from having the 25% bet size as our main size to betting 66% more often. Without the overcards, which are mostly air hands that are folding to a bet, the SB's checking range is simply more condensed. So it includes more medium hands and less pure folds. Which makes us want to bet less often overall, but bigger and with a more polarized range.

On the contrary, when we make the SB always check these overcards on the turn instead of barreling them...

...we see the opposite happen and we always want to bet JTs, no exceptions:

We also increase our betting frequency overall, because there's just so much more air in the SB's range that we can get to fold by betting small.

So the next time you're faced with the decision of betting against an aggressor's check, think about whether you're able to protect your hand against anything and whether you can clear up equity. For that, you don't only want to consider whether your hand is vulnerable to any outs, but also whether your opponent has these outs in their range in the first place.

So consider the range they got to that spot with by looking at what they didn't do. Do you think they would check all their overcards on the turn? Then it's a good spot to bet and protect against them. Do you think they would never check them and always barrel them through? Then you can comfortably check back your top pair and not be worried not give away free outs.

Of course, in this example, the turn betting and checking ranges are not the only things that determine what your opponent's checking range looks like.

Which hands they did or did not cbet on the flop is equally as important.

And also which hands they 3bet preflop. If those ranges all look different than GTO, it doesn't help you that the solver wants you to bet JTs OTT against a check in theory.

To start with the most impactful street, I have looked at how population does play preflop. In my upcoming course PREFLOP XPLOITS, I cover how the average regular's preflop ranges at midstakes look different than GTO, and how you can exploit them to the max.

I also show you how you want to adjust your preflop ranges against very tight and very loose opponents and which hands to add/remove to your strategy:

More news soon!

Thanks for reading,

Victor

2 Card Confidence