Out of Position Against a LAG

By Andrew Brokos

I’m going to analyze in-depth a hand that one of my coaching students shared with me. I believe there is an interesting lesson to be learned from each street, so after showing you how the entire hand played out, I’ll zoom in for closer consideration of each decision point and what we can learn from it.

The Hand

Hero is playing a $1/$2 no-limit hold ’em game at an online 6-handed table. The action folds to him in the CO, where he holds Jd 8d. He opens with a raise to $6. The BTN, whom Hero describes as a tough player whose only fault is being overly loose and aggressive, calls. The SB folds and the BB calls.

The flop comes 3h 5d 4h, BB checks, and Hero bets $12 into a $19 pot. The BTN calls, and the BB folds.

The turn is the Jh, giving Hero top pair. He checks and calls a $32 bet.

The river the Th, putting four hearts on the board. Hero checks, the BTN bets $40 into a $104 pot, and Hero folds.

Pre-Flop

I consider J8s to be a “standard” open from the CO. In a sample of 350,000 hands, I have opened J8s in the CO 70 times. This isn’t really a sufficient sample to determine the profitability of this raise with much certainty, but for what it’s worth, my win-rate when open raising J8s from the CO is 4.75 BB/100. In other words, it’s been a solid money maker for me, and I will continue to raise it from the CO unless there is some specific table dynamic that I believe will make this raise unprofitable.

The presence of an overly loose and aggressive player on the BTN would be one such condition. The profitability of raising J8s from the CO comes primarily from stealing the blinds and secondarily from playing a pot in position with a hand that can flop well should you get called. An aggressive player on the BTN will often 3-bet or call your raise, denying you the opportunity to realize either of these objectives. Although your hand isn’t totally hopeless to play out of position, it’s not a scenario you should enter willingly, and with this player on your left, it will happen too often for raising to be a good idea.

Lesson: Always consider the players left to act behind you before taking any action, even a “standard” pre-flop raise.

Flop

On the one hand, we suspect that BTN has a wide and not particularly strong range for calling pre-flop. That means that he will rarely flop strong hands, which is an argument for a continuation bet. However, we also suspect that he will not give up easily on the flop and will look for excuses to float (i.e. call with the intention of bluffing a future street) and bluff-raise. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t continuation bet, but you do need a plan that is more detailed than “bet and hope he folds.”

In this case, my student explained that he expected his opponent to float with a lot of Ax and other weak draws. With two overcards and a backdoor flush draw, he felt there would be a lot of turn cards on which he could profitably fire a second barrel.

With this plan in mind, I like the bet. Because of the number of draws, including Ax, that could be in Hero’s range, this is a tough flop for BTN to bluff-raise. It is more likely that, when he wishes to try to steal the pot, he will attempt to float rather than raise the flop. This means he will have a wide flop calling range and frequently a weak hand on the turn, suggesting that a turn bluff could be profitable.

Hero’s backdoor flush draw contributes somewhat to the profitability of this play, as it will give him additional equity when he bluffs certain turn cards. Ultimately, though, this highlights how questionable the pre-flop raise is.

It sounds like with this player on his left, Hero will often find himself contemplating a double barrel bluff with very little equity. A hand like JTs will make a draw considerably more often than J8s, making it a better candidate for multi-barrel bluffing. So while I would still raise some hands pre-flop that primarily rely on stealing the blinds for their profitability, I’d limit myself only to hands that will play particularly well out of position.

Lesson: When continuation betting into an aggressive player, you need a plan for future streets. Ideally, you’ll anticipate these situations as early as pre-flop and choose your opening range accordingly.

Turn

This is a good but not great card for Hero. There is some temptation to bet again to avoid letting a random heart see a free river, but given the number of weak hands that are presumably still in BTN’s range, I think it’s better to check and call. At best, betting prevents BTN from bluffing, and at worst it induces a bluff-raise that Hero can’t call.

The other risk of checking is that BTN will check behind with hands like A3 that are behind but that have substantial equity going into the river. This is a real cost, but if Hero’s flop read is correct, then floats are a bigger part of BTN’s range than are pairs. Betting would be correct against a pair-heavy range, but Hero’s plan to double-barrel bluff many turn cards would not. Also, some of those pairs may choose to bet this turn for protection, so Hero could end up getting a bet out of them anyway.

Lesson: The best way to exploit an aggressive opponent when you hold a medium strength hand is often to induce bluffs. You should generally focus on getting value from the weakest part of his range in a way that will still enable you to showdown your hand.

River

This is where things get really interesting. The river puts a fourth heart on the board, drastically altering the relative value of just about every hand that either player could have had on the turn.

When playing against a good opponent, it is important to consider your own range and what your hand will look like to your opponent. In this case, based on his turn check-call, Hero likely has either a good heart or none at all. Importantly, he is very unlikely to show up with some middling flush like the 8h.

Think about it: what kind of hand with a small or medium heart would Hero check and call on the turn? His turn play indicates that he has showdown value, most likely a pair but possibly just the bare Ah. Hero might bet the turn with something like a straight draw and no pair, but it’s extremely unlikely that he would check and call. He would need fold equity to play such a hand profitably.

It’s also quite unlikely that Hero would check and call with a made flush on the turn. With a hand that strong, he would presumably want to build the pot. This means that after the turn, Villain can put Hero squarely on a pair, possibly with one heart but almost certainly not with two.

Unless he has a medium pocket pair with a heart, something like 8h 8c, Hero isn’t likely to have paired this board with a small heart for a kicker. This is because hands like 65o and J8o are probably not in his pre-flop opening range. A5o and KJo would make sense, and with those hands Hero could have rivered an A- or K-high flush, but small and medium flushes are a very small part of his range on the river.

The most important implication for BTN is that he doesn’t need to worry about turning a hand like a set or two pair into a bluff to get Hero off of a weak flush. With hands like those, he is ahead of Hero’s folding range but behind most of Hero’s calling range, and so there is no sense in betting them.

This also means that BTN’s is unlikely to value bet weak flushes of his own. If he has something like 9h 8h, he can’t expect to be ahead of Hero’s calling range, and consequently he ought to check behind.

Therefore, Hero can expect that BTN’s betting range will be polarized to either strong flushes or weak pair/no pair hands. He isn’t likely to attempt a thin value bet or to turn a better hand than Hero’s into a bluff.

Believe it or not, Hero’s one-pair is actually a reasonable bluff-catching hand. To justify calling, he needs to win about 28% of the time. We won’t be able to predict BTN’s exact bluffing frequency, but I believe we can establish that his range for getting to the river includes a lot of hands that can’t win without bluffing and a limited number of big hearts, and that would be enough for me to talk myself into a call at the table.

This all comes back to Hero’s initial read that BTN will float this flop with a wide range, possibly including hands like 86s, 87s, 64s, and AQ. Without a heart, none of these hands have much showdown value vs. Hero’s range for check-calling the turn and all could be bluffing hands on the river. Some of these would be loose calls pre-flop and/or on the flop, but remember, our read is that Villain is loose and aggressive to a fault.

Meanwhile, BTN could have quite a few hand combos involving the Ah, given that we expect him to float most of his Ax on this flop, but not so many of Kh or Qh. Assuming that BTN isn’t calling pre-flop with hands like K5s and that he isn’t calling the flop with KJo, then just about the only way for him to have a K- or Q-high flush is if he started with suited cards and turned it. Especially with the Jh on the board, there are relatively few combos of Kh xh and Qh xh that he could have.

What it all boils down to is an aggressive opponent who gets to the river with relatively few hands that he can value bet and at least as many hands that can’t win without bluffing. Absent any specific read on his river bluffing tendencies, that’s enough for me to think my pair of Jacks will be good 28% of the time, and consequently I would argue for a call.

Lesson: Against an opponent who is capable of reading your hand, you can determine which hands he will value bet and which hands he will bluff based on what kinds of hands he will expect you to hold.

A Note on Bet Sizing

Unless you’ve observed something specific about the way that an opponent sizes his bets, I think it’s important not to read too much into the size of his bet. Specifically, it’s dangerous to decide that, “He’s betting less than half the pot, that’s begging to be called, it’s obviously a value bet, therefore I shouldn’t call with any pure bluff-catchers.”

There’s no reason why a small bet has to be a value bet. In fact, you’d ideally prefer to make your bluffs small and your value bets big. Playing in a way that enables an opponent to do exactly this can be very dangerous.

Whether or not BTN will recognize it, I can’t tell you, but this happens to be a good spot for bluffing with a small bet like the one he made. With four hearts on the board, many players will simply call with their good flushes, fold everything else, and pay hardly any mind to the size of the bet.

Thus, absent a specific read that you believe you can exploit, you should make your decision based on the pot odds that you’re getting rather than try to read meaning into a small or large bet with no context.