We’re taking this week off from podcasting, but here’s something new I want to try out as an occasional feature on the blog. I’m going to post a hand today and then comment on various aspects of it throughout the week. Here’s the hand, from a recent $5/$10 no-limit game: Hero is UTG+2 with a $2500 stack, and most of the table covers. Action folds to Hero, who opens to $30 with 8s 7s. Let’s assume that Hero is not particularly likely to win the pot pre-flop, and also that 87s figures to be a dog to the average calling range. In other words, you aren’t likely to win the pot immediately, and you aren’t likely to be ahead when called. What, then, is the case for raising this hand? Are there game conditions (different opponents, different stacks, etc.) where you would not open 87s from this position? Let’s discuss it in the comments, and I’ll post my reasons for playing this hand tomorrow.
12 thoughts on “Hand of the Week: Top Pair with a Low Kicker (Preflop Action)”
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Seems like deeper is better with a hand like this. Both for implied odds possibilities and turning your hand into a bluff on some boards. I guess you’d want passive players behind you who may call but are quite unlikely to raise or squeeze after subsequent callers.
I agree deeper is better, but why play it at all? You are risking 2x the pot, it’s likely your bet will be called, and when you are called you expect to be behind.
Other than implied odds you need to be opening hands like this so strong players can’t exploit you by attacking you on boards that don’t hit a high card heavy range.
Are you saying this is a profitable open, or an unprofitable one that you should make anyway to keep people from bluffing you?
In a vacuum its unprofitable but this deep vs the average 5/10 player its profitable as a result of implied odds. It also has the added benefit of protecting your range on various board textures.
I think that when you raise pre flop, you don’t raise a hand, you raise a range of hands. You want your range to be balanced, so you have to put big hands and hands with potential. Even when 87s is behind pre and post flop, it’s your whole range that matters. And when the stacks are deep, it’s easier to play drawing hands, due to the implied odds.
It should be profitable to open if the players with position on you aren’t aggressive 3-bettors, and the players in the blinds are somewhat ‘fit or fold’, as although their pre-flop calling ranges will be ahead of 8-high, you should be able to steal the pot fairly often even when you miss.
When you add in implied odds created by the deep stacks, you can probably play a lot of suited hands in this spot. Also, as said above by Joe and Jean, your range is more balanced and has better board coverage on a variety of textures.
I don’t like opening it if either there are a bunch of calling stations that have position on you (you’d usually be better off with high cards in that case) and it’s not so great if you’re likely to get 3-bets by a reg, as this hand doesn’t play well OOP in 3-bet pots without the initiative.
250bb deep this is a really tough hand to play OOP.
Hell, even AA become difficult to play OOP >300 bb deep.
I would look at who is on the button. And generally, how good are the players with position on you. It’s not just about preflop 3 bettors. If you have a bunch of solid players with position on you calling you pre-flop only to make your life difficult on turns/rivers with aggressive play, I don’t think this is a profitable open. If players behind you play straightforward TAG style on turns and rivers then you can probably play this hand profitably.
Biggest strength of a hand like this will be in barelling on a variety of turns with good equity. Your hand will be also disguised should you make 2 pair/trips.
I am not much worried about the cold equity of this hand preflop against calling ranges. Because many flops/turns that contribute to the low equity of this hand, you would simply not bluff on those boards. For example, if you have 78 of spades and the flop is AKQ of diamonds, why would you ever put any more money in the pot against 2 or more opponents?
So we don’t always go to showdown with this hand on all boards. So cold equity doesn’t matter as much.
But this hand will flop either a draw or a middle pair much of the times. Playing those hands OOP in a deep stacked game against good players is not profitable.
High card equity does have some value. So JTs will definitely be better than 78s to open from UTG+2.
At a table with good players, I would raise this hand UTG+2 only occasionally for deception and based on game dynamics. If I have been losing pots in the last hour, I would probably fold this hand. My image is not winning so players will not respect me post flop. If I have a winning image, have showed down good hands, then I may get fancy with this hand from EP. I am more likely to get respect post flop and be able to bluff my way out of at least a few spots.
May be I am a poker noob, but through repeated failures I have learnt that deep stacked cash games is not about making hands. It’s about putting yourself in the most profitable spots pre and post flop. You just don’t get to do that OOP with a drawing hand. Not to mention the fact that this hand isn’t even drawing to the nut flush/high flush and may not always make the nut straight.
If there is already a raise, we may 3 bet this hand in order to buy the button. If we find this in the blinds and several players have entered the pot, we may squeeze with it hoping to take it down preflop a lot. But I am not a big fan of raising this in EP.
As others have stated, the biggest reason for playing this hand is to ensure that your opening range is tailored to have sufficient coverage on a wide range of boards. If we didn’t have this kind of coverage, we could be attacked relentlessly on boards where our opponent’s range is uncapped, but ours is capped. By having this hand (and other similar hands) in our range, we at least have some sort of protection when a flop comes that is seemingly more favorable to the preflop caller than the preflop raiser. Additionally, when we’re this deep, we want to plenty of hands in our range that are capable of making very strong hands, and 87s is better for that purpose than high card hands that are very likely to produce a one pair type of hand.
What is probably worth talking about more is when this matters. When we’re talking about deep-stacked situations such as live cash games (particularly the bigger live cash games that allow deeper buy-ins generally speaking) or very early in tournaments, having these hands in your opening range for those protection purposes is critical. This becomes less important as stacks get shallower and the game becomes more about making one pair types of hands than about making the types of hands 87s is good for (although admittedly my experience in tournaments is practically nonexistent and my experience in full ring 100BB cash is quite limited, so there may be other factors that I’m missing out on here).
Aside from the stack size considerations I just discussed, there are very few game conditions in which I could imagine not opening. Perhaps open-limping could be better if a group of players behind me were 3betting exploitably often, but even so we may want to have a defending range versus them that includes hands like this, so the same theoretical considerations may still apply. I could also imagine a lineup that was so much better than me that opening this hand would not be profitable, but in practice I would of course never sit in a lineup like that.
I’m not sure how applicable this is, but you did say “different stacks”. According to HRC 87s doesn’t become a shove around 10bb until MP2, and seems to fair quite poorly in EP overall.
I do recall a podcast episode where I believe you said Snowie wants you to fold this (or suited connectors) in EP no matter what? Hmm.
Don’t hands like these play better against stronger ranges? Hence where all the implied odds talk comes from? Especially when we have position.
That’s all I’ve got!
It would seem to me that, given the stack sizes, the profitability of this open primarily comes from two places. First is the strength of the rest of your opening range. Since your EP opening range is presumably weighted so heavily toward big pairs and AK AQ, your opponents will have somewhat trivial decisions on numerous types of dry flops. Adding in a few hands such as this will allow you some decent bluffing spots on boards that favor your range over villains. These are usually board types that allow few other good bluffing candidates from your ‘standard’ range. This is even more true for turn barreling spots. For example I would much rather bluff with 87s on an A94r board than a hand like 77 because the former has the potential to turn a flush or straight draw. If this is implemented correctly, you should be able to add in more bluffs on boards that heavily favor your range, and your opponents shouldn’t be able to do much of anything about it even if they know a few of these hands are in your opening range.
I agree with the points about this hand helping your board coverage, although in practice I would say that few live villans are actually capable of taking advantage of this enough. (Some know to attack these boards with very good flush and straight draws, but few take it so far that they start dropping the hammer with gut shots or back door drawing hands.) I believe that opening this hand better protects the rest of your range by cutting into the profitability of the set mining strategy that both very good players and recreational players implement routinely. I’m not really sure if this can be considered a ‘source of profit’ for opening this hand, and I’m not sure how relevant this is with stacks closer to 100bbs. Just something to think about beyond being able to have the nuts on every type of flop.