Playing Big Hands Heads up on Textured Board

We have done a pretty thorough analysis of how to deal with playing big hands after the flop when the board is uncoordinated.  Luckily, having done that gets the concepts under control we need to analyze any other situation in post flop no limit hold’em play.  That means that covering big hands on a coordinated board will go much faster because the concepts become more familiar. So let’s get to it.

Obviously, the main difference between flopping a big hand on a textured board and flopping a big hand on an untextured board is going to be the likely difficulty of decisions going forward.  Let’s say you have the same As9s or 9s9d and you flop two pair or a set but instead of the board looking like Ah9c3d it now looks like AcTd9c.  Obviously, this board is supercoordinated as there are multiple draws now available.  Those available draws will drive any choice you make on how to play this hand on the flop.

On the A93 rainbow board there are not really any cards that will give you fits on the turn.  If you have a hand like 99 and have flopped a set we aren’t really worried about any card that might hit on the turn in terms of how difficult the card might make decisions for us at that point.  Pretty much the whole deck feels pretty safe there.  That means that we can choose to slow our play down if we want because we aren’t risking some disastrous card hitting that makes us want to puke.

Sometimes the slow play will get us more money from our opponent but in order for that to be an option we have to be comfortable with the fact that the slow play insures that we will see the turn card.  If you play a line of play that makes sure the turn will hit you better be comfortable with most of the cards that are available in the deck.

There is the key to setting your goal when you flop a set or two pair on a well textured board—you must realize you are likely to be unhappy with the card that hits the turn. On the AT9 two clubs board, as an example, we know we are unhappy with a club (even if you have a set the Ten of clubs makes a bigger full).  We also know that the straight cards are going to be ugly, particularly the K, Q or J in the case of the A9 hand.  And an 8 or 7 isn’t the best.  Even a 6 might give us a little pause.  When you add up all the ugly cards in the deck, it comes to more than half of the deck.  There are 47 cards remaining and about 26 of them are going to make us unhappy.  Now, to be sure, I am not saying that in a heads up pot your opponent will have all 26 outs, of course not.  What I am saying that there are 26 ugly cards in the deck that we know will make our decision process very difficult if our opponent puts any pressure on us.

It is so ugly, in fact, that we might just lay down the best hand and our opponent might not even think he was bluffing!  What if you have an opponent who has a hand like AK with the Kc.  The flop comes AT9 two clubs and you have A9.  Obviously, you opponent is in bad shape, down to 6 outs.  Now, let’s say the Jc hits the turn.  Your opponent thinks he has the best hand and knows that even if he didn’t he has the Kc back up so he moves in on you.  Can you call?  Of course not, and your opponent  doesn’t even really think he bluffed you!  That is a disaster.  It is such a disaster hat if he moved in it would be an extremely difficult call with a set of 99.  Imagine getting bluffed off a set of nines when your opponent didn’t even think he was bluffing!

So, how do we avoid that happening when the board comes so ugly for our hand?  Well, clearly we must account for that in the goal with the hand.  When the board came favorably for our big hand the goal was simple: Figure out the line of play that extracts the most money from our opponent.  We knew we had the best hand and we just had to figure out how to get the most value from it.  But now even though we still know we have the best hand we have to worry about the danger of the turn card so therefore our goal must be to avoid making a decision on the turn card.  That means we want to opt out of the decision making process right there on the flop.  We want to play the hand in a way that when we do see the turn card that there are no further decisions to be made at the point. There are only two ways to opt out of the decision process in no limit hold’em:  Fold (which is clearly wrong here since we have the best hand) or make sure you bet big enough that you have no further decisions in the hand either because your opponent folds or because all you chips are in the pot (or you are pot committed so you can’t fold the turn anyway). That means that you should basically just move all in on flops like this.

Let’s take the case of playing the hand in position in a heads up pot.  Whether or not you were the preflop raiser or not when a board hits like AJT two suited and your opponent checks to you you should bet very big.  If your opponent folds you don’t really care.  You are happy to pick up the equity without the trouble of making a decision on the turn.  If your opponent calls you are happy too as you almost always have the best hand at the point.  When you push on a flop like this the great thing is you just don’t care which way it goes, you don’t care if your opponent folds or calls. If they fold that’s awesome because you didn’t have to fade some ridiculously ugly card on the turn.  If he calls more power to him because he pretty much never has the best hand there.  Now, obviously, if your opponent bets into you, you would just push on him as well for the same reason.

One thing that falls out of playing this hand this way is that you are actually more likely to get a call from a hand that is weaker because they are more likely to read you as either not wanting a call or as having a flush draw.  It will be confusing to your opponent that you have moved on in on a board like this because people generally play hands like sets slower.  The fact that you have played the hand so fast will suggest a weaker holding to your opponent which will increase the probability that you get called by a hand like AK which is practically drawing dead against you. If you slow it down you risk, either killing your action when the texture completes and not getting money out of the AK-like hand or you risk losing the pot to the AK when an ugly card hits and you end up making a bad lay down.
When you play the hand super fast you avoid ever making a bad lay down and you never kill your action against a hand like AK because you get all the money in before the action killing turn card can hit.  Better yet, by over betting the pot on the flop you make sure that if a flush draw decides to try to gamble with you they are gambling at a loss because they are not getting the 2 to 1 odds they need to break even.

So, in position you would play the hand to make sure you got all the money in on the flop and this would be true whether you were in position in a heads up pot or in a multi-way pot.  If you get checked to over bet.  If you get bet into, move all in. 
Simple as pie.

Next time we will cover how to play these hands out of position.