I mean, this is a poker blog, amirite? So yeah. Why not. This isn’t revolutionary or anything but I’ve talked about it with several students and have actually had to mention it in a few videos that I’ve done for Deuces. Anywho. I’m talking with a student about hands he’s played where he coldcalls in the small blind…and he’s insisting he never does it. But I’m looking at the hands, and I notice it:
UTG raises. Horrible MP coldcalls. And hero calls with 87s in the SB and a decent (but not great) BB.
This is somehwere between pretty meh and very meh scale. It’s not like it goes up to 11 or anything, but it’s going to be a leak and given how many times I’ve had the conversation, I suspect that more people have it than should. So here’s the gist of it, guys. There’s a difference between “implied odds hands” and “implied odds hands.”
Yeah, you heard me.
In the spot above, you would often be making a pretty significant error by calling with 87s, or 76s — medium suited connector hands. But if you called with 55, well, I’d have to ask what your plan for the hand was, but I don’t think it’s bad. I usually call there with 44-77. You’re getting somewhere between 5.5:1.5 and 6.5:1.5 preflop, but — here’s the important thing: when your hand flops big, it flops big. This is huge and is mostly what I’m interested in talking about here.
With 76s, what are you going to flop that will let you continue with your hand? Well…a draw. Or, well, a backdoor draw with a pair, or a gutterball with a backdoor draw. Or a pair. Now you’ll flop all of these often but the board texture will vary a great deal, but when you do get your dream flops you’re still not going to be that great equity wise, or implied odds wise. You can’t expect to make a ton on the rare 854r flop, nor can you expect to be having tons of equity on an Ah9h5d board (vs. a reasonable PFR’ing range that continues to give you action, you’ll be about a 45/55 dog HU or will have about 40-45% equity still 3-ways).
What about with 55? When you think about what sort of flop texture you’re looking for with 55, the answer is pretty simple: a 5 or a board that looks really ragged and really safe where you can checkraise to protect. You’ll flop a set around 1 in 8 times, and when you do, your equity will be ginormous — the earlier 40% 3-ways will be closer to 90%. Yeah, 90%. You own this pot. I’d go as far to say that you actually pwn that pot. You won’t flop “backdoor” draws very often — a K96 board won’t be a peeling board, for example, when it goes bet-call-action is on you. This lowers your reverse implied odds and allows you to not worry about your effective odds/equity preflop because you won’t have to worry so much about what flops/turns you will need to call when you’re getting X:1 or Y:2 and board textures of ZZZ.
So yeah. I know this is in the abstract a bit but check out my video on Tuesday and I’ll definitely talk about it a bit more. For the meantime hope this generates some thought, even if it’s not going to get a lot of discussion…