Introduction
This month’s article is a continuation of last month’s article Handling a 3-bet in a Blind vs. Button Battle, Part 1: Preflop. For greater insight into this article, I suggest reading part 1 before part 2.
Last month’s article focused on some concepts that should be considered before deciding what hands to 4-bet a small blind 3-bet when you are on the button in short handed limit hold ‘em. This month’s article will be focused on some concepts you should be considering post flop against an aggressive players 3-betting range.
Since post flop play is so complex, it is hard to generalize “how to play postflop”, so I’ve decided to narrow the focus of this article to a frequent marginal situation that is very difficult to handle.
Because your range consists of so many Ace-high hands, learning to play Ace-high unimproved is extremely important. It will be happening frequently.
When an aggressive small blind 3-bets your button raise, you are often in a very tough spot with for the following reasons.
- Because of the bloated pot size, against an aggressive small blind range, Ace-high hands have equity to call down on many boards, but are in poor shape.
- Bad cards on the turn or river can have a dramatic effect on whether Ace-high can showdown or not, so board reading is very important.
- Against an aggressive small blind’s range on non-threatening boards (low boards- or one hi card boards) almost every pair has equity to be raised for value.
- Semi-bluff raises with good draws are very profitable due to the weakness of the 3-bettors range
You may be wondering why # 3 and # 4 matters to your Ace-high decisions. They are important because it is difficult to disguise that you have Ace-high if you are raising all your draws and your pairs before the river. While the small blind’s range may be weak enough that you want to showdown, it is still fairly strong. If you can help it, you would like him to not bet better Ace-high hands for value, nor give up on his bluffs.
First, I’m going to go drudge through some mathematics which can help give you a sense of how your Ace-high is doing on certain board textures. We can look at Ace-high’s equity on certain boards and see how the texture of the board effects your decision:
The range for small blind I’m assuming in this article is:
44+,A3s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,A7o+,K9o+,QJo
If you think your opponent is likely to be raising more suited connector type hands than this range suggests, when faced with a close decision, lean more towards calling when the board is dry, and folding if it’s connected. Always lean towards folding against tighter opponents.
Board #1
T 
9 
3 
If your opponent was to bet his entire range blindly, and you were to call your entire range blindly, you are risking 2.5BB to win 6BB. The minimum equity you need to call down is 2.5/ (6+2.5) = 29.4%
Here are some equities:
A8o = 32%
A7o = 28.2%
A6o = 25.9%
A2s (with backdoor flush) = 28.3%
A6s (with backdoor flush) = 29.4%
Note: these equities are far from everything to consider when deciding on calling down. Given the board texture and your position advantage, I think you need less than the “required” call down equity in order to at least profitably call the flop. First of all, you can safely fold on bad scare cards, not forcing you to put your money in bad. Secondly, when the ace hits, you may be able to put in a raise if your opponent is right. Thirdly, there are many opponents who will not value bet the river with better Ace-high hands but will still bluff with their busted hands allowing your money to go in fairly good on the future streets. The coordinated nature of this board increases that likelihood. The backdoor flush draw increases your implied odds for the suited hands.
Given the ranges and assumptions, I would call the flop with A7o+, and A2s+ (with backdoor flush) with the intention of showing down on good cards.
On the turn you will need 2/ (6.5+2) = ~23.5% equity in order to call it profitably
Given the high card nature of SB’s range the turn is pretty straightforward. Equity sharply drops on any King, Queen, or Jack, requiring you to fold unless a straight or flush draw was picked up, and it becomes an easy call if any other card comes.
A bad card on the river is more interesting because there are two factors in play:
- The small blind may recognize that the river is a scare card and will be more inclined to bluff it with a worse hand
- The small blind may become scared of this card themselves and thus be less inclined to value bet better hands.
Figuring out what your opponent does with his range is often tricky. There are some players who you can call down because they only bet their busted draws and top pair+.
In general, the situation we want to avoid is our opponents value betting the river with better Ace-high hands. Sometimes this simply cannot be done, but there are ways to dissuade it.
Because there are precisely four cards (an Ace, King, Queen, or Jack) in the deck that hit our opponents hard, against opponents who insist on value betting thin on the river as well as bluffing, we can wait to a “safe” river to raise our top pair.
Board T9443
Assume the bettors calling range on the river is anything he was betting for value:
44+,A9s+,A3s, A4s, KTs-K9s,QTs-Q9s,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo-K9o
TPNK (T8s) has 65% equity against this range.
If our opponent tries to counter this by betting the river with Ace-high, planning to fold only Ace-high to a river raise, as well as a few busted draws, we can very profitably bluff raise a safe river with a busted draw.
Calling range combinations: 117
The pot on the river is 7.5BB, risking 2BB to win 7.5BB, we’d need him to fold 21% of the time.
AJ-AK = 48 combinations
48/117+48 = 31% of his value betting hands.
This number is excluding any other busted draw he decides to bet/fold on the river.
Therefore, we can either profitably bluff raise him or gain a lot of value on a river raise with our top pair.
If you wait to the river a few times in a row, it may scare him from value betting Ace-high on the river in the future. You will have Ace-high more often than top pair, so the money you lose with top pair by waiting to the river should be more than offset by the money saved on Ace-high call downs.
Board #2
3 2 
4
The combination of gutshot outs combined with the showdown value means every Ace-high hand can profitably call down to the river. However, there is one problem with this. By calling the flop and the turn you may have turned your hand face up as Ace-high. This allows your opponent to go very thin on the river (as well as give up their bluffs).
Against opponents who I know would almost never bluff 3-bet air on this flop, I would raise the flop, bet the turn and check the river with my worst Ace-high hands. Because there are no good draws I’m not beating in my opponent’s range, I’m essentially “raising for information”. Also, if they fold the turn with a hand like KJ, I don’t care very much because they are folding 6 live outs in a 6BB pot. Plus, if I get re-raised it isn’t that awful because I nearly always have 7 outs. I would not do this if the flop contained a flush draw. This “information raise” is applicable on any board you think your opponent will never/rarely 3-bet bluff you on, but will put you on Ace-high if you just call down.
Another option is to call down with Ax hands, and to “float a low turn” occasionally with a hand like QJo, planning to bluff the river if checked to. This can be effective against a good opponent because your opponent will often put you squarely on Ace-high, possibly giving up on his Kx type hands, allowing you profitably bluff the river.
Against bad opponents who don’t read hands well (or don’t act on their hand reads), just call down and hope they barrel off their entire range.
If you really wish to disguise your range further, low/medium pairs don’t have very high equity compared to some other boards. Because of all the Ax hands in your opponent ranges, he’s often drawing to 10 outs. Thus, calling down occasionally with low pairs barely sacrifices value.
A pair + straight draw should nearly always be raised early. If you had just called and the card that improves you hits, many made hands in your opponents range will be terrified and check/call or even check/fold the river. If you are just calling, he should be very afraid of the scare card, since you have so many Axes in your range. If you raise your pair + straight draw early, your opponent will likely put in a crying call on the river if you improve. Since you’ve already bloated the pot early you’ll win more than had you just called down.
Board #3
J 8 3
What makes this board interesting is figuring out how a flush draw on the flop impacts your Ace-high call down equity. The minimum equity you need to call down blindly is 2.5/ (6+2.5) = 29.4%
A4o (without a heart) = 29.3%
So we know that nearly every Ace-high hand has enough equity to at least call the flop.
On the turn we need 2/ (6.5+2) = ~23.5%
Turn 2
A 4 = 27.6%
A 6 = 23.4%
So, we can still call down if we have straight draw as well as the Ace-high, but we have to fold our worse Ace-high hands without any form of redraw. We also have reverse implied odds in this situation, and our opponents money will often go in very good on the river, or push us off the best hand a considerable amount of the time on a fourth heart river. When there are a lot of bad river cards for our hand, we often have to fold when our equity suggests we should call.
Conclusion/Summary:
Drudging through these calculations we can get a feel for what board textures we can showdown on.
- A King is a terrible card for us, a Queen is a bad card for us, and a Jack is bad but better than a Queen. Two bad cards mean all Ace-high hands without a straight draw must be folded. If the board is coordinated, one King is enough to make us want to fold all Ace-high hands. On a K,9,7 flop, we would want to fold A8 and below. Other K-high boards we would probably want a backdoor flush draw even to call the flop.
- Straight/flush re-draws nearly always allow us to see the river
- If the board pairs, we can loosen our calling requirements because we gain a lot of counterfeit outs against better Ace-high hands.
- Flush draws on the flop mean we should tighten up slightly without a backdoor flush draw, and loosen up slightly with a backdoor flush draw.
- The more coordinated the board is in the middle range, the better hand we need to call down. For a Q,8,7 flop, we need a much better hand to call down than a Q,6,2 flop. This is because our opponents have straight cards in their range that will improve over our Ace-high. Backdoor straight draws and flush draws are important gauges in these spots to asses whether to “plan to call down”
Because Ace-high makes up a large part of our call down range in many spots, it becomes important to give incentive to our opponents to play a strategy that gets our money in ok in spots where Ace-high has an obvious call down. Some strategies include disguising your hand by raising some Ace-high hands on the flop, forgoing semi-bluffs with the weakest draws and waiting to the river with some bluffs/good hands. If your opponents are poor hand readers, just ignore this advice and play a straightforward strategy.