Hand Chart Construction, Part 3: Premium Pairs

In hold'em, we are dealt two of a kind (i.e., any pocket pair) only once every 17 hands. That's a little less than 6% of the time. More importantly, we're only dealt the so-called "premium" pairs (AA and KK) about 0.9% of the time. That's a tiny number, equal to only about once every 110 times we're dealt a hand. Said another way: At a 9-handed table, we have to wait more than twelve laps of the table on average before we see rockets or cowboys show up in front of us.

Because they're so rare, we want to get the most bang for the buck when we are dealt one of these two monster hands. Unfortunately, for many beginners, this means they try to slow play, or "trap" when dealt AA or KK. They just can't stand the thought of raising preflop and then having everyone else fold, taking down just a small pot. They've waited hours for Aces, and they want to get paid off. So they limp or min-raise or overcall....and then they lose.... and then they complain that their big pocket pairs never hold up. And when they do manage to win via slow playing, they often only win only a small pot. Fancy play syndrome, or FPS, dooms them to winning small and/or losing big.

As I've mentioned before on this blog a number of times (including recently here), we want to build value when we have a Value hand. Before the flop, there is simply no better hand than Aces, so by definition it's a Value hand. In fact, it's the preflop nuts. Why on earth would you not want to bet and raise when you're holding the current nuts?

Kings are a similar story. The only hand that beats you preflop is Aces, and our opponents only get dealt Aces once every 221 hands. At a nine-handed table, this means that if you get dealt Kings UTG, there is only a 3.5% that one of the remaining eight players left to act has Aces. And if you do run into rockets against your 'boys, and all the money goes in, you still have about a one in five chance of cracking the better hand. In other words, you should almost never be afraid of Aces when holding Kings in a cash game. I think it was Dan Harrington that once said, "I'm not smart enough to fold Kings preflop. Neither are you." Only if you have a sick read on your opponent and put him with dead certainty on Aces preflop should you consider folding to a 4bet all-in preflop when holding KK.

Okay, this is all just a long-winded way of saying that the two premium pair hands, Aces and Kings, are super-duper Value hands, and should be treated as such when talking about ABC cash game play. Raise, re-reraise, and re-re-raise preflop with these hands. If you can get all the money in preflop, do so.* Stack sizes, opp tendencies, your position, their position, upstream and downstream action, etc. essentially don't factor into how to play the hands preflop at the micro- and low-stakes tables.**

So, click on the picture, below, to see how I think you should play AA and KK at a nine-handed table.***

The ABC bottom line, not surprisingly, is to raise preflop no matter what happens upstream of you. This is clearly one of the simplest examples, but it also illustrates how we're going to build the rest of the starting hand chart, hand-by-hand. Stay tuned...

Back to Part 2 or Forward to Part 4

All-in for now...
-Bug
*All bets are off (no pun intended) if you don't get all the money in preflop and have to actually play a post-flop game with either of these hands. At that point, all kinds of things like player type and tendencies, board texture, stack sizes, and so on will factor into how you play the hand postflop.... ah, but this is true of any hand you see a flop with.

**As we get into mid-stakes and above, however, and our play morphs from L1 and L2 to solid L3-type play, we can start doing things like cold-calling to induce bluffs and so on. Our own image becomes incredibly important, and we can often get the opp to do our betting for us to build value in the pot preflop.

***A few words of explanation about using this chart (which, by the way, may not be the final format I use, but for now will serve as the data collection/display device for each hand and how to play it in an ABC manner). First, find your hand down the left side of the chart. Then find your position and seat along the top of the chart. Next find the upstream action that you're facing along the top; UR=Unraised Pot, R=Raised Pot, RR=ReRaised Pot. The cell in the middle of the table that intersects your hand and the upstream action you're facing is the action you should take. An "R" means you should raise (or bet, if the pot is unopened). "C" will mean call. And "F" is fold. There will be more to explain as we get into some of the more complex hands, but for now the chart is really this simple to use. And in this example, all the cells for AA and KK say to raise, regardless of the action you're facing.

Hand Chart Construction, Part 2: Format

There are 1,326 unique starting hands in Texas Hold'em that can be dealt to a player. Preflop, however,we can think of a hand like Q♥J♥ as being functionally equivalent to Q♣J♣, and hands like 8♠7♥ the same as 8♦7♣. In other words, we can reduce this rather large number of 1,326 hands to a smaller, but still somewhat unwieldy 169 "unique" hands. 


Of these 169 hands, 13 are pairs, 78 are suited non-pairs, and 78 are non-suited non-pairs. Within these three basic groupings of cards, some are clearly stronger (and therefore more "playable") than others. Within the pairs, for instance, AA is clearly stronger than 22 before the flop. Similarly, AKo is stronger than AQo, which is stronger than KQo, and so on. The trick with a starting hand chart, therefore, is to display all 169 2-card hands in a manner that is both easy to read, but still informative in terms of relative strength. We also want to be able to differentiate playable hands as a function of our position, table dynamics, and the action upstream of us.

To do this, there are essentially three primary styles or formats we can choose from when constructing a starting hand chart: 13x13 Grid, Matrix, and Text. Here's little bit about each:

13x13 Grid. This is the format that programs like PokerStove and Flopzilla use. Pairs are located along the central diagonal that runs from the upper left of the grid to the lower right. Suited cards are above this diagonal, and unsuited cards are below it. Generally speaking, the higher up and to the left you are in the chart, as well as the closer you are to the diagonal, the stronger your 2-card hand is (e.g., note that AA is in the upper left corner, while hands like 32o are near the lower bottom right.)

13 x 13 Grid Format

• Pros: The chief advantage  to this format is that the chart is compact and easy to read. It's also easy to visualize where your hand sits relative to others in terms of general strength. In other words, how far up and to the left is your hand on the chart?
• Cons: The chief disadvantage with this chart is that it doesn't leave much room to add information on things like position, table dynamics, or the upstream action. Yes, you can use color, but this only provides a solution to one of these items.

Matrix Format. This is the style that I personally used when I was first starting out in poker. Down the left side of the matrix is a listing of hands, usually sorted into groups by the high card in the hand. Across the top are both positions and upstream actions. To use this chart, you simply drop down vertically along the left side until you find your hand, then scoot horizontally across the chart until you find your position and the upstream action. Easy peasy.

Matrix Format

• Pros: The biggest advantage of this chart is is ease of use and display of the information.
• Cons: The biggest disadvantage of this chart is that it's a little slow and awkward to use. The chart can also be pretty large if you want to include a lot of hands. This means it's hard to create one that sits fully on your desktop when you play; i.e., the one I used to use required me to scroll up and down.

Text List. This is the old-skool "chart," which is in reality just a list of positions, along with columns for call, raise, and so on.

Text Format

• Pros: you can fit a lot of information into a small, compact area.
• Cons: it's tough to read this this kind of chart in the heat of battle; graphical displays are almost always better than text displays when trying to convey information in a fast, concise, accurate manner. You don't see fighter pilots with text lists displayed on their HUDs, do you?

There are other types of charts, but these are the most common. So which one am I going to use? I haven't fully figured that out yet, but I know that I'm not going with number three (text list). Instead, I think I'm going to start with the matrix format as a means of simply collecting the data. Then I might try to shoe horn the information into some kind of hybrid grid format. Dunno. The trick is figuring out a way to display all the data into just one or two charts. We'll see how it develops. The next thing I want to do, however, is start creating the actual data that goes into the chart.

Back to Part 1  or  Forward to Part 3

All-in for now...
-Bug

Bootstrapping and Burger Flipping

Why do I play poker? As I mentioned previously (here) I ultimately play to make money… ah, but this is a bit misleading. There are lots of easier ways to make money than poker. There are also certainly less frustrating ways to bring in a small second income like I do playing poker. Hell, there for a long time when I was grinding the microstakes tables and learning the basics of L2 poker, I would have easily made a higher, more consistent hourly wage if I’d simply taken a minimum wage job at the local burger joint.

So why play poker? Answer: I play poker to make money, but I also do so because it’s challenging and stimulating. Flipping burgers is decidedly neither challenging nor stimulating. Said another way, I play poker for the mental challenge (of making money).

For me, it’s like solving a never ending puzzle. What does this guy have? Am I getting implied odds here? What does he think I have? How can I extract value from the maniac in the big blind? What has that huge loss four hands ago done to his mental state. What does he think of the big laydown I just made? Is he paying attention? Can I bluff him now? How much should I bet? What will a check look like to him? Is this play plus EV? And so on…

I was thinking about this the other day while I pondered basic Level-1 preflop play. This is as basic and simple as poker gets: should I get involved in the pot with the hand I was just dealt? But you know what? Even though this is as simple as poker gets, it’s still quite complex. Which is why a starting hand chart can be such a good idea for a new player.

Unlike a lot of poker coaches and books, I’m a fan of—gasp--starting hand charts, especially for absolute beginners. Yes, this is a crutch, but I believe it’s a necessary one. Think of a hand chart as a device to bootstrap a new player’s game. Poker is ultimately a game of “why” and “it depends,” and to succeed at the upper levels of the game you will need the opposite of a starting hand chart; i.e., you will need to think on your own…

… but to get started on this “it depends” learning curve, a new player needs some guidance on which hands to play and which not to play. One of the most important skills to learn in poker is which hands to get involved with, and which ones to skip. Unfortunately, even at a basic L1 style of poker, in which you’re primarily worried about the quality of your own hand, the decision to enter a pot is filled with complex factors. Gap theory, late position vs. early, stack sizes, table dynamics, etc. all come into play:

Yep, these are the factors that go into a basic L1 starting hand chart. Once the beginner has used the chart for a while, they will start to understand why it looks the way it does; i.e., why does one call an upstream raise in LP at a tight table when deep stacked and holding 3-3, but fold that same hand when the stack sizes are shallow? A chart tells you the What, but the student can begin to understand the Why as they use it over and over. In fact, after a while, the beginner should be deviate from the chart and experiment, developing their own style, and ultimately discovering on their own that poker is stimulating, challenging, and a whole lot more fun than flipping burgers.*

Continue on to Part 1: Hand Chart Construction

All-in for now…
-Bug
* Another really interesting thing to note about the use of starting hands charts (especially for doubters) is that it trains you to think in terms of hand ranges as a function of position and action. Sure, beginners can use the chart to decide which of their own hands to play in different positions facing different upstream actions. L2 players, however, can use a chart to begin narrowing their ABC opponent's hand ranges. For example, let's say you see an ABC player cold-call in LP when facing an upstream EP raise; you can use a chart to winnow down the types of hands this opponent is likely playing. In a sense, by using a starting hand chart, you're beginning the process of learning how to hand read. Cool beans.