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In this hand from a recent game two players — Evan and Zeb — get into an interesting spot, with Evan facing a tough decision on the river, folding his straight against Zeb’s full house.
GTO Wizard takes a closer look at the action to analyze each phase of the hand. From the preflop decision to open with 98o to the postflop play and the final river fold, GTO Wizard examines the strategic choices made by both players.
By breaking down the key moments, they offer insights into how GTO strategies could be applied in this situation, providing a deeper understanding of poker decision-making.
Preflop
In the hand, Evan raised to £25 from early position with 9♦8♥ and was three-bet by a player known as Zeb on the button. Zeb raised to £75 with Q♠Q♦ and Evan called.
Unfortunately, opening a weak hand in an early position such as Evan’s is not a GTO play because there are five players yet to act, which dramatically decreases the probability of winning the hand. The weakest connected off-suit hand that should be raised from UTG +2 in a big blind ante game is Jx10x offsuit, although only at around 50% frequency.
Zeb’s Queens, on the other hand, can be either called the majority of the time or three-bet sometimes, so it won’t be possible for Zeb to make a mistake here unless he folds pre-flop, which would be absurd.
We will continue the analysis going forward, assuming that Evan calls the 3-bet at a low frequency with 98o+ in order to see how Evan should’ve played his hand postflop as played.
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The Flop
Both players went to a flop of Q♥7♠5♦ which is favorable board for Zeb’s range. Zeb decided to c-bet £35, a small 20% of the pot, and Evan took a moment before calling.
While betting such a small size may not be far from optimal, sizing up to half-pot suits Zeb’s range much better. The reason for that relates to the fact that Zeb needs to three-bet preflop polarized, which would mean that the majority of his value hands are extremely strong and his bluffs extremely weak.
Because Zeb bet a small size, Evan should now check-raise to around 4x Zeb’s bet fairly often (22.7% of the time on average) to deny Zeb from realizing his equity cheaply with broadways (AK, KJ, JT) and backdoor flush draws, forcing them to fold often. Specifically, 9♦8♥ should evenly split actions between raising and calling.
The Turn
The turn brought the 6♠, which made Evan a straight. Evan checked again to Zeb (which was the correct play), who continued betting for around three quarters pot, or £175, and Evan called.
Zeb realized quickly that the board could run out ugly in many ways on the river and correctly sized up the turn to get value while ahead, which also puts a lot of pressure on Evan’s potential open-ended straight draws like T8s or A8s. Here, we see the solver prefers using the larger bet size with all hands that bet, although sizing smaller would not be an immediate mistake.
For the same reasons that Zeb needs to pile money in the pot, Evan will also need to raise all-in, mainly with straights and some sets for value. Sets can call more often than raising, as they will sometimes cooler flushes on spade rivers, an ability that straights don’t have. So it’s best to get it in before we lose value against a queen on bad rivers.
The River
We saw a 6♦ roll off on the river, which promoted sets to full houses. Evan faced an all-in for £690, which was around 100% of the pot and all Zeb’s remaining chips.
There is nothing wrong with Zeb going all-in with QQ on the river. On the contrary, it’s the correct size for Zeb’s overall value range, such as AQ+.
Facing an all-in on the river in Evan’s shoes, however, the solver would never fold a straight as this would result in an EV loss of around 49.4bb or, in other words, leaving 494 £ on the table.
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Conclusion
As the commentators quickly pointed out, such plays would not happen online because there is a high probability that Evan had some live tell on Zeb, which led him to fold his nutted hand correctly.
While Zeb played the hand almost perfectly, Evan got heavily out of line by raising and calling the 3-bet preflop with a trash hand.
As for postflop, folding the straight by the river was either an incredibly accurate tell or a complete disaster; you decide!
Hand analysis provided by Sotos in collaboration with GTO Wizard
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