After a summer of heady WSOP dreams and Vegas simulations, it’s time to get back to the classroom. The nights are drawing in, it’s raining outside, and it’s time to do some maths.

My subject this month is a mistake that I think a lot of amateur poker players make. It concerns the belief that one has the odds to call a raise based on the textbook odds of one hand against another. Let’s just have a recap of some of those odds to be sure:

Hand A			Hand B
K-4s	(33%)	v	7-7	(67%)	(over and under versus a pair)
J-7o	(39%)	v	A-5s	(61%)	(unpaired cards versus over and under)
8-5o	(35%)	v	A-Ko	(65%)	(unpaired unders versus unpaired overs)

Nov 16, 2020 For a goos, in-depth look at your poker hand odds pre-flop and in several very common poker hand scenarios, see our Beginners Equity Guide to Standard Situations in No-Limit Hold'em. If you'd really like to dig into all of the long shot odds in poker (quads vs. Quad anyone?), check out our Long Shot Poker Odds article. Be very careful playing this hand. The Rest of the Top 20 Hold'em Hands. The top 10 best starting hands in Hold’em are a good starting point for poker players but every potential starting hand can be ranked all the way down to the lowly 7-2 off suit, which only has a 4% chance of winning versus random cards. The best hands to play in poker pre-flop will always be your big pocket pairs (such as Ace-Ace, King-King and Queen-Queen), followed by big-suited connectors (such as suited Ace-King),. When someone talks about premium hands in poker, they’re referring to the strongest preflop hands - the best-of-the-best, if you will. In No-Limit Hold’em,there are 169 distinct starting hands. They include 13 different pocket pairs ranging from deuces up to aces, plus 78 suited hands and 78 unsuited hands.

Imagine in each case, Hand B is doing the raising preflop and Hand A is doing the calling. All of Hand B’s holdings are ones which we would reasonably expect to raise with, especially if bringing it in from late position (e.g. the cutoff or the button). The holdings in the Hand A column are usually considered trashy, and are not necessarily recommend for play out of position (e.g. in the blinds) to a raise.

Yet many players take a look at the percentage figures of the respective match-ups and say “hang on a minute, my hand is only slightly behind, even if my opponent raises to 3x pre-flop, if I’ve already posted some money in the blinds, I’ve easily got the odds for a call”.

The maths of this proposition is flawed for the following simple reason: the action isn’t over yet. By all means, if you’re calling all in (notwithstanding if you’re on the bubble of a tournament – which brings yet more complications) if you have the odds for the call, it’s a trivial problem. However, in cash games, and in many tournament situations, there’s plenty of money behind. When you make the call, you have two factors to think about:

Reverse implied odds
The “text book” odds are to the river, not on the flop

Reverse implied odds

Put simply, reverse implied odds considers the amount of money you lose if you hit your hand, and yet pay off your opponent because his hand is still better. Text book examples include hitting a flush with a card that pairs the board and gives your opponent a full house. Money is lost this way (especially in tournaments) in the much more common scenario of hitting a pair and paying off your opponent who has a better pair. For example you could have A-7 against your opponent’s A-J or 8-8 on a J-7-2 board.

Creating an abstract risk profile of all the boards you hit, all the amounts you pay off your opponent if he beats you, and all the amounts he pays you off if you beat him, is not an easy business. I’ve claimed elsewhere (see my article “The importance of implied odds in big bet poker”) that correctly assessing this is what separates merely good players from great players. Suffice to say, that if the net risk of making the call is -EV (as it likely would be against Aces for example), then you should factor that in to the express odds of making the call pre-flop – something that amateurs rarely do. Certain hands, such as Ace-rag and low unsuited connectors can be real leakers if you don’t know how to play them well.

Top 10 Poker Hands Pre Flop Poker

The text book odds

The odds you’re given in books and with poker software are “hot and cold” – that is, all in and to the river. The chances of A-8 suited beating 9-9 may well be around 30% according to the odds, but if there’s a fair amount of money behind, it’s the odds of hitting the flop that are important. The A-8 will hit the Ace on the flop about 18% of the time (and the 8 about 18% of the time too – which is bad news of course) and at that point your opponent might not like his 9-9 any more. You’ll hit your flush draw on the flop about an eighth of the time, but what do you do – stack off? You’ll only hit your flush a third of those times. The EV of this proposition is not a done deal on the flop by any means.

The immediate upshot of this seems to be that you should fold a lot of your marginal hands when out of position to a raise. Unfortunately, if everyone follows this advice, it makes it rational for players bringing it in on the button to raise 100% of their hands. Let’s put some maths to that statement. Imagine after reading my comments above, you (in the big blind) and the small blind are both uncomfortable playing marginal hands out of position. You both resolve only to play your top 10% of hands for value if raised from the button. From the button’s point of view, he can make a standard raise to 3x the blind in order to steal the blinds (a total of 1.5x the blind). The chances he will get a fold from both blinds is:

90% x 90% = 81%

Because you and the small blind are folding all but your top 10%, right? He’s risking 3 BBs to take down 1.5 BBs, so he only needs to make it work 67% of the time to show a profit. But since he takes down the blinds a staggering 81% of the time with a standard raise, we know that he should do it every time – i.e. with all his hands!

So what to do?

As I’m sure you know, the story doesn’t end there. When you’re relatively deep in the small or big blinds (let’s say 30BBs or more) different strategies have to be used to combat the opponent who’s raising too light from late position. I’ll summarise a few of the most popular ones here:

3-betting from the blinds
Calling preflop with the intention of (i) weak leading, (ii) check/raising, (iii) reverse floating on the flop.

3-Betting from the blinds

There’s no question that learning to do this is a bit hairy – especially if you’re a nit by nature (like me). However if you want improve your game, I suggest you learn. I advise you to do so at lower stakes than you’re used to, so you can spew to your heart’s content. Caveat emptor: this is going to be high volatility!

Right, the first thing is, we’re talking about 3-betting light here. Anyone can 3-bet with AA, KK, AK and QQ – you’re doing that for value, and if that’s all you’re doing it with (i.e. your top 3% of hands), your opponent has nothing to worry about. He can simply raise you 100% of the time and if you reraise him, throw away his hand or call for implied odds if the stacks are deep enough. As Annette Obrestad likes to put it: “you might as well turn over your hand at that point”.

So what to 3-bet light with? A good rule of thumb is not to do it with hands that might be marginal in big pot situations. You don’t want to hit your Ace with A-9 if your opponent has called your 3-bet with a better Ace. The secret is what’s known as “polarity”, namely hands that you can bet as monsters or air on the flop. Suited connectors and low pairs are good candidates for this – they can either flop big or not at all. The point is that it’s less likely that they will find marginal flops (as the A-9 would do on an A-K-T board for example). Imagine instead that you 3-bet with 5-5 from the small blind. If you c-bet on that same A-K-T board, you know that if your opponent calls, he has you beat. Moreover, you might get him to fold better hands such as 7-7, T-9, a few K-X hands, etc.