Creative differences

The reason that most poker books don’t go into playing hands in non-standard, ‘creative’ ways is because it isn’t usually a good idea. Against a table full of competent players, putting chips in the pot with a hand that is much weaker than average will typically show a loss whatever the circumstances.

However, there are situations where you can make more money by not using the standard play, and I am going to walk through a real hand I played recently to demonstrate this. I have kept the word ‘creative’ in quotes above, because you should look at it as more of a science than an art. Every move should be calculated.

STARTING CONDITIONS

In order for an unusual play to be profitable, three main factors need to be in your favour: position, stack sizes and, most of all, your opponents’ tendencies. Firstly you need a mark: an opponent that makes an identifiable mistake that you can exploit. This should usually be a player that calls too loosely early in the hand, and then has to pass on later streets because the cards they hold can’t take much heat.

Secondly you need good position. When you play ‘creatively’ you will be putting chips in the pot with a weak hand with the expectation that you will make better decisions than your opponent, even if they hold stronger cards. When you are out of position you yield too much control in the hand to do this.

You also need to be careful when you have position on your mark but other players have position on you. If they spot you getting out of line, they can leverage their position to force you to make the same mistakes you were hoping to exploit.

The next factor is stack size. Once a player is all-in he can’t make any more bad decisions, however unskilled he may be. Since you want to make your opponent fold at some point in the hand, you have to make sure there are sufficient chips in play to reach that point. A small fourth consideration is your starting hand. It isn’t all that relevant, but hands that at least have straight or flush potential are preferable to 7-2 offsuit.

THE ACTION

$5/$10 no-limit hold’em | Five players
Under the gun $882
Cut-off $423
Hero (button) $3,350
Small blind $1,012
Big blind $1,000

Pre-flop: UTG calls $10, cut-off folds ($25 in pot)

ANALYSIS

In this hand the UTG player is the mark. He is playing 30% of hands in early position, raising only 10% of the time pre-flop and folding to 60% of continuation bets. He has limped in, so we can be fairly sure he has a hand in the lower two-thirds of his range, meaning he will fold to continuation bets even more than usual.

We should also expect that he will call more c-bets in position than out, so at a guess he’s probably folding to continuation bets 75% of the time in this spot.

The stack sizes are fine – the mark has 88 big blinds and the blinds have 100 big blinds each, so we aren’t going to get shoved on lightly if someone figures out what we are up to. As we have the button we have position on the mark and the solid players in the blinds, which will discourage them from getting involved.

Here’s the plan: we raise pre-flop to isolate the mark and get more of his chips in the pot, as well as to discourage the blinds from entering the pot. Then, after the mark has called and the flop is dealt, he checks to us, we make a continuation bet and – most of the time – we win his money. If he calls the c-bet we will usually give up on the pot, as this player does not fold on the turn once he has invested chips on the flop.

Let’s say we raise to $45. I’d estimate that around 25% of the time we get re-raised by one of the blinds and fold. (These players both re-raise out of position about 7% of the time, so 86% of the time neither will raise. I’ve rounded down to 75% to allow for occasional flat calls and a margin of error.) So, 75% of the time the blinds do not get involved, the mark calls and we reach the flop with a pot of $105. We then make a $65 continuation bet and the mark folds 75% of the time. Let’s see how this pans out in terms of expectation…

• 25% of the time we lose our pre-flop bet = -$45
• 75% of the time we risk $110 to win $60 with a 75% success rate: (-110 x 0.25) + (60 x 0.75) = $17.5
• Overall, our expectation is (-$45 x 0.25) + ($17.5 x 0.75) = $1.88 per hand

So the standard play in this situation was to pass and win nothing, but by raising pre-flop, making a continuation bet and giving up whenever things don’t go to plan, we can show a small profit of $1.88 per hand.

But that’s not the end of the story, because when it doesn’t go as planned we do not necessarily lose the $45 pre-flop raise as we assumed above. We often get to see the flop if one of the blinds flat-calls our raise, and we still get to see the turn when the mark calls the continuation bet. Both of these situations have some positive expectation even for really terrible hole cards because we can still make some profitable bluffs, and sometimes we’ll make a hand that wins at showdown.

We’ve already accounted for the profitability of our actions. If we get caught out we just revert to ABC poker, usually just folding, but anything else we can earn is a bonus. In the actual hand, for example, we are called by the SB as well as the mark and see a flop with Q?-5?.

THE ACTION

Pre-flop: hero raises to $45, SB calls, BB folds, UTG calls Flop: 9?-10?-8? ($145 in pot) SB checks, UTG checks

ANALYSIS

The SB called, and that wasn’t part of the plan, so our default play is to check or fold from now on. Against some players we could still profitably c-bet on the best flops, like A-2-2, but this flop gives typical flat-callers all sorts of pairs and draws. We also have a gutshot straight draw, and we wouldn’t like to be check-raised and have to fold when we can take a free card instead.

THE ACTION

Hero checks
Turn: 7?
SB checks, UTG bets $145

ANALYSIS

We now have a flush draw to go with our gutshot, giving as many as 13 outs to win. The flush outs may be more valuable than normal because it is likely someone has a straight they won’t pass, and as the flush would be backdoor it’s well disguised. We don’t want to raise because the mark will rarely fold after he has taken an interest, and if either player has a Jack they will push all-in, meaning we would have led them into playing optimally against our draw.

THE ACTION

Hero calls $145, SB raises to $290, UTG calls $145

ANALYSIS

This min-raise from the small blind must be one of two things: either the J? with a flush draw building the pot with a freeroll, or Q-J looking to keep lone Jacks in the pot. This means drawing to a Jack may only be good for a split, and we could sometimes be up against a higher flush draw. But we are now getting 6/1 to call with around $600 behind, so it can’t be correct to pass.

THE ACTION

Hero calls $145

River: A? ($1,015 in pot)
SB bets $677, UTG calls $547, hero calls $677

ANALYSIS

We caught a great card and have the second nuts, and our opponents have volunteered their chips, so of course it’s an easy call. It turns out the SB had turned the nuts with J?-Q?, the mark had hit the flop well with 8?-J? then turned the straight with a straight- flush redraw. And we backed into winning a $2,916 pot by reverting to ABC poker and playing our draw.

Situations like this will not happen very often when you play speculative hands – usually you will just have to check-fold whenever it doesn’t go to plan. But since this strategy was designed to show a profit without even considering your hole cards, the times you do flop or turn a draw are effectively hugely profitable freerolls.