Reading the board 401

¹ has only two OESD and so seems to fit the naïve definition of a ‘dry board’.

“Wait.. read that sentence again, two OESD? I see precisely none; is this Quad guy high, or is my hangover worse than I thought?!”

Fear not, dear Reader, the antiquated idea that we need at most two gaps between cards to have an open-ended straight draw belongs to that fossil of a game played, mainly, by actuaries. In Omaha, the JT9 and 765 combinations each have 9 outs to the nuts on this texture. Although the different ranks of 3-card combinations are not equally weighted in players’ ranges, each of them accounts for 1% of all starting hands². Since these hands have 40% equity plus against almost anything which isn’t a set, they should feature prominently in our minds when selecting a betting line on this board. Furthermore, card removal reduces the fraction of sets in our opponent’s range, but increases the fraction of these 3-card combinations. From a top 70% range, your opponent is almost as likely to have these 3-card hands as to have any set.

So many colors…

Now you’re a bit more alert, a quick brainteaser for you, how often does a wide range have a back door flush draw on this (or any) trichrome board? Write it down. Another, how often does a tight range have two back door flush draws on this trichrome board? Again, write it down. Answers are at the bottom of the page ³.

If we hold AA75, and our opponent AK98ccss, then he has 35% equity against us on the Q84 trichrome flop. If a random spade or club lands on the turn, he will have 40% equity against us. When a player has this much equity in Pot-Limit Omaha, there is no bet-size we can choose on the turn to have him make a mistake against our hand (against our range it’s more complicated. From the perspective of the defending player on this texture, he will pick up a flush draw by the turn 44% of the time. This makes these two-BDFD hands excellent candidates for a float against a small C-bet or a check-raise (planning to shove over half of turns) against a large one. If you are having trouble getting action with top set on these textures, I’ve just given you a big chunk of hands to balance your flop aggression range with.

Returning to the board-reading lesson, if we get to the turn and the board is still trichrome (i.e not rainbow, since a flush draw appears) then our opponent will hold a flush draw around 25% of the time. It’s pretty sobering to consider that if he defends 60% of his turn range (say check-raising a 10% chunk) to a barrel that up to half of his range will have the completed flush on the river. When a back-door flush completes on a trichrome texture, firing the third barrel as a bluff requires our opponent to {either fold some flushes to a large river bet/ fold most non-flushes to a small river bet/ weaken his checking range by leading the river when he makes a flush himself}.

Keeping nits out of your hair

Whilst nits don’t interfere with the win-rate of the intrepid player in most situations, there are a couple of boards where their hilarious ranges can catch you unawares. Does a small blind cold call range of around 7-8% feel familiar from mousing over your HUD pop-up? It turns out that a ‘standard’ nit range of this width has around 18-22% sets on {K,Q} high boards and 35% (yes, really) sets where two of {K,Q,J} appear. So do the poker community a huge favor, and next time you get check-raised by a nitty SB on this texture just fold the flop. Put the rake-back grinders back where they belong stacking shelves…

This article was intended to have the reader thinking a little deeper about the nuances of flop texture. Commit the details above to memory and your PLO intuition should improve that little bit more. At the very least I hope your head is a little clearer now. Don’t give up at the tables,

Quad