Overview
In my previous post, I mentioned that in a super deep stack game like a 500bb match, if you have a hand that you can’t fight with at the flop, it’s better to fold quickly. Because the bet amount before the flop is small, the cost of simply folding itself may not be that high (although if you’re unlucky, it can be like a body blow). What you should be most afraid of is losing a pot close to all-in with a moderately strong hand (for example, a one pair with top pair and top kicker) in a game where pot bets are made repeatedly from the flop and the bet amount is raised rapidly. If you lose 500bb in one loss, you will lose chips equivalent to 100 times the cost of immediately folding on the flop. To put it in extreme terms, if the cost of folding on one flop is about 3bb, even if you fold 100 times, if you win the all-in pot once, it will be a good bet with good odds. Therefore, the situations in which you can participate in a game where the bet amount is raised rapidly from the flop will be quite limited.
In these games, the important thing is to have a hand that is easy to make a strong hand like the nuts, and the preferred hand preflop may be very different from a 100bb game. In a multi-way game with four or more players left on the flop, a one pair with top pair and top kicker is not a reliable hand. If you have AKo and you get top pair and top kicker on the flop, you may make an aggressive pot bet CB and get a 3x reraise in return, leaving you at a loss.
Thinking about it this way, we start to wonder what the probability is that the board will be playable on the flop with each hand. In games with large implied odds, it would be better to increase the number of hands that have a higher probability of creating a playable board at the flop, rather than comparing the simple probability of winning at the showdown. For example, let’s assume that the following situation on the flop with your hand and common cards is judged to be a playable hand of the nuts level (you can bet full power from the flop), and calculate the probability of each hand.
- Double Hit Two Pair (two pairs with 1 hole card + 1 community card)
- Trips (1 hole card + 2 community cards)
- Set (Pocket Pair + 1 community card)
- Straight
- Flush
- Full house
- Four of a Kind
- Straight Flush
Even if you have one pair or two pair, if you have a one pair (one pair on the board), you will not be judged as nuts. Flush draws and straight draws are not weak, but they come with the risk of not being able to draw them by the river, so it will be difficult to keep up with the rapidly rising bets. Therefore, the only criterion for judgment is the showdown value already present at the time of the flop.
Let us arrange preflop hands in order of the probability of making these hands. This may be more accurate to what players experience in games where multi-way is common (for example, if you find 54s much easier to play than AKo, you may understand why).
Calculation Result
Thoughts: Is It Possible to Only Play Monster Hands?
The calculation results are probably too long… but let’s take a look at the table and consider the characteristic results. One clear trend is that pocket pairs, especially sets, have an overwhelmingly high probability of being made. In 500bb matches, the basic format may be to successfully set-mine on the flop, then raise the bet all-in with a succession of pot bets. Thinking about it this way, it may be a good idea to prioritize pocket pairs and 3-bet at tables with a lot of multi-way.
What may seem surprising is that the next hand after pocket pairs is a suited-connector. If you try to measure the strength of hands using this criterion, you will see that 54s ranks quite high. Since the probability of making two pairs or trips is the same for all hands except pocket pairs, hands that are more likely to make straights or flushes rank higher, and after pocket pairs come JTs. AKs are strong when used as a top pair or top kicker, but this criterion does not include them, and they have a low probability of making a straight, so they rank lower.
After Suited-Connector, there are Suited-One-Gapper, Suited-Two-Gapper, and just Connected. What is interesting is where AKo is, which is not very popular at tables with many multi-way poker. It is 122nd in the table, and AKo is a hand with a low probability of making a two-pair or higher on the flop. AKo is a strong hand with top pair and top kicker, and it can be said that it is not suitable for a game where players fight with two-pair or higher. In reality, top pair and top kicker are not weak hands even in multi-way poker, and it is not possible to conclude that AKo should fold based on this result alone. You should consider the hand range preflop based on the overall strength of your hand, but we will consider another way to do this.
Finally, consider whether it is possible to play a wide range of games preflop, while folding or playing passively with anything other than monster hands after the flop. If you narrow your hand range so that your VPIP is around 40%, the probability of getting two pairs or better on the flop is about 5.5-6%. Therefore, on average, you will bet aggressively with monster hands about once every 30 games. Assuming that you pay a preflop bet of about 4bb per time, you will have to earn about 120bb per monster hand. Of course, as a result of betting aggressively, all your opponents may fold and you may not earn much chips, or you may be able to get two or more players involved in an all-in battle. Of course, there are also cases where you lose with a monster hand. Taking these things into consideration, you may feel that an average of 120bb is impossible or possible.
This approach is similar to the flop version of NIT, so you will need to either play slowly so that other players don’t know when you have a monster hand, or mix in some aggressive betting games (such as one pair or semi-bluffing with draw hands) in other situations. In reality, you may find it difficult to operate unless you fight a little even with a hand of one pair.
Appendix: Hand Ranges Based on Monster Hand Hit Probability
Just like the tool that calculates hand ranges so that the VPIP is determined in order of the highest probability of winning, I have created a tool that displays hand ranges when entering in order of the probability of getting a hand of two pair or better on the flop, so I have included a link here.
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