Roughly speaking, top pair can take on one of two roles for you. It can behave either as a value hand or as a bluff catcher depending on the situation. In my next article I’ll talk about playing top pair for value. This article is about playing top pair as a bluff catcher.

When Good Hands Go Bad

Bluff catchers are not good hands. By definition they’re good enough only to beat a bluff. They aren’t going to beat many – if any – of the legitimate hands your opponents could have. So most of the time you should fold them. And even when you find yourself compelled to call with a bluff catcher, you usually lose more often than not.

Unfortunately, top pair frequently becomes a bluff catcher by the river. Here’s a typical situation. It’s a $2-$5 live game with $1,000 stacks. One player limps, and you raise to $25 on the button with Q J . The big blind calls, as does the limper.

The flop is J 8 4 . Everyone checks, you bet $50, and the big blind raises to $100. The limper folds, and you call.

The turn is the 4 . The big blind bets $75. You call.

The river is the T . The big blind bets $150.

When you raise preflop and flop top pair, you typically feel good about it. It’s often all the hand you’ll need to win the pot. But this particular pot doesn’t go according to plan. The big blind checkraises you on the flop and bets the turn and river. The bet sizes aren’t large, and the board has not come threateningly for your hand, but you are nevertheless in trouble.

You have only a bluff catcher. The strongest hand that you beat is J-9. Most players would be much more passive with J-9. They’d tend to check and call rather than checkraise, bet, and bet. The same goes for weaker made hands like T-T, A-8, and the like. Despite the small bet sizing, people simply don’t play this way with hands you beat often enough to consider your top pair anything but a bluff catcher.

If you call the river, you can expect to see a better hand. It could be A-J or A-A or A 4 or 8-8. Or it could be something else. But it likely will beat you. Your only hope is that your opponent has been bluffing with a flush or straight draw. But this isn’t probable either, because most players don’t bluff this way. They either make a large bet or they bet after a show of weakness. A series of small bets into strength is not often a bluff.

Because top pair is a bluff catcher in this situation, and a bluff is unlikely, the river is a clear fold. In fact against many opponents who like to make small bets like these, you can fold earlier in the hand.

Three Questions

How do you figure out if your top pair is a value hand or a bluff catcher? And if it’s a bluff catcher, how do you decide whether you should call or not? Ask yourself three quetsions.

Has an opponent bet into you or raised your bet? If the answer is no, you can likely play your top pair for value. Top pair is a strong hand, and if your opponent has shown no strength, you can fairly assume you’re ahead much more often than not.

Think of the strongest hand that you can beat. Would your opponent play this strongly if he held that hand? If the answer is no, you likely have a bluff catcher. To play your top pair for value, your opponent needs to have hands in his range that you can beat. If he’s played too strongly to hold the hand just weaker than yours, you’d better hope he’s bluffing.

Is he bluffing often enough to justify calling? If not, fold. A bluff catcher is a bluff catcher. Top pair bluff catchers and bottom pair bluff catchers have almost the same value. Yet most players are far more willing to call with top pair to “keep someone honest” than with bottom pair. I think players call too often with top pair in this situation, and perhaps not often enough with bottom pair. If your top pair is a bluff catcher, treat it that way. Don’t call with it just because you’re frustrated that it’s not good anymore.

Here’s how you might use the three questions in a real hand. It’s a $2-$5 game with $1,000 stacks. You have AdQs and open for $20 from three off the button. A player calls behind you, and both blinds call.

The flop comes A T 8 . Everyone checks to you. No one has shown aggression so far, so you can play your hand for value. Players with weaker aces and draws will certainly call. You bet $80. Only the small blind calls.

The turn is the 3 . The small blind bets $120. Now someone has shown aggression, so you have to ask the second question. Would your opponent play A-J this way? It’s conceivable.Your opponent could also hold a hand like A 3 or K T and be betting the pair plus flush draw. Or you could be drawing dead to a flush or slim against another better hand. The bet is small enough and your winning chances are big enough to call.

The river is the 7 . The small blind bets $500. Would your opponent play A-J this way? Almost certainly not. It’s a huge bet for a player with A-J to make. Top pair is now a bluff catcher. Is your opponent bluffing often enough to call? His bet is just bigger than pot-sized, so you need to win one time in three to justify a call. On this board a bluff is not nearly that likely. Both the flush draw and the J-9 straight draw have come in. Not many hands out there would spend so much on the flop and turn, yet amount to nothing on this river. Q-J fits the bill, and it’s still possible for your opponent to have a hand like K T . But far more often your opponent will have the big hand he’s representing. You have a bluff catcher, and you’re not getting odds to call. Fold.

If you ask yourself these three questions while you have top pair, you’ll be able to get away from the hand more often when you should.

[This article appeared in the June 16, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 12 ) of Card Player.]

Great Multiway

Small pocket pairs are truly excellent hands in multiway pots. If you play a lot of live no-limit, you’ve no doubt played in games where most pots see four, six, eight players to a flop. Small pocket pairs are dream hands in these games because they flop sets that you can count on to be best the vast majority of the time. The more opponents you have, the bigger the chance you’ll find an unsuspecting sap with top pair happy to pay you off. Simple enough. But I do have two comments about pairs in multiway pots.

First, be cautious in truly wild games. They aren’t common, but I’ve played in a few games where routinely three or more players would see nearly every flop for 15-20 big blinds each ($75 to $100 in a $2-$5 game). If it costs you $100 to see a flop, even in a crazy game where you’re very likely to get paid off if you hit, the odds might not be there for you to flop a set. Remember that you will flop a set only 1 time in 8.5, and neither winning nor getting paid off is guaranteed. Also, you could get caught calling a big raise only for an opponent to shove all-in behind you. So check the stack sizes and make sure you have enough potential upside to make up for the times things don’t go according to plan.

Second, if several players limp in front of you, it’s not always best to limp along. Sometimes putting in a raise is better, even if you’re sure nearly everyone will call. It depends on your stack sizes and the stack sizes of the majority of your opponents. The deeper everyone is, the more advantage raising has.

If raising a small pair seems strange to you, think about it this way. There’s no doubt that playing a small pair in a sixhanded pot for $5 is profitable when most players have around $500. Playing a small pair in a sixhanded pot for $10 is roughly twice as profitable when the same players have around $1,000. It’s not exactly proportional, of course, but the basic idea holds. When you have a profitable situation, the larger you can pump up the stakes without making the stack-to-pot ratio much lower, the more profitable the situation will be. Therefore, it’s often worth it to put in a modest raise in a multiway pot with a small pocket pair.

Good Heads-Up Too

Small pairs are good heads-up too, particularly if you have position. Whereas in multiway pots most of the value of the hand comes from flopping a set, in a heads-up situation you’re counting on winning some pots unimproved. For this reason, position helps a lot. Having position will help you get your weak pair to showdown cheaply when that’s what you want.

But you don’t always have to check it down when you have an unimproved pocket pair. Sometimes you can bet it for value. For instance, say you are playing $2-$5, and a loose player opens for $25. You call on the button with 7 7 . The blinds fold.

The flop comes T 8 4 . Your opponent checks, and you check. The turn is the 2 . Your opponent checks, and you check. The river is the 2 . Your opponent checks again. You can bet $50 or so here for value. Because your opponent has checked three times, you can be fairly certain that your hand is best. Suspicious opponents will call with hands like 3-3 and A-Q.

You certainly shouldn’t automatically bet all your unimproved pocket pairs on the river. But against opponents who like to try to snap off bluffs, you will find profitable situations to squeeze extra value out of your hand.

No Good In Reraised Pots

One situation where small pocket pairs play particularly poorly is in heads-up reraised pots. If you open, an opponent reraises an approximately pot-sized amount, and everyone else folds, usually you need to fold. For example, say you open to $20 with 4-4 in a $2-$5 game, and the player on the button reraises to $70. Against most players and with most common stack sizes, you should fold.

The problem with calling the $50 is that it’s very difficult to win enough money when you flop a set to make up for all the times you miss. With $500 starting stacks, for instance, you’d have to get all the money in the middle virtually every time you flop a set to hope to make a profit. Even knowing your opponent has a strong hand worth a preflop reraise, you can’t expect him to want to get it in every time. He might hold A-K and have missed the flop. Or he might hold Q-Q on a K-high flop.

In practice, you won’t stack your opponent remotely often enough to justify calling the reraise only for set value. To justify calling the raise you’d have to have other ways to win the pot. Perhaps you could win unimproved at showdown or steal sometimes. But small pocket pairs are poor candidates to win reraised pots unimproved, as they frequently flop badly, forcing you to adopt a check-and-pray postflop strategy. And they are also relatively poor hands to try to steal a reraised pot with because they rarely flop draws.

Unless the stacks are extremely deep and your opponent loves to shovel money in the pot, you’re better off folding small pocket pairs to a big preflop reraise.

Conclusion

Small pocket pairs are fun hands because they get you immediately thinking about winning a huge pot. In multiway pots, they’re terrific, but watch out for big preflop raises. And don’t be afraid to put in a modest raise yourself if the stacks are deep.

Heads-up they are good as well, particularly with position. And in some situations you can even bet them for value unimproved.

But if someone reraises preflop, don’t make the mistake of calling automatically. Calling big reraises with small pairs is a no-no. Flopping a set in a huge reraised pot is a rush, but it won’t happen often enough to make it pay in the long run.

[This article appeared in the June 2, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 11 ) of Card Player.]

A common misconception about suited connectors is that they are “multiway hands.” The idea is that if you hold a hand like 6 5 , you want nothing more than to have six people in the pot with you. Some people even take the idea so far as to say that they’d rather have 6-5 suited in a seven-handed pot than pocket aces.

The reality is that suited connectors are okay hands in multiway pots, and only okay. Their obvious upside is that they can make straights and flushes, hands strong enough to win big pots. But they have a few problems also:

1. Small suited connectors make small flushes. Getting beaten by a higher flush is extremely expensive, and in some circumstances you’ll be reluctant to play for stacks even if you make your flush.
2. Small suited connectors make small, vulnerable two pair hands. Two pair is an important hand in hold’em. If you make two pair with a hand like A-T, you often have a hand strong enough to play for stacks. But if you make two pair with 7-6 in a pot with many opponents, many times you will be too vulnerable to escalate the betting. Not being able to get good value for your two pair hands is a significant drawback.
3. Suited connectors usually flop draws, not made hands. If the flop betting gets big, the player with the suited connector may not be able to continue and may miss out on making his hand.

Compare the hand to a small pocket pair. Pocket pairs make sets which are also strong hands that can win big pots. But they are stronger multiway hands on all three counts. If the board pairs you usually won’t be worried about losing to a bigger hand. Instead, if someone makes trips you can win a lot with your full house. Also small cards don’t make pocket pairs particularly vulnerable. Even a set of deuces is a strong hand that you can usually play happily for stacks. Finally small pocket pairs flop made hands, not draws. Either you hit your set or you don’t.

Small pocket pairs are unquestionably good multiway hands. Suited connectors, on the other hand, often end up having to play scared when many players see a flop.

So what are the strengths of a suited connector?

1. They hit a lot of flops. There are many ways to hit your hand. You can flop a pair, a flush draw, an open-ended straight draw, or even a gutshot.
2. If you are known to play suited connectors (as most players are), you can credibly represent a strong hand when the board contains mostly low cards.
3. If you get to showdown, they give you a decent chance to hold the best hand.

The first two strengths of suited connectors suggest their real value in no-limit. Suited connectors are good bluffing hands. They hit a lot of flops, which means that you can often bluff the flop and turn with them, and if you get called you still have a reasonable chance to win the pot. Bluffing is generally more profitable when your hand has equity rather than when your hand has no showdown value whatsoever. Suited connectors have significant equity on the flop more often than other types of hands.

Many players misplay suited connectors by ignoring the real value of the hands. They just sit back with them and try to hit straights and flushes. That won’t happen often enough, and it won’t be profitable enough when it does happen, to make a real profit. To make these hands profitable you have to be willing to bluff with them.

Here’s a routine, but important example. It’s a $2-$5 game with $500 stacks. A loose player opens for $20 from three off the button. You call on the button with 9 8 . The big blind calls.

The flop comes K 7 4 . Everyone checks to you, and you bet $50. The big blind calls, and the preflop raiser folds.

The turn is the A . The big blind checks, you bet $120, and he folds.

In this example we flop a flush draw with the suited connector. As I mentioned before, a small flush made with a suited connector can be a vulnerable hand in multiway pots. This pot is only threehanded, however, so we can be reasonably confident a completed flush will be the best hand.

When the preflop raiser elects to check the flop against multiple opponents, it usually indicates a weak hand that’s prepared to fold. Given that fact a flop bluff is nearly mandatory. The big blind will often fold, and so will the preflop raiser.
The big blind surprises with a call, but the turn card is another good one to bluff. Many of the hands the big blind could have called the flop with – unimproved pocket pairs, sevens, fours, flush and straight draws, even sometimes kings – he will fold to a solid turn barrel. And, again, if called we still have a roughly 20 percent chance to make a flush on the river.

Suited connectors hit lots of flops. They also produce lots of bluffing opportunities. Don’t just sit back and try to make your hand. Pull the trigger when the opportunities present themselves. If you do that, you’ll get the real value out of your suited connectors.

[This article appeared in the May 19, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 10 ) of Card Player.]

Experience

Experience is the most obvious trait, and it definitely matters a lot. I would never back a rank beginner in a no-limit game even if he had seven Ph.D. degrees from Stanford and had won the Nobel Prize in economics. There’s so much about no-limit you can learn only by putting in hands by the thousands.

But raw experience isn’t the key. Plenty of players who have been playing for ten years or more don’t win. And a lot of the recent big winners had been playing for only a year or less before they began raking in the money. Experience must be accompanied by the next trait to have value.

Self-Evaluation

One of the many ironies about poker players is that the bad ones tend to be more certain of themselves than the good ones. Countless times I’ve heard a player lecture another at the table. “How could you do something so stupid? You should have done X instead of Y. Everyone knows that.” Not even to metion how rude it is, with few exceptions the table coach’s interpretation of events demonstrates his very shallow understanding of the game.

Winning players are self-critical. Unlike the table coach, they don’t assume that the way they usually play a hand is necessarily the best way to play it. After a session they recall notable hands and pick them apart. They rethink each decision and consider whether they could have done things in a different way that might perform better on average.

Experience is nearly worthless without self-evaluation. You can play a million hands, but if you play them like a robot and never think about what you’re doing you won’t improve much. The more you engage your brain during and after your playing sessions, the more you’ll improve. But you have to focus on the right things, which takes us to the third trait.

Efficient Focus

So far I haven’t said anything particularly revloutionary. But here’s where I know many – if not most – players go astray. They play lots of hands. They even think about the hands during play and away from the table. But they think about the wrong hands and are focused on the wrong concepts. Good players focus their efforts efficiently in ways designed to give them the best return on their time. What is an efficient focus?

It’s easier to explain what an efficient focus isn’t. I receive a lot of emails from readers asking about a hand they’ve played. Easily more than half of the questions follow the same theme. My reader has a big hand. He gets all-in. He loses. Should he have played differently?

Nine times out of ten, the answer is, “No, you had a big hand and you put your money in. You did it right.” Poker involves risk, and whenever you put your money in the middle you can lose it. These hands stand out for people because they are very emotional. Big losses are upsetting, and many players instinctively focus their learning to find ways they can avoid these negative feelings in the future.

If you want to get better at poker, though, you shouldn’t focus on the most emotionally taxing hands. Ups and downs are an integral part of the game, and vainly trying to avoid them isn’t going to make you a winner. Efficient focus means finding situations that occur frequently that you could play better. Look for situations where you’re giving up on pots you could be bluffing at. Look for situations where you’re calling on the flop without a plan for the rest of the hand. Look for situations where you are playing in a way that’s too straightforward and readable. The good stuff is usually in the small and medium pots. If you just focus on all the obvious hands, you’ll be wasting most of your efforts. Efficient focus demands reexamining the seemingly mundane pots. But even good players can’t ignore the emotional aspect of poker, which brings us to the fourth trait.

Emotional Awareness

Virtually everyone who plays poker responds emotionally to major events like winning or losing a big pot, winning or losing a number of hands in a row, and so forth. The trick for a good player isn’t to bottle these natural emotional responses up. Instead it’s to be aware of them and to react to them in a positive way.

Emotionally unaware players get frustrated at the table and react by playing much looser and crazier than they usually do. This describes the well known phenomenon of “steaming.” A lot of players try to avoid steaming by actively refusing to play loose and crazy when they feel themselves getting frustrated. But this reaction has its own drawbacks. These players often play like they’ve lost the pot before they even get going. They stop raising their aces. They stop betting their good hands on the flop. They fold too easily to pressure.

The fact is that it’s difficult to play well whenever you’re in a strongly emotional state. Instead of trying to fight or hide the emotions, emotionally aware players quit until they are feeling fresh and positive again. After a particularly bad run, however, you might not feel like thinking about poker, let alone playing it, for a long time. How long that time can be is affected by the fifth trait.

Passion

Top players all have it. Every one of them, at least every one that I’ve met. They live, eat, and breathe poker. They want to talk about hands constantly. When they’re home alone, they are reading books or watching videos. They’re fiddling with PokerStove. They’re reading forum posts. They don’t get sick of it. Working on their poker game is the thing they enjoy most. You can win without single-minded passion, but if you want to win millions, you absolutely need it and there’s no substitute.

[This article appeared in the May 5, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 9 ) of Card Player.]

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