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[Music]
Oh, I didn't see you there! Let's talk about a poker hand. I want to share one of the most interesting hands I played all year—possibly in my entire history of playing poker. It might be one of the most intriguing hands streamed in a long time, really long time. I won over $150,000 with Deuce to Seven offsuit.
So, this hand has a bit of a history to it, and there are some weird conditions at play here. Let's just pause it right here because I have to explain what's going on in the first place; otherwise, it’s not going to make sense.
This hand starts with a unique situation—a very unique situation, actually. There is a bonus if someone wins three hands in a row: $2,000 from each player, which means roughly $12,000 on top of actually winning the hand—$6,000 if there are six players, or $10,000 if there are ten players. I believe there are seven players playing at the moment, and Y Viral has won two hands in a row. If he wins this last hand with Ace high, which is quite a good hand, he can win an additional $12,000 on top.
Also at play is a bounty if you win the hand with Deuce to Seven offsuit. So, both of us have massive incentives to win the hand. If I win it, I get $1,000 from the player, so I get a bonus of $5,000 or $6,000 on top of this as well. I know that Y Viral is very loose, and I don’t think he’s going to be playing a fantastic strategy in four-bet pots. Maybe in three-bet pots, he’ll be playing pretty well; he’s a pro and quite a good player. I know that he’s very combative towards me, but I don’t really see what options I have.
I could call pre-flop; that’s definitely an option. You don’t want to three-bet all Deuce to Seven combos because there are 16 of them, and if you’re trying to win the bonus with all of them, you probably want to be a bit weighted towards value and have a bit more value. My image is pretty terrible; people know I can three-bet with anything and just be crazy in general. Y Viral definitely knows that, and I’ve already played a hand with him where he called a hand and showed a five of hearts. There’s some other hand where he won the pot somehow, or he showed a hand that was very loose, like calling pre-flop with 6-3 of hearts or something. So, I have a good idea of roughly how wide his range is.
This is a hand where I’ll be going into a bit of what the analysis looks like. If you don’t really know perfectly what sort of ranges people are playing and they’re not following exactly like GTO Wizard, it no longer applies because there are weird bonuses at play.
We’ll start with running the hand off and showing you guys what happens. Pre-flop, I end up deciding to three-bet with Deuce to Seven offsuit instead of calling. I want to take the initiative away from him. I’m hoping that he just doesn’t play the pots super well, and I find some kind of edge that way because it’s hard to play through the pots where both ranges are wide. The fact that he calls is important because I can eliminate a number of hands from his range.
By the way, another reason why I pick to three-bet is that the stack sizes are a bit awkward for a four-bet, which kind of takes away that option unless he wants to go all-in for $100,000. That’s very ugly; it doesn’t really have the option to three-bet plus. It’s a very unattractive option with a lot of hands.
So, he does decide to call. I already spoiled that a little bit. When he decides to call, I can probably eliminate a lot of his pocket pairs, but I didn’t realize it straight away. I think there’s a really high chance he jams quite a few of them in this spot because he just has loads of incentive to win the hand, and there’s like a $20,000 bonus on top. He doesn’t know it’s $20,000, but it’s almost $20,000.
Basically, what happens if someone wins it? I don’t really think he has especially big pairs or hands like Ace-Queen or Ace-King, if I really have to guess, because again, I think that he’s not going to trap. He’s probably going to go all-in or do some weird four-bet or whatever it is—probably just go all-in, to be honest, as he actually does later on when he has pocket Jacks versus my squeeze.
There’s a really good chance his hand is wide and has loads of suited hands. I know that’s roughly what I’m thinking about; he probably has weak Broadway hands like Jack offsuit—almost 100%. I could guess that maybe he has Jack-King offsuit too; it’s possible. Anyway, I need to be thinking more in these kinds of categories with how wide exactly he’s playing.
Okay, so then comes the flop: King-3-7. I actually think this is a pretty good flop for me because I don’t think he has—I think his Ace-Kings, like I said, have already jammed. He might even jam like King-Queen suited, things like this. It’s not 100%, but I think the King, especially, is not as good as it usually is, but often it is because people don’t have so many King-X suited in their ranges. I have a pair, so that’s fantastic, and I have a piece of junk, obviously.
So, I think betting is a pretty good option. I can get him to fold some hands like 10-9 offsuit if he has that or 10-9 of clubs. Obviously, he has to fold; he has no choice there. Even with the bounties, it’s just too insane to do anything about it. So, I decide to bet small, and I think this protects against a lot of hands and makes it very difficult for him to play back very well against a small bet. I think it’s fine; I have a bit of a range advantage, but not much because both of us are wide.
In theory, I actually should have a strong range advantage, and as I mentioned, King-3-7 is on the better end of what my overall range is looking for. I should have a bit more nuts in my range, and a lot of his equity just has to be denied, to be honest. So, he does call. I’m not loving that at all. I have to start putting together a turn strategy for what’s going to happen on various different turns, but it’s not practical to think too much in detail. I’m going to have to check a lot of turns or consider turning my hand into a bluff, which is a really unattractive option, actually, in general because from his point of view, I have loads of bluffs, and it’s a big pot, and I want to win it, and I don’t want him to win it. So, I’m going to have to check a lot of turns, basically.
Then the turn comes: a Queen of Spades. I think for a second that bluffing might be a good play, but there’s actually a good chance I have the best hand here. It’s not really nearly as good of a turn as it looks. What happens is it polarizes the other guy by a lot. He has lots of flushes now; remember, he has loads of suited hands, etc. I start thinking to myself that actually I go from this idea of turning my hand into a bluff to just checking and trying to win at showdown because, or maybe even checking and turning my hand into a bluff on various rivers, because he can have a flush—that’s a realistic thing.
I don’t think that I really get him off too many things that are worse by betting or much equity that’s worse. I could even screw myself by betting and like check-folding the river; that would be a real disaster. So, I decide, looking at the whole of the possibilities, to check and take my option on the river as the best way of doing this.
If he has a King, he’s going nowhere on the turn. If he has a Queen, I don’t think he’s going anywhere. If he has something like Queen-Jack of hearts, he’s got a better hand. There are not that many combinations of that. I didn’t really think he has many offsuit Sevens; I think he has many suited combinations of Sevens. I don’t beat any of them; they’re pretty rare, like 8-7 of clubs, things like that. He can have 3-X; that’s another thing I think could happen. I thought at the time pocket fives, pocket fours, which fold sometimes. I don’t think he folds with the speed, so there’s a decent amount of combinations that fold, and the other things that fold, I haven’t beat anyway.
I could theoretically check-call, actually, because he now tends towards being—he might have enough bluffs if I decide he’s got enough bluffs with his busted suited hands or Ace-10 offsuit type floats, then I could check-call. But that’s going to be a really ugly option. Fortunately, he did not put me in that spot; he check-backs. That’s fantastic news! I can win at showdown, or I can win by turning my hand into a bluff—that’s another possibility.
So, the river comes, and it’s the 10 of Spades, which is a bit of a disaster, actually, as I think about it more and more. At first, I think, “Okay, what about turning my hand into a bluff?” Then I realize, “Okay, I’m basically saying I have the Ace of Spades somehow or the Jack of Spades.” I think to myself, “How do I really have Jack of Spades here? Maybe two Jacks with Jack of Spades makes sense. Queen-Jack with the Jack of Spades? No, I’d probably call that. King-Jack with the Jack of Spades? No, I’d probably call that. Jack offsuit or Jack-N? Not really.” There are not many Jack of Spades X that I have that aren’t like a flush.
I start thinking, “Okay, what about the Ace-X of Spades? I could have Ace-King and check the turn, the Ace of Spades, or Aces and check the turn, the King of Spades, Ace-Queen with Ace of Spades and check.” I think then I have to polarize myself between nuts or nothing, and I think that it’s really an unattractive proposition to do this in this kind of spot because from his point of view, I can have anything anyone can imagine as a bluff, and it’s just pretty damn hard to actually have the nuts when you think about it. I just don’t really have that clean of an image, and I have some showdown value anyway.
I think, “Man, it’s just too ridiculous of a spot to take because it’s just not that easy for me to have it, and it just looks like I’m full of crap, and I probably really want to win this pot.” Blah, blah, blah.
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So, I decided to check. I know that this spot tends to be wildly over-bluffed by a lot of players. It depends on who; it depends a lot on the situation. There’s quite a bit of nuance to these four-flush boards. So, yeah, this is where I’m thinking about it, and I end up deciding to check. I actually do give a bit of a tell here in that I’m sitting there thinking and checking. It’s a bit of a difficult tell just because it doesn’t really show the range of the possible hands that I can have. It’s possible that I’m thinking about bluffing, which is the case, and potentially turning a hand into a bluff.
Does it look like I’m going to check-call? I could potentially be making a thin value bet with like a low Spade, something along those lines that might make sense. It’s not one of those sorts of things in this spot. So, I do, in fact, check to Y Viral, and he goes into the tank. Now, I’m just sitting there hating the situation because it just doesn’t look like I’m going to win. It really doesn’t look like I’m going to win.
Then Rob’s getting annoyed. Yeah, this is a really tough spot when you have loads of bounties in the middle, and now you have to decide whether to hang yourself with these bluffs or not. I think while he was doing this, it seemed to me that he was probably going to bet. In my head, I’m thinking, “Okay, what does this bluff range look like, and what does his value range look like?” Because you have to determine whether he’s value betting with an Ace of Spades or a Jack of Spades and what his size should look like.
So, he does bet. He bets about pot size, which I actually don’t think is correct in this spot. He’s maybe a little bit too much on the polar end here, and I think that I’ll get to the fact that in reality, I don’t think he quite has enough value—at least if he doesn’t have enough Spades that are good enough to win the hand to value bet. If he can value bet with like six of Spades, maybe he can get away with this, but it’s actually hard to have that, which I’m going to get to in a second.
Okay, so here I’m starting to count all the possible different combinations of flushes because actually, there are a lot more than it may appear, and I count a lot of the flush draws as well. So, I’m thinking to myself, “Which Ace-X Spades, which Jack-X Spades, etc., which nut flush draws that he checks back on the turn he may have?” I decide he probably doesn’t have Ace-King; he might have Ace-Queen. At least at this time, I counted Ace-Queen, Ace of Spades, Queen, and he’ll check the turn almost for sure.
So, he’s got all those combos; he’s got three of those. I don’t give him Ace-Jack offsuit and Ace-10, not because he doesn’t have them in his range overall, but because he’s almost like 100% to bet the turn with such combinations. I don’t give him Ace-Jack or Ace-10 with the Ace of Spades in his range, not because he doesn’t have that overall, but because I think there’s a really high chance that he just bets the turn and doesn’t check it in this spot. It’s just such an obvious bluff spot that I think he’s just going to take it.
He could potentially have Ace-9 for sure; he’s not holding Ace-9 or Ace-8. He can be pre-flop with Ace of Spades. These would have been a lot of combos, but I just think there’s a high chance he goes on the turn. If I’m really being precise, probably what I’ll do is give him 20% to 25% of those, and that will be a bit of math. It’ll be something like 5 times 3 times 20%, which would be about three combos or so.
I start counting the nut flushes, and I start giving him quite a few of those, actually. I think there’s a pretty good chance he slow plays those that are the made nut flush on the turn. So, we have Ace-2, Ace-3, Ace-4, Ace-5, Ace-2, Ace-3, Ace-4, Ace-5, Ace-6, Ace-7, or not a seven, Ace-8, or no, excuse me, Ace-8. We have Ace-9, and we don’t have Ace-10. He might jam Ace-Jack suited, but you know what? We’ll give him that anyway. That’s eight combinations for what I counted as I was talking, and he probably doesn’t have 100% of those if we’re really honest. But let’s be generous and give him something like six combinations if we’re counting.
Now we count something like three plus six plus like another three value bets. This is roughly what’s going on in my mind at the time, and we now need to count really the Jack of Spades type hands. He doesn’t have Jack pretty much ever, but he can have Queen-Jack, he can have King-Jack, he can have 10-Jack, but he is very, very likely to bet it on the turn again. So, it’s most likely Jack-X hands. I mean, I guess he could have like Jack-8 or Jack-9, and his most likely Jack-X hands are those sorts of things.
I don’t think I counted Jack-8 or Jack-9. I don’t think I really need to because again, he probably bets them on the turn. But Queen-Jack and King-Jack, if he universally checks them on the turn, are another six combos. And by the way, guys, the way you count this is there are three offsuit Kings and one Jack of Spades, or there are three offsuit Queens and one Jack of Spades, and that’s how you count this. That would be two times three, right? So, we had 12, and now we have 18 combinations.
I need to be getting a price that’s greater than two to one, right? Because he’s betting about pot size, and there’s about $20,000 money on the side roughly, whether I win or lose. He doesn’t know that I have an additional $6,000 essentially if I win because of the Deuce to Seven thing. I also have all the bragging rights in the world if I win too; we can’t forget all that. So, I have additional bragging rights plus glory equity, of course, if I do win.
It’s good factors; even if it’s like break-even, it makes sense to call for these kinds of reasons, really being serious. I also deny the fact that he—I guess from my perspective, actually, it’s like plus $8,000 if I win because I win the $6,000 plus I win the two more. I don’t pay the $2,000 to him, and I deny him the $12,000. So, it’s a little bit more than two to one that I need.
So, he’s got to come up with only nine combinations of bluffs for his play to be plus EV or break-even EV, basically. Actually, he needs even less than that; he needs basically eight combinations of bluffs total in order for him to be break-even with this, or else he’s bluffing too much because now the price is better than two to one. If he’s bluffing, if he has ten combinations of bluffs, guess what? He’s only got 18 combinations of value, and if that’s the case, he’s not value betting enough because the price is wrong.
Now, if he starts having hands like 8-9 of Spades or 8-6 of Spades or somehow nines with the nine of Spades, or he turns up with bluffs that beat me, that was actually one of my biggest concerns. If he turned up with 8-7 of clubs and beat me, that would be a disaster. Now he can have a lot more value bets rather than not; he thought he was bluffing, but he’s value betting, actually.
One combination, by the way, I forgot about was Jack-9 of Spades seeking out that. So, actually, he’s got 19 combinations of true value, not counting 9 of Spades, 8 of Spades type things. I think he can value bet those, actually, if you really think about it. I think it’s quite hard for me to have the 8 or 9 of Spades; I don’t know if it really does for pot size, so not a great chance.
So, yeah, actually, the biggest concern is he turns up really with worse, and does he have enough bluffs? Let’s get into the not enough bluffs first. There’s a pretty good chance he turns a 3-X into a bluff. What kind of 3-X does he have? We know he’s got as wide as 6-3 suited. There’s a good chance he’s got 6-4 suited. Well, he does have 6-4 suited 100%. There’s a good chance he’s got 3-2 suited; there’s a good chance he’s got 3-4 suited, 3-5 suited—like almost 100%. Ace-3 suited he can have, as I mentioned, the 6-4, 6-5 busted gut shots. He should be able to have some busted Ace highs that miss or other busted kinds of back doors, such as 8-6 suited of hearts or 8-9 suited of hearts—hands like this.
There’s also Jack-8 of hearts; that’s another one. Jack-6 of hearts, perhaps. Jack-5 of hearts. Let’s start doing a little bit of math now. Remember, we only need to get to the number of 10-plus, not considering the fact that you need to turn other hands that are better than me.
So, let’s consider non-3-X combos first. So, there’s 6-4, there’s 6-5, and there’s 5-4. There are actually nine combinations of those alone. Why? Because there are four combinations of each suited hand, and one of those is a flush, right? You can have 6-5 of Spades, but all the other ones are busted, and there are nine combinations. However, we don’t know that he’s betting all those on the river; he might have bet a lot of them on the turn.
So, I’m going to do something like give him half of those combos, and now we need to find basically a bunch more. Let’s count Ace-6 of hearts, Ace-9 of hearts, Ace-8 of hearts, Ace-6 of hearts, Ace-5 of hearts—that’s five more already. Ace-2 of hearts, I don’t think he folds Jack-5 of hearts potentially, and Jack-6 of hearts or Jack-8 of hearts either way. We can pretty clearly get to the point of break-even roughly.
Now, if he starts having things like Ace-6 of clubs, etc., which I think people do have sometimes, or Ace-6 of clubs, Ace-5 of clubs, I don’t think he’s real keen on folding those, to be honest. I think he does jam some Ace-5 suited as well. It’s really hard to say, but we’re getting into the realm where we know his range is really wide, and he’s going to have a bit more combos than he might expect, which basically means that he’s going to turn up with, for the most part, it usually means that people turn up with more bluffs than you may expect.
So, I’m going through the analysis of what I was thinking of at the time. I don’t really describe the precise fractions of what I gave his bluff combinations; I didn’t count that precisely, but that’s what this analysis would look like. Actually, the biggest factor that made me call—I was about to 50/50 it—and the final thing that made me call was actually something that Patrick Howard, the creator of Movus Poker, told me, which is that basically on these four-flush boards, a lot of different ways that it runs out, a lot of the time, people just find some kind of strange ways of bluffing, and they just have more bluffs than you expect.
As a matter of fact, this is what hung me against one of the students I had—some strange bluff against the guy. I put a lot of pressure on him, and he just called me with some nonsense bluff catcher, and sure enough, I was bluffing too much. And somehow, even though it was an obscure spot, and because of remembering that from him, I came full circle and I used that against somebody else for an even bigger pot.
So, that was the ultimate deciding factor between flipping a coin or just straight-up calling. The biggest issue, of course, with calling is that he just turns up with 6-7 of clubs or 6-5 of diamonds. I lose that, and that would have been like the real disaster. But if we start doing that now, we have to add more value bets, essentially, where he’s got like up to, you know, like 15 more value bets. Now I’ve got like a real problem.
So, I finally call, and he shows me the Ace-3 offsuit, which really opens up my eyes and makes me realize he’s actually got way more combos than I thought, as we discussed. He might even have like 3-X all-in combos—hopefully not turning 7-X offsuit combos into bluffs that he presumably has. I’m sure he’s got 8-7 offsuit; there’s a really good chance 9-7 offsuit, why not? And it does mean that he’s got quite a few more bluffs because now he could potentially have like Ace-4, Ace-5, Ace-6 with just no backdoor, that kind of stuff.
Also, he has an 8 potentially, Ace-9—that’s quite a few combos. Once you start adding a bunch more, the number of combos just starts really adding up. If you do bluff too much, you get too fast in the unprofitable zone and just have loads of bluffs. Not to mention all the 3-X combos, which I didn’t really consider into the possible bluffs, at least where I wasn’t really sure if he was going to turn 3-X into a bluff. But if I started considering those, I’d basically do something like map them against the potential 7-X combinations of bluffs.
But if we do get into the 3-X combos, there are quite a few bluffs because now it will be two times 3-X if we’re considering the suited hands. For example, 3-2 suited, which he really has a high chance he has, would be 3-2 of clubs and 3-2 of diamonds, but there’s no 3-2 of hearts possible; there’s no 3-2 of Spades and the flush, right? If you have Ace-3, then he’s actually got 12 combinations total.
So, he’s got 3 times 4, right? So, it’s three threes, four Aces. Now, three of those combinations have the Ace of Spades in them and may or may not bet the turn. I’m going to guess he probably checks the turn, so he’s actually got three Ace-3 with the three of Spades and three Ace-3 with the Ace of Spades. So, he’s actually got six Ace-3 offsuit type combinations.
If we start adding more Ace-X offsuits, it becomes six and six plus six plus six, etc., for Ace-8 and Ace-9, etc. Looking at more 3-X combos, he can have 3-5, he can have 6-3, he can have Jack-3, he can have 9-3, he can have 8-3. Maybe we don’t really know; there’s a good chance he’s got Jack-3. Basically, not terribly hard to turn loads of bluffs, and this is pretty much what the general thought process looks like.
Fortunately for me, I called and got all the glory and the money—one of the best possible situations. I managed to check-call instead of bluff it off as well and just get him to fold the worst. Yay me! My team and I thought it might be a funny idea to invite him for a collab on this video, but I thought that because usually people are kind of annoyed when everything goes perfectly against them and they get demolished in a hand, they tend to be a little bit bitter afterward, and they certainly don’t want to make a massive YouTube video about it.
But thinking about another way, as one of my team members described it, you can either just lose the $100,000, or you can lose $100,000 and also make a viral video potentially or get more content and more viewers. I’m not the one to make that decision, but I’m certainly not going to press it on anybody. I’m just happy to win and happy to be on the best side of the YouTube video, which I obviously unbiasedly selected out of all the other ones.
I think now would be a good time for a flute solo.
[Music]
Alright, guys, I showed you why I did what I did, and yeah, Deuce to Seven offsuit—learn to play it like the pros! Thanks for watching!