I wanted to post a simple example of a situation where we attack our opponent's range with total air to let you understand how/when to attack paired boards without anything.
PokerJuice Hand History #3964
Blinds: $0.50/$1.00
SB ($100.00) 100bb
BB ($100.00) 100bb
CO ($100.00) 100bb (Hero) Q♥ J♠ T♦ 9♣
BTN ($100.00) 100bb (Villain)
($1.50, 4 players)
CO bets $3.00, BTN calls $3.00, SB folds, BB folds
($7.50, 2 players) 7♥ 7♠ 4♦
CO bets $3.75
So:
Things to consider
When facing a board like this and you have Qhigh, do you think one of the following?
- I didn't hit the flop, so I check-fold
- If I bet and my opponent calls, I will lose money
- My opponent has better hand so often that I shouldn't bet
- If I bet and my opponent calls, I don't know what to do
If you answered "yes", here is something interesting to you:
How to turn a Bet into profit
If we assume that opponent calls with a wide range of about 30% and would 3bet aces, he will have trips or a full house 19% of times here. That is an interesting number because when hero bets half a pot as a cbet, it has to be succesfull 1/3 times to make profit. In other way around, if villain folds at least 33% of the times hero will make profit with the cbet. If villain calls with only trips or full house, he will fold 81% of the times. This means that hero will make a lot of profit with the cbet.
Now if villain doesn't want to fold, and will call with broadway overpairs (JJ-KK) and any 56xx, he will still fold 55% of the times. That means that even with a pretty wide calling range hero will still make profit with a half a pot cbet.
To continue "what if...?" thinking, if the flop has a flush draw in it and villain calls with any flush draw, he will fold 38% of the times. So even in that case it is marginally profitable.
Conclusion: we can very often attack paired boards for Autoprofit!
So as you can see, making that half a pot cbet with total air is almost always profitable if villain doesn't float or raise as a bluff on the flop. The key is to understand that the opponent will fold enough of his range to justify our bet, even as we have total air ourselves. When you learn this concept, you can use it in many other situations and start to look for other spots in postflop.