Can I get value from a weak King on the river?
Barry Carter gets a Spin & Go hand reviewed with his least favourite type of hand, high cards with a weak kicker.
In this new series PokerStrategy Editor Barry Carter gets a relatively 'standard' hand reviewed by a professional player to see if it was a trivial decision or not.
This week I caught up with SpinLegends coach Epistokrat again, this time to tackle a particular type of hand I struggle with a lot in Spin & Go's - high cards with weak kickers.
This is a $5 Spin & Go, I have just eliminated the first player and we are heads-up at the $10/$20 level. I have no reads on my opponent and am dealt K5o.
So I struggle with these kinds of hands for lots of reasons but I figure I am usually ahead so it's worth a raise.
Epistokrat: Readless, limping is favourable with this hand, it is a hand that captures the pot quite well against a potential weak checking range of the opponent, we dominate Villain's 5x in case we both hit a 5. Furthermore king high has increased showdown value when played in a limped pot, as our opponent's range mostly consists of lower cards as he isolation raises with many Ax, strong Kx and pocket pairs. In case Villain ISO raises we just fold this hand, typically their range will include less bluffs than there should be, and mostly Broadways that dominate us.
On the other hand, readless we expect opponents to overfold so your minraise will also do a little better than it should. While it is not a big deal in terms of chip EV in isolation, it does not take a genius to change his strategy for the better if you raise every single hand, so I advise to take the most efficient limps like this one and just call here.
Ok didn't expect that. So as played he calls and the flop is K-2-2 with two diamonds. We immediately see why I struggle with these kinds of hands, it feels too strong not to bet, but what are we getting called by that we beat? Either way, I bet small after he checks in the hopes of getting small pocket pairs, diamond draws and AX to call.
Epistokrat: Notice there is low value of protection betting Kx, that means in case we check, how many bad turn cards are there? Few! Villain's range does not contain many Ax as he only called preflop. Most turn cards just seem to be good to him, if Villain hits them it will make him pay us more money on later streets.
Checking weak Kx will be higher in EV, we pot control versus stronger Kx (which is the number one card in Villain's flatting range) and open the option for Villain to bluff us on the turn so we easily call him down. If not, we will go for value on later streets of course. we are not too concerned about 2x as we folded most of them preflop and the flop there is only 2s and 2h in the deck.
This is not a matter of the hand not being strong enough but rather of us getting too many folds here (that means we want to bluff here with air).
The turn is a Queen which puts out another flush draw. Now although I cannot really put Villain on much of anything, there are now two flush draws, a straight draw and QX hands that could call us on the turn. So I am betting here after he checks in the hopes that I did indeed get a garbage hand call our small flop bet that can justifiably call here.
Epistokrat: As played the turn changes our kicker to split with all other Kx-two pairs in Villain's range. By having bet on the flop we narrowed Villain's range down to 2x, Kx, Qx, Ax and flush draws. There ought to be plenty of backdoor flush draws (clubs) that now improved to real draws but mostly the population folds too wide with these holdings. Considering this range we can exploitively bet 75% of the pot here on the turn which is close enough to your sizing to make flush draws pay and I don't have doubts that Villain will continue his Qx when he just improved it.
The river brings an 8 of clubs which completes a potential flush and Villain checks again. I don't think many hands call me that I beat unless a random Qx called us on the flop, everything else beats me or I suspect the most likely hands are Kx which we are chopping with at best, so I check back.
Epistokrat: As played I check river too. We split with Kx, lose to 2x and flushes and fold the busted draws that we beat anyway. Against some passive opponents there may be room to exploitively bet small against Qx. However small bets induce bluff raises and that would be terrible here.
Let's quickly consider a more advanced concept, the blocking effects of our hand. We do not block diamonds, leaving more busted flush draws in Villain's range. He will not call another bet, he might even turn them into a check/raise bluff, which would be terrible as we would fold to any raise sizing. Also we do not block clubs which means there will be more flushes in Villain's range, of course an argument for checking.
It turns out that Villain had K8o and avoided a chopped pot by getting there on the river.
Epistokrat: If anyone wants to discuss this hand further, I'll be checking out the comments in this article so I can answer their questions there.
I never considered limping
As is often the case with these hand reviews (and the reason I am doing them) an element I considered standard and not meant for discussion actually ended up being most important. I didn't even consider limping Kx here, I just thought because it beats a random hand I should be raising, but as Epistokrat says limping this hand leaves a much wider range in with me and I will often be able to profitably check it down. Likewise checking back on the flop gives me a better chance to get value or bluff catch on the turn and river.
My thanks to Epistokrat who is one of our coaches over at SpinLegends. If you want to get top level coaching, a Spin & Go bankroll and world class support with like minded players, send us an application and become a Spin Crusher.
Thoughts on the hand? Let us know in the comments:
