Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Turn play when there are few hands you can beat

From my recent $5/$10 online limit games, I've often found myself in a headsup situation with a tight aggressive opponent on the turn when there are very few hands that I can beat. How should I be playing in these situations?

My opponent for these particular situations is a tight aggressive (not tight agg/agg, nor tight agg/passive, basically the player that gets the Eagle icon in PT). I have the most doubts againist this specific type of opponent for this situation.

The easiest to describe situation is one in which I have a hand like QQ or KK.

Let me use QQ as the example.
- Preflop I either 3 bet or raise/cap and see the flop headsup. (neither of us was in steal position; one of us opened in ~MP, and the other was in mid-late pos, in a 10 handed game)
- Flop comes something like J79 with a flush draw (I have one of that suit), 2 or 3 bets go in on the flop
- An A comes on the turn giving me 2nd nut flush draw.

Now what? My opponent has good starting hand selection. I guess that any tight agg player would play that way preflop with any PP 9 or higher, AK, or AQ (perhaps AJ, AT if he raised/called preflop). The only hand I can beat is TT for which he still has 6 outs. If I'm behind, I'm waaaaay behind.

Assume he called the last bet on the flop. There is 6-7BB in the pot.

If I'm first to act, what do I do?
If he is first and bets? if he checks?

1 comment:

ScurvyDog said...

Hands like this always make me throw up in my mouth a little.

I think you want to at least see the river, based on the 2nd nut flush draw and the size of the pot. If you bet out on the turn, though, and get raised, it's really hard to call.

I'd probably take the path of weak, least resistance and check-call, if acting first, and just call if he bets out. If your read on him is right, he's got something that beats you

If I don't make the flush on the river (or spike a Q) I'm done with the hand, check-folding or folding.

But I often play situations like this too passively, and better players might be inclined to play the turn more aggressively.