BoArderline: O8 board textures discussion for my 2000th post

My favorite game is LO8.
This is the game I play the most, think about the most, post about the most and not lose the most...

While posting about the following topic, i'll try to also consider how it applies to big bet O8, until I give up and concentrate on LO8.

What is the difference between preflop and postflop? the answer is: the flop!
The flop can come in all sorts of forms. those forms allow us to draw conclusions about possible hands/draws:

High Hands: the flop may enable quads and/or full house if there are two or three cards of the same rank. it may enable a flush if monotone, a flush draw if has two cards of the same suit, a straight and/or a straight draw if has three cards of different ranks when the gap between the highest and lowest is three ranks tops, a straight draw if has at least two cards when the gap between them is no more than three ranks, etc.

Low Hands: the flop may enable a low and/or low draw if it has three unique low ranks (A through 8), and a low draw if it has two unique low ranks.

There are also hands/draws that are impossible after the flop:

High Hands: on a flop of three different ranks, quads/full house is not possible.
A less obvious example: on a monotone board, unlike in holdem, a flush draw is not possible.

Low Hands: the flop may not enable a low/low draw if it has only one low rank or zero low ranks. with one low rank, a backdoor low draw may be possible by the river, but it's a rather weak draw - a longshot for half the pot.

"DRY" = a board with few draws, resulting in fewer ways the odds can change with the turn of a card, or with simply the turn card.

"WET" = a drawy board. equities run closer.

The terms heavy and light, used to describe the ranks of the cards on the board (heavy as in high, light as in low), are less common in O8.

Dry and wet boards also affect our reasons for betting:
Value is the first and foremost reason for betting, and it may effectively be the only reason for betting wet flops.

The logic behind the previous statement is very simple: on wet boards, we expect to get called, and when we bet in order to get called, we bet for value.

On the other hand, if there's a time to bet a poor hand (bluff), it better be when the board is dry. again, it's very logical. out opponents are less likely (on average) to hit a dry flop and more likely to fold to our bet, and bluffing is when we bet, expecting (maybe "hoping") to get folds.

a few LO8 examples:

(1) folds to hero, hero raises from the BTN, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop (3 players, 6 small bets): K54

SB checks, BB checks, hero better have something decent if he considers betting, as this is one of the most wet boards and he should expect to get called extremely often!

(2) same action, only now the flop is 66J

SB checks, BB checks, hero should probably bet his entire range, unless villians are the types to put hero on a hand and play accordingly. more often, though, villians will miss this dry, "nothing" flop and won't try anything fancy out of position.

(3) again, same action, only now the flop is KQ9

SB checks, BB checks, hero should treat this flop like the previous one (dry) and bet.

a flush draw is impossible on this board and anyone with a flush (even a baby flush) is a big favorite over a non flush hand. the huge equity discrepancies make this board dry and anyone without a flush should feel reluctant to continue.

When there are two or three cards of the same rank on the board: those are extremely dry boards, especially with no flush/low draws possible.

Paired boards (especially in a four card game) create a phenomenon of WA/WB, or: way ahead, way behind. anyone without trips (or a rare full house) is a relatively large dog to anyone with trips or better.

These boards are actually good for AA, which make nut two pair, the next best hand to have after trips. AA are often WA/WB on these boards, which is much better than they can expect on most aceless boards.

Actually, deciding whether to continue with AA past the paired aceless flop is often a tough decision to make, and will mainly depend on the number of players still in the hand. the more players, the more likely that someone does have trips or better. shorthanded, though, folding aces on these flops is usually much too tight.

Low boards are wet boards - we will refer to boards with two or three unique low ranks as "low boards". these boards are wet, as they enable the most common draw in this game - the low draw.

It's rare that one hand has the best chance for both the high and the low after the flop. more often, the equity in the pot will be distributed more evenly when low is possible. remember: more draws = equities run closer = board is wet.

High boards are dry boards - boards with zero or one low ranks are "high boards". pots will often be "hogged" by one player. the likelihood of taking the whole pot creates larger edges in terms of pot equity. A hand which is a favorite will often be a very large favorite. large edges tend to occur when boards are dry.

3 to a flush isn't like 3 to a straight or 3 to a low - as we said before, on monotones boards, a flush draw is impossible. on 3 to a straight boards, a straight draw is possible. also, on 3 to a low board, a low draw is possible.

An example with the same action as before:

flop is 234
hero's hand: 2345

A low is already possible (with the nut low being the wheel using an A and a 5) and a straight is already possible, too (wheel is also a straight for high, while the nut straight being 6-high, using a 5 and a 6). however, hero has neither, and instead only draws for both using his "live" card, the 5.

Usually, when drawing to something which is already possible, the draw isn't very good. hero should probably still bet the flop, and if raised, call and fold the turn unimproved.

Hero may also improve on his flopped "three" pair, which gives him a six outer full house draw.

Note that this board is actually rather dry. the flop is rainbow and very light (=with low ranks) so the whole spectrum of middling and/or high cards, suited or otherwise, totally missed this flop.

Also, as was just mentioned before, hero's draw isn't very good. if someone has flopped a straight, hero is basically drawing to chop (with the outside chance of backdooring three quarters). a straight simply crushes a non straight hand (with the exception of 56 vs A6). range crushing two card combos are a dry board phenomenon.

The connection between typical playing ranges and board textures - high boards are considered dry while low boards are considered wet. there is one more reason why low boards are generally wet boards.

People tend to play hands dominated by low cards. indeed, Broadway cards aren't bad, but very many players know that good hands develop from bottom up, enabling the player with the low hand to bet strongly, enjoying a freeroll and the potential to promote a half pot winner into a scooper.

If players do tend to play more low hands than any other type hands, then on low boards, more active players tend to have good flop fits. more good flop fits don't leave a single hand with a huge advantage. and no large edges indicate that the board is probably wet.

As was mentioned before, the first board is very wet.
that was the flop: K54

First there is the 2-flush. that's much more wet than monotone or rainbow.
next there is the low draw. dominating high hands will at least lose some of their equity to the low draws.

Remember: even the best high hands go down in value on low boards. and when the 3rd low card comes, the high hands go way down in value. only the very best of high hands remain playable.

Morover, the 4 and the 5 create all sorts of low straight/wheel draws. these are some very common draws, also because of players' tendency to play low cards.

All those draws will often create a "fair" distribution of equity among the players who continue past the flop.

Can the flop be any more wet? it's hard, but probably yes. make the K a 9 and now the board is probably the wettest, here's why:

1) A 9 high board allows more overcard outs. for example: two pair, nines up, lose much more often than kings up. the non dominating high hand effect makes this board even more wet.

2) KK are more often seen among players who voluntarily play their hands. 99 are notorious for being: "as bad as it gets", even though with logical thinking you'll be able to tell why playable O8 hands are better off having 99 in them than 88, 77 or 66.

At any rate, a dominating high hand will more often be present on a K54 board than on a 954 board, and dominating equals dry.

Users: thanks for your time; Mods: thanks for your space; Buzz (special mod): thanks for the help with this post and thanks in general...

Long live O8, I guess...?

Nice post.

Epic.

Thanks.

Buzz

Thanks for this - some really good stuff

Some nit-picking

"high boards are considered dry while low boards are considered wet. there is one more reason why low boards are generally dry boards."

Clearly just a typo.....

"There are also hands/draws that are impossible after the flop:

High Hands: on a flop of three different ranks, quads/full house is not possible.
A less obvious example: on a monotone board, unlike in holdem, a flush draw is not possible."

I guess this does make sense, I just read it wrongly first time. Obviously a full house (but not quads) is possible by the river on a flop of three different ranks.

I'm going to take some time to look properly at the post now. The material on the different types of board textures looks really interesting and worth careful study/discussion.

SOB


Some words: very very good post! I fear that the bad players will learn something from your post because you reveal some of the things that lie behind their mistakes. But hopefully they dont even care about reading.

I had to read this twice also but he is correct! A flush draw is not possible as on a monotone flop there is already a flush or not.

Good post!

oops!
good eyes, thanks!
I wonder if Buzz can take care of that...

Yes it was the first part of the quote that confused me rather than this bit, which I got. I have no idea why I included it. Lazy I guess...

So, low boards are wet, and high boards are dry. This makes sense where most players are playing low hands.

We do get situations where there are many players limping along with trash hands. I wonder, are there then situations where a high hand can also be wet? I don't know, Kd Qd Jc Tc or something. There are plenty of draws if the pot is multiway and no guarantee it hasn't hit one or more players.

This is a bit vague, but given that low boards are wet, should we generally be folding high overpairs when we have no low potential? I assume we do. So in the BTN, SB, BB scenario given in the post we open with KKQJ and the board comes 2s 3s 4c 9h. We check/fold? This assumes I guess that SB and BB will only play if they have low hands. If we are BB in this scenario shouldn't we be calling quite a wide range though?

cbetting. It seems from this analysis that if we missed we should cbet the flop 3 way when the board comes high. My temptation is to cbet quite liberally 2 and 3 way. Perhaps this is a mistake on wet low boards.

How many handed does it need to get (obviously this is very general) before its no-longer worth barrelling on a dry board? Say K99 and we have missed.

Do you mean that a high board can be wet?
If so, the answer is yes. the terms are relative. high board only tend to be dry. for example, the wettest of high board will obviously be more wet than the dryest of low boards.

one more reason: paired boards are generally very dry boards, and paired boards also tend to be high boards.

I agree.

either with or without specific reads on the blinds, it's a very bad board for KKQJ, and its pot equity tends to be poor. you can use PPT and see for yourself.

positional advantage and skill advantage may allow you to profitably bet flops liberally 3-handed. HU even more so - you can't go wrong c-betting extremely frequently.

4-handed is a stretch, more than that, you just waste money...

Good stuff str8, thanks for writing that. It would be interesting to know the breakdown in percentages that each of the mentioned board textures will flop. Any ideas on how to determine that?

I disagree
combinatorics

I believe that Buzz enumerated the different flop textures in a series of 2+2 Magazine articles two or three years ago. They are off the site but may be accessible on the wayback machine.

I find it annoying that we can't find old articles from the 2+2 magazine. I can't work out why thy aren't all easily available.

Yes I did mean that - thanks for the response, I was thinking along the same lines.

Lets say we are going to cbet liberally whatever the board. How do we take advantage of our knowledge of the texture as being wet or dry?

I know quite a few players advocate donking on flops and turns. It goes somewhat against the grain for me as I'm used to checking to the preflop raiser.

Lets say we are the SB in the 66J example above. Why not bet out on the flop? The board is dry, and often we can take it down without much of a fight. If we are worried about balance, we can also donk with our full houses and quads.