Preamble
This post owes a lot to Pokey's
near-legendary hand reading guide. If you haven't read it, do so now.
When reading 2+2 hand strategy posts, one will constantly see boards referred to as "wet" or "dry". These terms are simply shorthand for expressing how well the board helped our villain(s).
What Makes a Board Wet?
As in most of poker, there is only one constant answer: it depends. Two identical flops can be either wet or relatively dry based solely upon the situation itself.
Having entered a pot, we usually have a pretty good idea what kind of flops we would like to see. In the same way we put our opponents on ranges of hands, we must understand that relative wetness depends not as much on the cards we see, but on how well the board may have helped our opponent. When approached like this, we can come up with a series of rather easily digested rules of thumb.
1. Flop is wet if it connects with our opponent's hand range
Do we know that a flop connected? Of course not, or at least, not for certain. That's where our reads and hand range assignments are needed. Opponent-dependent statistics are good, actual notes are even better.
Against a nitty setminer we can safely assume that A-Q-4 flop missed him 90% of the time. At the same time, the nit sees a flop with two high cards and assumes that our hand hit. From our point of view, the flop is dry. From nit's point of view, the flop is somewhat wet.
2. Flop is wet if the number of potential scare cards is high
"Call flop, re-evaluate turn."
The above advice is seen every now and then, usually when we're discussing some of the more interesting hands. With no pocket pair, roughly 70% of the time we miss the flop. Then again, so do our opponents. As we can not know exactly what our opponent has, a good portion of flops is going to look rather unpleasant.
When we call a flop bet, we are really hoping for a safe turn card, after which our opponents' actions should help us to narrow their range. For example:
We are in mid-position, with 55+/AJs and raise first in. A good villain on CO cold calls and the rest of the table folds. Flop comes
T
9
7
which is pretty horrible, or in the common terminology: very wet. We (c)bet and villain promptly raises. Before calling the raise, try to think of all the cards that
could fall on turn and make the board go from bad to worse. Then click on the spoiler.
It really depends on our hand and especially on our read of the villain whether we want to put any more money in the pot.
Now, if the flop had been K
T
9
it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. That's still wet, but at least it doesn't allow a metric buttload of draws and combo-draws. As an added factor, facing flopped two pair would be less of a threat than in the first case.
What about texture and cbets?
Now, that 70% figure for missed flops is only the mathematical figure.
In fact, at µNL, we can assume that against a single opponent, they effectively missed 80% of the time! A preflop coldcall usually implies either a pocket pair, some kind of suited ace, or one of the best suited connectors (87s-JTs). A king- or queen-high board is about perfect for cbetting. Suited aces missed, and almost everyone puts AK/AQ in our likely preflop raising range. Even with real hands such as smallish pocket pairs, most villains are in pure setmining mode playing fit-or-fold.
3. Board Can Only Get Worse
That sounds rather pessimistic, doesn't it?
Think about the horribly wet flop from previous section. We have T
9
7
on board, and have already calculated that as much as 55% of the deck may look bad for us. What about the other 45% then?
Even on a blank turn, say 3
, the board hasn't changed any better. All the draws are still there, any made hand is at least as strong as before, and our hand certainly didn't improve.
In fact, there is virtually NO turn that would make us happy. (With one exception: we hold Ad-Ah, turn is As.)
4. Flop Texture Depends On Villains
It takes a stronger hand to cold call a raise than it takes to overcall one. Unless the first caller is trying to be tricky, he counts on implied odds against the original raiser. The second caller, on the other hand, has the advantage of knowing that two players have already shown interest and can therefore expect some extra action post flop. As such, the implied odds are better and he can expect profit from marginal and speculative hands.
Assuming the opponents are decent, the range for a cold call is usually, in order of potential and opponent's looseness: any pocket pair 22-TT (sometimes JJ), suited connectors 76s-QJs, suited aces which allow combo draws (A2-A5s, ATs-AQs) and some good suited gappers (QTs/J9s/T8s/79s/68s). KQs is a special case - at least at the shallow end of µNL pool different players are going to play that hand in completely different, and for most parts rather unpredictable ways. It's certainly a trouble hand to play with, but it's also one of those rare hands that are troublesome to be against.
For overcalls, when two (or even more) people have already put their money in, the calling range tends to widen to include all suited aces, suited double-gappers (KTs-T7s) and occasionally some unsuited connectors like 76o-T9o. The loosest players include offsuit broadway cards, with a splash of suited kings for good
measure.
As we can see, with two or more decently skilled callers practically any unpaired flop is potentially troublesome. On a low flop, everyone knows that the original raiser's hand is very likely to have improved and villains are eager to float or raise the flop bet with almost any overpair. On any other one, at least one of the callers probably hit.
Since an unpaired hand misses about 70% of the time, the combined mathematical probability of two callers
both missing is 0.7*0.7 =~0.5. In reality it is even less, as due to card elimination the villains are more likely to hold different kinds of pocket cards. There is a reason we pretty much never cbet with air into two villains.
5. Wetness Is Relative
One of the wettest flops I can think of is a two-tone 7-8-9. If it connected with villain's hand at all, the LEAST we are facing is an OESD.
However, a flop like that is not always bad. Someone with nitty setminer stats can have only 5 hands where that connected hard, namely 66-TT. And on such a flop, the setminer will let you know instantly because he can not risk a bad turn card which would kill his action.
Rather counterintuitively, against even a slightly better player a monotone 7-8-9 flop is actually not as wet. Our villain either missed it entirely or flopped awesome, and when we cbet on such a horrible board, we are representing massive strength. In the eyes of the villain the least we can have is a flush draw with overcards.
The board can look different to players in the same hand.
Although flops are generally easy to split into wet and dry ones, the relative texture always depends on the opponent(s) we are facing. The same holds true for our villains, too.
6. Flop Texture Depends On Preflop Action
I'll pick an easy example. You are 130BB deep and out of position against a tight player whose 3betting range is almost exclusively JJ+/AQ+. You find yourself in mid-position with KK, raise and get promptly 3bet by the tight player. You are certain that a solid 4bet will fold out JJ/AQ+ every time, QQ 85% of the time, and KK+ simply never. Therefore 4betting has very little value and would in fact turn your hand into a bluff, folding out everything you beat. You call.
Flop comes A-Q-J rainbow. Every single hand in your opponent's range has you crushed, and the absolute worst hand he can have is TPTK. Good luck getting anyone off that in a 3bet pot.
Against the same opponent, with the same preflop action, a usually disastrous 7-8-9 two-tone flop would have been only somewhat moist.
7. Texture Evaluation Depends On Game Level
In general, the lower the stakes, the worse the players are and thus wider the range unknowns will call with.
For example, on Stars 2NL any flop with an ace on it can be considered wet. Notable portion of the players on the lowest limit can't let go of an ace preflop, so the only question is who has the best two pair by the river. A couple of levels higher naked aces are no longer nearly as much of a threat.
What Constitutes A Dry Flop?
There are exactly four flops where it is impossible for the turn to complete a straight. These are: K-8-3, K-8-2, K-7-2 and Q-7-2. In rainbow, they are bone-dry. In two-tone, they are still somewhat moist.
There are a few other flops which, while not entirely unconnected, are very unlikely to give anyone a good or concealed draw. Such flops are 9-4-2, Q-6-3, T-5-2 and so on. Therefore an obvious corollary follows: If the board has missed majority of speculative calling hands, it is considered dry.
There is one final category of boards which are good to know. Have a look at the list of potential cold- and overcalling hands; remove the aces and leave everything else in. Note how the majority of hands that coincide with wet flops have a biased selection of ranks between eight and jack.
All paired flops are dry in general, but all the flops between 88x and QQx are in fact
very dry, for a very specific reason. When two cards of the same rank are out, it is less likely that any of our opponents holds one. Queen is also possibly the worst card to combine in a draw because any nut draw with a queen in it is blatantly obvious and less likely to get paid. Hence, someone flopping trip queens is not as likely.
Final Words
There is one very special kind of flop which is either extremely dry or extremely wet. Any JTx flop is plain awful. It connects with pretty much every single drawing hand, giving pairs, two pairs, pair+draws and just about everything under the sun. For a 3bet pot, there are very few hands that could have connected either way, so many of the hands are happy to float at least one street.
While it is true that the word "never" should not be used when discussing poker, in µNL this may be the single exception to the rule:
Never, EVER cbet with complete air into a JTx flop out of position.
For just about everything else, use your judgment.
Apply it, guys!
While we usually try to avoid hand histories in the middle of a thread, this one might actually benefit from them. Feel free to provide illustrative, narrated examples along with your comments.
Two Plus Two
Re: Concept of the Week #8: Evaluating Board Texture
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