There are a couple of common themes that one continuously sees in the hand histories in LLSNL. While the most common is a lack of reads, I’m bored of that subject at the moment. So I want to look at another area: Relative Hand Strength (RHS for short). This isn’t an in depth discussion on the subject. Covering it in detail would require writing a novella. Instead, I’ve headlined some ideas that should provoke some people to do further research on their own. The discussion below is going to assume that you understand things like ranges, equity, etc.

The place to start is to define it. For me, it means how your hand compares in value compared to your villain’s range based on the information you have available. It varies also by the action you plan to take. It is measured by the equity you have in the pot.

The first mistake I see is that people confuse RHS with Absolute Hand Strength (AHS). Everyone reading this is aware that AA is the best hand pre-flop and a royal flush is the best hand post flop. A 7 high non-straight hand is the worst hand at the river. It is in between that causes problems. To simplify things, I’ve always liked Harrington groupings of hands.

1. The nuts
2. The near nuts
3. A good hand
4. A hand of some value
5. Bluff catcher
6. Trash

Playing the nuts and trash are easy. Bet the most that can be called with the nuts and fold (or bluff) with trash. The near nuts is also relatively easy to play. If you aren’t folding to a bet or raise, treat it like the nuts. A good hand means that you’ll want to bet, but will b/f if raised under many circumstances. A hand that has some value you want to check down. A bluff catcher is one you’ll call if the bet smells bad.

A problem is that a single hand can be placed in several categories depending on the circumstances. The first is the board.

Let’s look at one type of hand most people have trouble putting into a grouping, the set. Most people will look at a set as a pretty strong hand on an absolute basis. Yet on the river, extremely few boards will be such that top set is the nuts. The number is so small that you can actually write out every board by hand of the thousands of boards possible. Almost any board can have a straight. Any 3 card flush board can have the flush. A paired board can have quads.

Therefore, rarely is a set going to be the nuts. If the board doesn’t have a potential flush on it, a set will be a good hand. If it does have the potential flush, it drops to a hand of some value. On a flush board with multiple people in the hand, bottom set is more like a bluff catcher. Finally, a set is trash if the board is monotone on the river.

Clearly if a set can be trash by the river, TP isn’t going to fair any better. If you get nothing else out of this COTM, live these two statements: TP is never more than a good hand on the flop. The average winning hand in NLHE at showdown is 2 pair.

The second factor is the action you are facing. The more villains in the hand, the stronger your hand needs to be to win. In HU action, having the second or third nut flush is still pretty good on the flop or turn. With 3 people betting, it rapidly becomes a bluff catcher.

The third factor is that AHS does not order what will be the order of best hands against a single holding. KK is the second strongest starting hand. When it is against AA, you’re better off with 65o. Your equity is actually higher. Let alone you’re more likely to get paid off with 65o than KK.

The next element of relative strength is the difference between good equity and bad equity. All equity is not equal. Janda writes about this in his book, which I assume Miller’s NLHE version also does. Let’s take two hands: KT vs. 87. There’s a raise in front of you and you call with both hands in separate hands. The flop is K65r. For argument’s sake, let’s say the villain’s range is such that you have the same equity in the hand whether you have KT or 87. Janda’s argument is that the 87 equity is superior for a couple of reasons. The most important is that if you hit your draw, the increase in equity is far higher than what KT gets. With KT, you still face being beat vs. having a hand that crushes the villain’s entire range. The second factor is that you don’t place yourself in a RIO situation. If you miss with the SD, you can easily fold as your equity drops whereas you’re stuck with the same questions as you had before on the flop with KT.

After that, there is a reaction range to a bet, especially on the river. Of the few people that actually are thinking about ranges, they often make mistakes on how to apply their knowledge. Let’s say that you put a villain on a range and think, “I’ve got 80% equity against his range. I’ll bet.” The problem is that the villain is likely to fold most of the hands that you beat. You’ve risked money with no possible return. If he has a hidden monster, he’ll happily call or raise you, costing you money. The key is to think about his calling range and your equity against that. River bets when you are ahead are even money bets. You have to win over 50% of the time against the villain’s calling and raising range for them to be profitable.

In reality, I agree with David Sklansky’s old rule of thumb you should be about 55% against the villain’s calling range. The main reason is that most people are more optimistic about the ranges than is true. If you believe you have a bigger edge against your villains than DS did in the 1970s against his, OK. But understand people in that era thought JTs was the nuts pf because it could make a straight both ways.

Last but by no means least is position. Your hand strength is much better in position than out of position. You get better value from your implied odds hands and even your pf monsters allow you save bets when behind when in position.

Outside of the river, there are some considerations. Of importance is to realize is that the stack off with second pair noob has been hunted to near extinction. You’re going to get “coolered” a lot if you think you can bet/bet/bet TPNK and win.

You want to know two things. First, what is his grouping for hands he will bet/raise both pf and post flop. Some players need the nuts or near nuts to bet or raise. Others look at any hand of value (or draw) as worthy of a raise. The second is what will he call? Again, some may need the near nuts or a strong draw, while others will call with nearly anything. In LLSNL, we can exploit both of these tendencies, but only if we know where the line is first.

This COTM is really just a launching pad to further thought and discussion. The basic ideas should lead you into considering such things like the virtues of raising, folding your SB, and thin value betting. I’ll leave you with this. If you make a thread on whether to make a thin value bet, the answer is no.

Good read.
Thanks Venice.

Good solid stuff and to the point, nice work Venice.

I would like to add a couple of points to this debate:

Your own image is also something important to consider in this topic and your percived range in other eyes. Your opponents ranges (raise ranges,3 bet ranges, bet ranges, call ranges, all of them) change in relation to your actual image, weak tight, tight, nit, LAG and all other kinds of image we could have. Being self aware of your own image and how your villains percieve you is huge when it comes to judge relative hand strength and gauge precise hand ranges: both preflop and postflop.



Context of a bet/raise or call is another one and goes hand in hand with image sometimes. Relative value of hands can also be illustrated with some preflop examples. If an old nit who havent played a hand in 3 hours suddenly 3 bets your opening raise from UTG and you hold QQ its pretty much worthless. In a bubble queens is a premium hand, but not in this context against this particular villain.

Nice post, and one that leaves a lot to the discussion, rather than presenting the whole thing tied up in a bow.

To get that discussion started, I'll throw out a question.

Given that you were the PF raiser in HJ and got called by a calling station button and a somewhat aware, but rather passive limp/caller in EP with 100 BBs effective, checked back the flop, and did a half-pot delayed c-bet/value bet OTT and got called by both, and then checked to OTR, what hands do you (all of you, not just OP) put into Harrington's 6 categories on a board of: AT6Q7?

Very true, though against our worst V's the image is more likely "winning" or "losing." If your image is "winning" their range gets tighter.

I'm assuming you're only referring to hands which we'd play this way, because not betting hands like AK OTF against the Vs described would be criminal.

I think that we can also break-down Harrington's categories into our decisions OTR here:

1: B/3B obviously.

2: B/C

3: B/F

4: This the only real 'it depends' category, where C/F, C/C and B/F can be done depending on how stationy Vs are, and how often Vs will bluff when checked to. In the hand in question I'd probably lean towards B/F.

5: C/C or C/F depending on Vs bluffing tendencies. In the hand in question it's obviously C/F

6: B/F or C/F, for the hand in question its a C/F unless we pick-up a tell on BU.


Onto our ranges (which excludes hands we wouldn't end up in this spot with):

1. KJ obviously.

2. 89s, maybe AA if we think either V will slow-play a set or 2P to the river AND raise with it (a lot of Vs just call here with sets, and almost all just call with 2P).

3. QQ and maybe AA if we're somehow slow-playing, QT

4. KK, KQ, QJ, maybe A-rag suited

5: Tx, JJ, 56dd, 78dd, 79dd (Although I doubt we play Tx or JJ this way)

6: J9dd, K9dd

Clearly KJ is the nuts and 98 the near nuts. Beyond that, I think sets are good hands on this board as played and two pair hands are ones with some value. TP is really a bluff catcher. I feel KK and less than TP are really trash in this situation because so many players will call with Ax hands and won't fold them. LLSNL players won't bet on the river with worse than TP.

There's a lot of implications concerning raising and betting in this situation, but I'll leave that open for discussion right now.

Thanks for a pretty good read.

Relative hand strength considerations require a fairly broad set of details to consider.

Two I'd like to comment on are:

1) Opponent skill level

2) Opponent's big bet tendencies

Opponent Skill

Say you are UTG and open to 5bb with AA. You are called by MP and BU. MP is your standard local reg who plays at least 1 session a week, and who seems to know his way around the table. BU is a younger guy who seems to be very new at the game, and is possibly scared $$$. We are 100bb effective, with both players.

Flop comes Js4s4c. You Cbet 1/2 pot, MP (Reg) calls in stride and BU (noob) double checks his cards a few times and looks like he truly doesn't know what to do, but calls eventually, and you notice he's shaking like a leaf. What can we say about this?

This is a spot where your AA is still the effective nuts against MP. Sure, its possible he has 4x here, but we should be discounting this to [A4s, 54s]. Sure, its possible he has JJ here too, but we can discount his JJ holding here because we're going to give him credit for being capable of 3b pre. Thus, we can construct a fairly decent range (even a relatively tight "continuing" range) for MP where our hand still is quite strong.

But against BU, you should be proceeding very cautiously. Again, its certainly possible for him to have something like [QQ, AJ], but his behavior just screams, "I have a monster and don't know what to do with it". He has either JJ, or more likely A4, or 44.

This is a case where we still have a relatively strong hand against MP, but most likely, complete trash against BU.

Opponent big bet tendencies

This is a favorite topic of mine.

Here's one scenario: You get to the river with what you think is the effective nuts, let's say its 99 set on a 9325Kr board. You were the PFR'r and are seeing the river HU vs. the older guy who limp/called from UTG+1.

Older Guy (OG) seems to have a fair amount of experience playing live poker. He is not a rock or a nit, as far as you can tell. But, you have a fairly good read that he's tight and for the most part, passive.

OG checks to you, and you put out a 2/3rds pot sized value bet, pretty sure he's going to snap call you with something like [AK, 33, 22, A9, K9].

But instead, OG moves AI. Its a big bet. But, you snap call, expecting that he never has [64, A4 or, lulz, KK] but yet, amazingly, you are shown KK.

This is a spot where our opponent waited until the very last moment to put in a huge bet. He wanted to make damn sure that an A wasn't going to drop before he got his money in, so he never even thought about raising you OTF or OTT. Also, he's never bluffing here.

The key piece of info here was OG's bet sizing. He thinks he has the stone cold nuts (yes, he never even saw that there were straights possible OTT).

The big bet means you're beat. Your hand just went from 2nd effective nuts to soiled cocktail napkins in the blink of an eye. Yup, he didn't raise pre, nor showed any aggression the whole way.

Good solid poast Lapi, nice reflections and reminders to all of us.

Come now, there must be more for y'all to say on this subject. Cat got your keyboard?

Good post Venice, but I've got a few qualms with Janda's example. K10 is going to flop a pair, and even top pair, much more often than 78o will flop a oesd (that's also ignoring k10's ability to flop an oesd, and the times when 78o doesn't make a straight to the nuts). Also there's the problem that he says that if their equity is equal, then the 78 is a stronger hand. That's obviously correctly as it's easier to get value with the absolute nuts than it is with a single pair or even 2 pair/trips, but what hand range would we need to be against to actually have the same equity?

if we look at 78 vs a 10% opening range what hand range would the k/10 need to be up against to have the same equity?


78o vs 10% opening range:

Equity Win Tie
MP2 39.20% 39.11% 0.09% 87o
MP3 60.80% 60.71% 0.09% 77+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, AJo+, KQo


This is what K10o needs to be up against on the same board to have the same amount of equity:


Equity Win Tie
MP2 36.12% 35.89% 0.23% KTo
MP3 63.88% 63.65% 0.23% QQ+, AKs, AKo


That's a 2.5% opening range, in order to have the same equity as when 78o flops an oesd vs a 10% opening range


If we widen the 78o's villain range to a 20% opening range it's this:

MP2 41.55% 41.36% 0.19% 87o
MP3 58.45% 58.26% 0.19% 66+, A4s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo


So the k10o would need to be against an opening range of this to be at the same equity:

Equity Win Tie
MP2 43.78% 43.59% 0.19% KTo
MP3 56.22% 56.02% 0.19% QQ+, AQs+, AKo


or a 2.87% opening range. So really if we have k10o vs a person who is opening only 2-3% of hands it's an obvious fold preflop. If we look at how k10o is doing against the more realistic 10% and 20% opening range that the 78o was playing against, we get these equities:

Equity Win Tie
MP2 70.03% 69.18% 0.85% KTo
MP3 29.97% 29.11% 0.85% 77+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, AJo+, KQo


(note: the 78o had 40% equity whereas k10 has 70% vs this range) and vs the second example of 78o vs a 20% opening range:

Equity Win Tie
MP2 75.05% 73.31% 1.74% KTo
MP3 24.95% 23.21% 1.74% 66+, A4s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo


(note: the 78o had 41% equity vs k10's 75%)



So while what he says is correct, that it's always great to be drawing to the nuts instead of a one pair hand, in practice the k10 has a lot more value than the 78o, and I think his example suggests the opposite. K10 will make a value hand (although rarely the nuts) more often than the 78, and when it does make a value hand it will have a higher equity.

Great analysis BGP. I want to be sure I understand correctly. Are the equity/win/tie number you gave preflop numbers, or for "when you flop an oesd?"

In no limit poker, chasing after your (perceived?) 5 card value with a massively RIO hand like KTo is going to break you mentally if you don't get your spew under control.

In practice, when you flop TPMK on a K76 board, you're going to be value owned by the host of hands that have your KT value crushed. There just aren't going to be that many more worse K'ngs in V's range to make up for the times you value own yourself against KJ, and slow played KQ and AK (and never mind how you will fare against 76, 98, etc.). (Note that specifically 98 has you completely crushed if your T falls, and you are guaranteed to stack off with top2p.)

If you can comfortably toss KTo on a K76 board, then you'll probably do fine playing this type of RIO hand for some amount of value.

Otherwise, you're way better off dropping it preflop, and playing your 87o instead (which your probably tossing on a K76r board too ).

Ooops sorry, all of those numbers are on the k/5/6 rainbow flop as per Janda's example.

My point is that Janda's example is basically impossible.

good post venice10

As an additional nitpick on the K65r example, is that even if your equities ARE the same, that having the made hand is often superior to having the draw because your equity increases on 80% of turn cards and you can continue to bet, either forcing your opponent to fold or to put in more money bad.

Whereas having the draw, your equity will only increase on 20% of turn cards (but obviously it will increase to near 100%)

Awesome post and look forward to the continuing discussion. Thank you Venice.


I've heard Venice say this before and I don't fully understand it. Thin value betting is an important skill for beginners at LLSNL. I would think it's reasonable to make a thread on help ranging our Villain to determine whether we have the 50%+ equity to valuebet the river.

I actually disagree that beginning LLSNL players need to thin value bet. You can win good money at LLSNL by just going for fat value. I won't go into much detail, but most people misunderstand thin value betting. For example, it isn't the villain's range you need to know on the river, it is the villain's calling range you need to know. Most HH don't provide enough info for an outsider to even guess at a range.

I read the example much more as a surface level example. However, you got into that spot, with significant money to play for, it's a lot easier to play 78 correctly than KT.

If I understand correctly, I think Venice is referring to spots where you maybe beat 20% of his calling range. That's not thin value. That's a bad bet. If you beat 60% of his calling range, then that would be thin value as your expectation is low but still +EV. Just because you have SOME equity doesn't mean you should be betting it. Venice can correct me if I'm wrong.

That's close. What a lot of people do is they look at the range the villain can call the turn with. Often, this will include things like 2nd pair and flush draws. They think, I'm ahead of that range with my TPNK, I should bet. The reality is that the villain isn't going to call with 2nd pair and and broken flush draws. He is going to call with TP or better.

A thin value bet is one where you have middle set and you c/r the turn. He calls the raise, and you're first to act. He can have top set, but he also can have TPTK, or 2pair and will call a certain amount of the time with that.

The only sets I flop are with aces so your example doesn't really apply.

Using this example, how about the time that we check back the turn, the river bricks, he quickly checks to us, and we now have the option of betting TPNK hoping that he puts us on a busted flush draw and calls with his 2nd pair hand. At this point do you think we get looked up by worse more than 50% of the time? If so, do we use a sizing like 1/3 pot to try and get this crying call?

Depends on the villain, which is the whole point of the derail of thin value betting. My argument is that you can't thin value bet an unknown villain.

You could with arbitrary one size fits all ranges. Granted, they won't always be right but its better than nothing.

Then you are gambling, not thin value betting.

I'd call it educated guessing. Just more guessin than educated than what were used to. It's not completely blind.

Good OP talking about how to evaluate hands on the river.

But one question that's also interesting is, how can we use that grouping to guide us on the flop or turn?

For example, let's say that we have a flop of A74. How are we fitting different "made hands" and "draws" into the categories?

Personally I like to evaluate all my hands--both draws and made hands--by looking at the likelihood of what they will be by the river. For example, if I have AK with no clubs or diamonds, I think of that as, "very slim chance it will be the nuts or near nuts, some chance it will be a good hand, some chance it will be a hand of some value, some chance it will be a bluff catcher, no chance it will be trash". (Of course the actual percentages matter too.)

I think this is part of the point of the example that venice brought up about the KT vs. 87o (although I agree with BGP's analysis that the specific example is impossible). If we have AT on the A74 flop, there is a very small chance that by the river our hand will be better than a hand of some value or a bluff catcher, and those sorts of hands are always tricky to play. But if we have 65 with no clubs, then by the river we will either have the nuts, near nuts, a good hand, or trash, and virtually never will we have something in between. The chance we make a big mistake on the river is not as high as it is with the AT (we're less likely to miss bets we should make or call bets we should fold to). But, 65 is most likely to be trash on the river, while AT is somewhat likely to be a good hand, and almost all of the rest of the time will at least never be trash.

Also, this thought process--at least to me--gives more depth to how to evaluate draws. If I have a hand like 87 on a board of K73, there's an insignificant chance I'll make the nuts and a tiny chance I'll make the near nuts. So if I think I am behind, I'm almost never going to chase a longshot draw when I would only have "a good hand" even if it hits. It's not just about the odds of improving--it's also about how strong a hand I'm improving to.