Poker Thoughts: Playing Top Pair in NL Holdem

Poker Thoughts: Playing Top Pair in
No-Limit Holdem
by Martell

I accidentally saw some poker on TV the other day. Not only do I watch very little TV, but I definitely don't watch poker. It's not that I dislike poker being on TV—on the contrary, I'm glad to see the game getting a bunch of national coverage (and advertising dollars). It's just that televised poker is nothing like the actual game. On TV, poker is a series of big hands and even bigger bluffs, one after another; in the real world, though, the game consists of a series of decisions made with low- to medium-strength hands. The thought process behind those difficult decisions is what interests me, and you just don't get much of that on TV.

One such medium-strength hand is top pair. Top pair can be one of the most difficult hands to play in no-limit because, while it's never the nuts, it is often the best hand. The big challenge, then, comes in trying to walk the fine line between protecting your hand and staying out of trouble. Here are six things to think about when you have top pair:

1. Do you have a good or bad kicker?

For many players, top pair is the worst hand that they'll get aggressive with. If you see them going after a pot, it is also the most likely hand for them to have. Should you decide to take a stand against one of these opponents, your kicker will be the difference. In order to stay out of trouble, I generally recommend calling only if you have one of the top two kickers. The times where I've broken this rule have ended up costing me a lot of money.

Plus, in the instances where you're up against two pair, you at least have a few outs to draw to. It may be a rare instance where you hit that three-outer, but it's a lot better than drawing dead.

2. How scary is the board?

Flopping top pair with AQ and a board of Qh 9s 3d is a lot different than doing so with a board of Qh Jd Th. In the latter situation, you're caught between a rock and a hard place. If you bet a small amount to protect yourself from the straight, the straight draws and flush draws can afford to hand around. But if you bet a large amount to get the draws out, you'll only get called by hands that have you dominated. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

In those cases where there's a straight or a flush on the board, it's generally better to play extremely cautiously, dumping the hand if there is any sort of resistance. Yes, you will sometimes be laying down the best hand, but laying down the best hand occasionally is part of winning poker.

3. What is your position?

If you're first to act, you're in even deeper trouble, as any sort of cautious play can be misread by your opponent as saying, "I have nothing." You are likely to either be bet off the hand or stuck in a situation where you're calling larger and larger bets. If you want to try and win the hand, you're going to have to take the lead and be the aggressor. Of course, then you set yourself up to be snapped off by a bigger hand, who can sit back and call until you stop betting.

If you're last to act, though, the situation is reversed—you can be the one sitting back, making your decisions based on the information your opponent gives you. If he shows weakness, you can take the lead in the betting, you can take a free card if you think it's in your best interest, and if he puts a big bet in the pot, you can always fold. No-limit poker is a highly positional game; your position can even be more important than your cards. Keep this in mind when evaluating the true strength of your hand.

4. Do you also have a flush draw or not?

This is an interesting situation: if you're heads up and you flop top pair and a flush draw (that is, a flush draw where both your cards are suited, not one where you're using only one of your cards), then it is impossible for you to be drawing dead. In fact, the worst off you can be—even if you have a horrible kicker—is to have 9 outs. A 9-out hand on the flop that sees both the turn and the river will improve just over 1/3 of the time, so if you had to go all-in here, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

How can this be true? Let's say you have Qh 3h (you came in for free in the big blind, of course) and the flop is Qc 6h 2h. Against AQ, you have either 11 or 12 outs (depending on whether or not the Ace is a heart); against Queens and Sixes, you have 9 outs; against Queens and Twos, you have 12 outs; and against Sixes and Twos, you have a whopping 14 outs—a situation where you're actually the favorite with two cards to come. And even against a set of Queens, you still have your 9 heart outs.

What if you're up against a hand like Ah Kh? That is a big draw your opponent has, one with 13 outs (remember, you have two of the hearts in your hand), but you're still the favorite.

I used to play a fairly big no-limit cash game, and one of the guys I played against would routinely go all-in on the flop with any pair and a flush draw, and the numbers still work out the same. If he got a caller, he'd say, "I've got outs. I don't know what they are, but I've got outs." This guy had plenty of holes in his game, but in my opinion, this wasn't one of them. Worst case scenario, he was a 2:1 underdog, and often he was around 1:1 or better. I'm not saying this is necessarily the best way to play this hand, but it is a play to keep in mind if you feel you need to take a stand.

5. Bet with a purpose in mind

If you choose to make a bet—and, really, this applies to every poker situation—have a purpose for it. If you have top pair, here are the two main things you might want to achieve with a bet:

To win the hand right here, since top pair is a very vulnerable hand.
To find out where you're at early and cheaply, so you don't lose your whole stack.

These are fairly opposite goals, and it's sometimes impossible to achieve both. If you have to choose just one of these goals, choose the second one. That way, if you made a mistake, it's a much cheaper mistake.

But if you can find a middle ground that achieves both, that's the perfect place to be. Usually that involves making a bet that is around the size of the pot or slightly larger, and your opponent needs to have a middle-sized stack. Too small of a stack and he's likely to go all-in, and you'll be forced to call (which isn't always bad, but it does give him the maximum opportunity to draw out on you if he's behind); too large of a stack and he has the implied odds to make the call with any kind of draw.

But a medium-sized stack will usually only play back at you—raise or call—with some sort of decent hand. Unless you've got a great kicker, you can just shut down.

6. Play conservatively on the river

This applies in all positions, but is especially true if you're last to act. As a general rule, you should never bet a potentially winning hand if you can't handle a check-raise, and top pair can't handle a check-raise. Because of this, you should almost always check this hand on the river, especially if you've done some betting on previous streets. Anyone who called a bet earlier in the hand either 1) had a draw to beat top pair or 2) already has a hand better than that. Which of these hands they had, you don't know, and even the most innocuous river card could have made somebody a second pair. So if you bet and your opponent check-raises you, you pretty much have no other choice but to lay the hand down. Once the table sees you do this, you can bet that you're going to see some more check-raises.

On the other hand, if you check top pair in last position, it sends a clear message to your opponents: if you have a hand, you better bet it, because you're not going to get to check-raise me. This ends up giving you back the power of late position, and you can now pick off their value bets and bluffs with your medium and strong hands.

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Those are my tips. Hopefully they help. For the most part, they are designed to keep you from getting trapped with a hand like top pair. While you may have the best hand in that situation 80% of the time, it's that other 20% that is going to knock you out of the game. In the long run, that's just not worth the risk.

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.