Strategy with Kristy: Reid Young Analyzes Cash Game Poker Hands
Reid Young makes his second appearance on the Strategy with Kristy podcast. Last time, the poker author and no-limit hold'em cash-game crusher discussed showdown value.
This week, Young picks three interesting cash-game hands that have specific teaching points. Here is a snippet from the interview.
The first hand I have to talk about is a pretty old hand, but it's a situation that comes up pretty often. It's a post-flop squeeze spot. The criteria for this is that you want someone who is continuation-betting a lot, someone who is either floating that continuation bet or just calling with a wide range of hands, and then you're to act after that. That's a good time to put in a raise with a pretty wide range of hands, and you can take down a decent-size pot right off the bat.
So in this hand, the under-the-gun player, who's very loose and aggressive, raises. The cutoff calls, and I call on the button with ace-queen. It's notable for this hand that I have the ace of hearts. The flop comes 8?9?4?. It's pretty sweet that I have the A? because I can go ahead and put in a raise and not get three-bet by a nut-flush draw, which, these days, is really the bulk of peoples' three-betting range on the flop if it's not air.
This is a tough board to to three-bet with air though because they assume I just have a draw or a set and get shoved on. Or, even if I raise with a hand like jack-ten, I might just shove on them anyway if they three-bet. So, not that many people three-bet hands like pocket jacks nowadays, so their value range is very, very thin. That makes ace-queen a great hand against their calling range. Also, if a heart comes on the turn, I can continue barreling if I choose. The under-the-gun raiser is really likely to continuation bet a ton of missed overcards like king-queen or something like that so the cutoff calling doesn't necessarily represent that much strength because he could have a hand like queen-jack of diamonds, jack-ten or a weaker pair like pocket sevens. The important thing for this play is that both the under-the-gun player and the cutoff have a ton of hands that they will automatically fold to a raise.
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