Paying off nits

Single Table Tournaments / Marcus Bateman / 11 November 2010 / Leave a Comment

Although they have a mind numbingly narrow value range when they bet here, they are still nits, and nits very rarely bluff much.

Had an odd hand last night I thought was worth writing about as it raises some interesting Hold'em concepts and is generally a weird spot that required some thought. I was blind on blind versus a very tight player at the tail end of a pub sit and go that I play whenever I'm back in the town I grew up in. The general standard is very bad, but it provides a good opportunity to catch up with people and play a bit of low stakes poker.

Folded round to us in the blinds and I raise ace queen off suit from the small blind and he defends. Stacks are about thirty big blinds effective. The flop comes out 8c9h5s. I check and he checks behind. The turn is the 4h. I bet half the pot and he calls. The river is the 6c. I check and he bets pot.

This is a reasonably interesting spot against a very tight player, as there are very few sevens in their range after my turn bet, and the chance of them having flopped a straight the way the hand played out is quite low, due to the fact that with a flush draw on the board, they nearly always would have raised at some point before the river. The call also leaves me with a perfectly playable stack, so I have some room to make a hero call if the situation seems a good spot to make one.

So what left do they bet for value? Being a nit, usually not that much on a four straight board. Very few two pair/top pair/over pair type hand ever gets bet on the river here by a very tight player who sees ghosts around every corner, which leaves only a very thin group of sets left as value range. Any flopped set probably raises at some point before the river for the same reason as they raise the flopped straight, most under pairs except possibly sevens or fours folds the turn, and over pairs check the river, which leaves a very narrow range of possible hands that they can hold when they bet for value on the river - either pocket fours or pocket sevens (and even the set of fours often gets checked behind here by this player type).

Although they have a mind numbingly narrow value range when they bet here, they are still nits, and nits very rarely bluff much. So we have choice between two relatively unlikely possibilities - one of which we are probably ahead of (any pair gets checked behind for its show down value, so their bluffing range is composed mostly of hands we are ahead of - they also have a lot of missed flush draw type hands that we could well beat). I thought for a good while about this hand and ended up calling, not being particularly surprised when he flipped a set of fours, adding a 'do you have a seven?' comment after I called just to confirm his hyper nittiness.

I'm not sure the call is that bad in the long run (after all, even the biggest nits do bluff when certain opportunities arise - and this is certainly a spot even the tightest player will often take a stab at with air), and possibly with some extra information such as a good physical or timing tell my life could have been made much easier, but think the hand raises some interesting Hold'em concepts regardless of its exact result, and was a classic hand where his range of hands could be narrowed down to literally just a couple of possibilities with some thought.

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