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The Top Pair Quiz
In the nine years I’ve been playing poker, I have had my fair share of epiphanies – moments of realisation in which I felt I finally understood a key concept. At least a couple of those have involved top pair in No Limit Hold’em.
Playing top pair depends on a great many factors, and adjusting well to those factors can have a significant impact on your results. In this quiz we’ll look at some tricky top pair situations and think them through.
Scenario 1 – The Paired Flop / The Importance of Stakes
1A. You are playing in a full $0.10/$0.20 No Limit Hold’em ring game online, and you are dealt Ac-Js in middle position. Your stack is $20. There are two limpers before the action reaches you, and you make it $1.50. The button, both blinds, and both limpers call, making the pot $9. The flop comes Jh-8s-8c. The small blind checks, the big blind bets $2, and both limpers call, making the pot $15. What should you do?
- Fold
- Call $2
- Raise to $10
- Raise all-in for $18.50
Strictly speaking, it’s not the stakes of the game that matters, but the type of player that populates it. Nonetheless, the type of player you will typically find in an online $0.10/$0.20 game is loose, passive, and very weak.
Against this type of player, top pair top kicker (or ‘top top’, as Jamie Gold likes to call it) is a goldmine. Your opponents will be playing lots of weaker hands, and will throw away their money faster than a drunk businessman in a strip club. Expect to be called by small pairs, gutshot draws, overcards, and more.
Folding is out of the question, and calling is a poor choice because you won’t be extracting value from the weaker hands you expect your opponents to hold (and you’ll be giving them a free card to hit whatever they might be drawing to).
The only question is how much to raise. If you bet $10, it should be on the condition that you will call a reraise, or move all-in when the turn comes, regardless of what it is. My personal preference is to simply move all-in and remove any further decision-making from the equation.
1B. This time, you’re playing $1/$2 with a $200 stack. It’s folded to you preflop, so you make it $6 with your A-J and the button and the big blind call. The flop comes the same Jh-8s-8c, and the big blind bets $15. You raise to $45, and the button pushes all-in for $200. The big blind calls. What should you do?
- Fold
- Call
This situation is vastly different to 1A, despite your hand and the flop being exactly the same. $1/$2 games are a lot tighter than $0.10/$0.20 games, and the typical opponent at $1/$2 online is much more knowledgeable. What’s more, the pot was smaller preflop because not so many people limped in.
There is not a chance that your top pair is good here – you’re up against at least an eight and possibly a made full house. Don’t go broke in a small pot with a small hand. Fold.
Scenario 2 – The Wet Flop
You’re playing a $0.50/$1 game and have $100 in your stack. You raise to $4 in early position holding As-Qh, and the button and small blind call, making the pot $12.
The flop is Qs-Jd-10d, giving you top pair, top kicker. The small blind checks, you bet $10, the button makes it $30, and the small blind reluctantly folds. What should you do?
- Fold
- Call $30
- Raise all-in
You’ll often hear Hold’em and Omaha players talking about the ‘texture of the flop’. In other words – how likely is the flop to have hit your opponent, and it what way? A ‘dry’ flop would be something like Qh-7c-2s, which has no obvious draws and only one high card. If you’d hit top pair on that flop, you’d feel quite secure in your hand and might even consider slowplaying if you thought your opponent had probably missed.
This flop, however, is not dry – it’s very draw heavy. It’s possible that somebody already has two pair, trips, or a straight, or that somebody has a flush draw / straight draw combination, and you’re not happy to be up against any of those hands. On the other hand, if your opponent is aggressive, they could simply be raising with a draw in the hopes that you’ll fold.
All of this rules out calling straight away. Your hand isn’t strong enough to slowplay, and you don’t want to be giving free cards to anyone if you’re ahead. If you’re behind, you don’t want to be putting any more money into the pot because it’s unlikely you’ll catch up. Plus, if you just call, you’re in the same miserable situation all over again on the turn. What are you going to do, check?
So do you raise or fold? Well, that depends what you know about the button. If he is the sort of player to make the straightforward play and raise when he has two pair, trips, or a straight, and flat call when he is drawing, then you should fold. However, if he is the sort of overly tricky player (also common at these limits) to raise with his flush draws but slowplay his made hands, you should absolutely push all-in.
Against an unknown opponent, I would tend to fold in this situation. It seems like a weak thing to do, but when you consider the two likely possibilities, it seems logical:
- You have the best hand, but you’re not a dominant favourite because your opponent has a good draw.
- You have the worst hand, and you have almost no chance to draw out.
Scenario 3 – The Small Flop
You’re playing in a six-handed $1/$2 game. This time you look down at Ah-8h on the button, and call an aggressive player’s middle-position raise to $6. Both blinds fold, so it’s heads up to the flop, which comes 8s-4c-2h, giving you top pair. Your opponent bets $8. What should you do?
- Fold
- Call $8
- Raise to $20
- Raise all-in for $194
Top pair on a low flop like this, against a continuation bet from an aggressive opponent, is probably the best hand, so it would be a mistake to fold. However, it’s much more vulnerable than if you had flopped top pair on a higher flop, for example A-K on a flop of K-8-3. In the A-K hand, there are no overcards that can come on the turn or river that make you feel uncomfortable. On this flop though, a scary card will arrive on the turn nearly half the time, and if your opponent has two overcards like K-Q, there are six cards in the deck that will give him the best hand.
The problem with just calling is that you don’t want to give your opponent a free chance to catch up, and you’ll be in a tough spot on the turn. I like to play in such a way that I have as few difficult decisions as possible, because difficult decisions equal mistakes, and mistakes equal less profit for me. Calling could be the best play if you have an excellent read on your opponent and know he will bluff the turn and the river, but against a typical opponent this is not a hand to slowplay.
Raising all-in isn’t smart in this situation. Your opponent will fold all hands that you have beat, and call with most hands that beat yours. That isn’t a profitable investment.
Small raises are great in situations like this because they allow you to gather reliable information about your opponents’ holdings at a relatively cheap price, while putting the pressure back on them and forcing them to fold hands that might have drawn out on you. Making lots of small raises can also give you the image of a loose-aggressive player when actually you are risking very little. In this case, the raise to $20 or so is probably the best play.
Summary
Top pair can be a tough hand to play when the stacks are relatively deep, and it can be hard to know when to apply pressure to your opponents and when to back off. I hope this quiz has given you some things to think about!
