Made Hand Mistakes in No Limit Hold Em: Straights
Related article: Made hand mistakes in NL - flushes
The most obvious leak for your average NL player is paying off the best hand with a trap second best. However this series of articles discusses a more subtle, yet equally damaging, leak that occurs when YOU have the best hand and don’t maximize your win. Here we’ll take a look at common mistakes made with straights in NL. This article covers straights on the flop and turn - since strategy for the river differs significantly, we’ll address that in a later article.
Two core concepts underlie play with made straights: first, straights are very vulnerable hands - when there are still cards to come and you’ve made a straight, there aren’t many ’safe’ cards in the deck. Second, straights can be very well disguised hands; whereas the flush possibility is usually apparent to even your dimmest opponent, some straights can be very difficult for your opponents to discern. Let’s explore some scenarios with straights and recommendations for play. All of the discussion below assumes that you’re making straights using both of your hole cards and that you’re drawing to the nuts on at least one end. While there are plenty of unique situations where it’s ok to draw to a non-nut straight or a straight that only uses one of your hole cards, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to newer players, especially not in a full ring.
1) Flopped straights: I suggest betting out these hands strong simply because no one will expect you to. This advice is especially relevant if there is a flush draw on the board or if you made a middle straight - say 89 in pocket and flop comes 7 10 J. Straights are weak in general, but this type of straight presents two problems. First, any over card basically handcuffs you against a field of 3 or more because it makes a very likely higher straight [likely because the straight would require popular hole cards like KQ, AQ, etc]. Second, you hole cards make the weak end of the straight, which means your hand can only get worse. For example, if you make a straight with
Hand:
Board:
a turn of an A, J or Q doesn’t threaten your hand the way a similar turn would threaten our 89 straight. In fact, we’d love to see the ace in the above scenario because it makes a likely two pair or top pair and gutshot possibility for our opponent who called the flop and we can now bet strong expecting them to call [or on a good day, even raise].
On that note, even if you flop a high straight, I would still recommend betting out - especially if an ace is on the board. If you called a raise preflop and are out of position to the raiser, I think you can justify looking for a checkraise with a scenario like
Hand:
Board:
because the one gap hand makes a wickedly disguised straight and if your opponent holds AK or AQ [or any number of legitimate raising hands], they’re probably going to bet strong to your check. Another option is to weak bet and hope they come back with a strong raise. Weak betting is a topic we’ll cover in another article.
Another scenario where it makes sense to bet is when you make the top end of a middle or high straight with your hole cards against a large field, say
Hand:
Board:
There’s a reasonable chance [especially in an unraised pot] that someone has flopped the low end and will pay you off; more likely, someone has a draw to the high end with a pair and will call large bets drawing close to dead - but they would be happy to take free cards if you check.
Again, none of this is to say that you should NEVER slowplay a flopped straight - but three key concepts have emerged at this point: 1) it can be very dangerous to not protect a straight with cards to come 2) you might not be maximizing your profit by checking the flop 3) not all straights are created equal - the size of the straight, the placement of your hole cards in the straight and the cards on the board all factor into the value of your hand and how you should bet it.
It may seem odd to devote so much discussion to flopped straights since they happen so infrequently [although if you play multiple tables online you will see them on a regular basis], but the core principles above flow through the rest of our discussion
2) Straights made on the turn:
The core concept here is betting to protect the hand, especially against a large field. Betting the made straight here charges the multiple draws that are likely to be present and also gives second best hands a chance to play back at you. Let’s say you called the flop with an open ended and hit on the turn:
Your Hand Board
Ok, this is obviously a dream scenario for your q10, since you’re about to wax anyone holding a 10. Bet strong, because anyone but a sharp player with a really good read on you is going to pay you off assuming a split. Also, the clubs are a problem [if the board had turned 8s you’d have even more reason to bet] that you can’t ignore especially if the flop was bet and more than a few people stayed.
With any luck you’ll bet, flush and pair draws will call and someone late will wake up with the 2nd best straight and raise to protect it. This is the beauty of your bet when there are draws on the board - more than a few players holding the lone ten will raise you to protect their hand against the draws, and when they do that, go ahead and put in the reraise, because they are pretty much stuck to the hand. If you’re in late position and someone bets strong, go ahead and put them all in. This should drive out any remaining draws and if the original bettor was on two pair or trips [and not the straight as we’re assuming] you’re now charging them a hefty price to draw. If they call and make, at least you made them put their money in with the worst of it. If you’re in late position and everyone checks to you, bet the pot or something close. With any luck it will look like you’re trying to steal the pot and a 10 will be stupidly lying in wait for a checkraise [one can dream]. Even if no one has a 10, there are enough draws on this board that you have to bet to maximize your profit. Charge the draws now, don’t wait until the river - no one’s going to pay you off with a busted flush draw.
Now if the turn came K instead of 8, we’d have a different scenario. We don’t have the same shot at trapping someone with a lock second best since it now takes two cards to make a straight instead of one. I still recommend leading with this hand since there are plenty of cards you don’t want to see on the river [any club, any card that pairs the board, any Q or 10 for a total of 25 cards, a number you can obviously reduce based on what you assume your opponent holds, but still nearly half the deck in any case], and the board gives your opponents more than ample motivation to call if you bet, but to check if you don’t. For example, someone holding QJ here for a pair and a gutshot draw might be silly enough to call a bet, but if you check to them they will usually take the free card happily. You probably want to be a little less blunt with your betting than in the above scenario. Bet enough that your opponents don’t get proper odds to call, but there’s no need to vastly overbet the pot in this situation - as long as they aren’t getting the right odds, you want them to call.
We’re describing an open-ended draw making on the turn here, but the core principles are the same for any straight - if the board shows you draws along with some big cards, bet to protect and bet reasonably. If you making your straight means that someone else may have had the misfortune of making a trap second best hand, bet large and shoot for their stack. The key differences between play on the flop and play on the turn are that 1) the turn almost inevitably opens up a new draw possibility and therefore gives you more to guard against and 2) there’s probably more money in the pot on the turn then there was on the flop, and you need to adjust your bet size accordingly.
This article only touches upon a fraction of the possible scenarios involving made straights [and we’ll cover rivered straights in a later article], but in summary: don’t make a habit of slowplaying straights. Instead, make a habit of betting your hand based on a combination of factors - the strength of the straight, the potential strength of your opponent’s hands, and the perception your opponents have of your hand.
