As a follow-up to my recent article entitled ‘Static and Dynamic Board Textures’, I’ve put together this article and another one breaking down each category of flop. Static flops are a significant contrast from dynamic ones, and require a drastic shift in the way we approach them. Let’s take a look at the most important things to remember about these spots and how they affect our strategic concerns.
Static flops tend be fairly easy to identify – any flop where there are few significantly impactful turn cards is probably a very static one. The most static flop in Hold’em is Ace-Ace-Ace – it’s almost impossible for a turn card to change hand equities on that one. In these circumstances where draws are almost never a concern, some hands will have very high or very low equity versus another range, perhaps as little as 10% or as much as 90% in some cases.
The good thing about static flops is that it tends to be quite easy to identify which player has the range advantage, because it’s almost always the preflop raiser. The simple reason for this is that the preflop raiser will almost always have all of the strongest preflop hands in their range, while the preflop caller usually will not, and since the flop doesn’t do much to bring the equities closer together, we usually end up with a spot that strongly benefits the preflop raiser.
C-bet significantly more often
With the above in mind, our approach on static flops as the preflop raiser needs to involve a lot of c-betting, much more than on dynamic flops. This allows us to do two things – get value from the greater prevalence of strong hands in our range compared to villain’s, and make use of our range advantage to allow ourselves a greater number of bluffing opportunities on this and future streets.
In selecting which hands should go into our c-betting range and which should not, it’s important that we c-bet a very high frequency with any value hand that does not contain blockers to weaker value hands. When we have bottom set, for example, we have a strong hand with a good chance that our opponent has top pair, while the same can’t be said when we have top set and it’s much harder for villain to have a strong value hand.
It’s also crucial to choose bluffing hands that have some chance of improving on later streets – backdoor flush and straight draws, overcards, gutshots, or even overcards to second pair can be perfectly viable c-betting hands since they create additional opportunities for us to pick up more equity and fire more barrels on future cards.
Use progressively larger bets on future streets
Static flops usually result in hand equities becoming more polarized as the hand develops. For example, a board with no flush or straight draws means top set has 100% equity on the turn, while a double-paired static board can mean some underpairs have 0% equity. This reality means we have to adopt certain bet sizing policies later in the hand to make life easier for us.
On the flop, a more traditional small bet sizing makes perfect sense, since we have few draws to protect against. On the turn, however, our value range has usually become even stronger and our bluffing range has gotten weaker (regardless of whether we were the preflop raiser or not), and thus our range is more polarized. This makes a slightly larger sizing, perhaps slightly more than half the pot, a little more appropriate.
On the river, our range gets even more polarized, especially when we’re 3-barrelling. This creates a spot where in order to both maximize the value we get from our value hands and give ourselves the maximum number of bluffing opportunities, it makes sense for us to go for quite a big sizing. In certain spots, an overbet-shove can often be a good option if our betting or raising range is reduced to either the nuts or a pure bluff. If we were to analyze hands from a game theory optimal perspective, we’d find an all-in bet sizing to be optimal in any spot where our range is perfectly polarized.
Float often with backdoor equity hands, slowplay more often
As the preflop caller, we’ll often be in a spot where we feel like it’s very difficult for us to represent a strong hand by raising a c-bet on the flop, since there are so few strong hands to represent. Conversely, we’ll also be in spots where we feel like it’s hard to represent a bluff in the event we do flop a strong hand, because it’s such a poor spot to bluff.
As a result, static flops can often be a spot where we don’t really need to have a flop raising range at all, especially since we have the range disadvantage most of the time. We can adapt our strategy by doing more floating with backdoor-draw hands to take the pot away on future streets, and protect this floating range by also slowplaying more frequently on the occasions where we do flop a strong hand.
This strategy protects us against aggressive villains who might be tempted to three-barrel bluff a little too often, and it also allows us to effectively exploit those villains who might be tempted to check-fold the turn too much after betting the flop. It’s a good balance between protecting ourselves from exploitation on the flop, and allowing ourselves to pick up the maximum number of good spots later in the hand.
Your blockers are often your best bluffs
Lastly, we’ll find that on these types of boards it’s often quite difficult to choose turn and river bluffs effectively, since there are often no obvious drawing hands that make good second barrels, and thus we may end up slowing down too often and leaving ourselves with few good river spots.
The solution to this conundrum is to determine our bluffing ranges according to blockers when the board contains no draws. If we have a card in our hand that blocks the top part of villain’s calling range, that’s a great indicator that a bluff might be a good option, since we’re reducing the frequency that villain can call us.
It’s important to note that sometimes our best blocker hands might be a bottom-pair or weak-pair hand that can’t win at showdown – these hands will often block sets and two-pair combos, and just because we have some kind of a value hand doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bluff with it. Turning made hands into bluffs is a crucial skill to develop as your game progresses.
All told, static flops tend to be somewhat easier to play than dynamic ones since it’s a lot easier to work out where we stand. However, opponents will make so many mistakes on these boards that learning to play them even a little better could have a huge impact on your winrate over time. You may even end up kicking yourself for all those spots you missed previously, but don’t worry – it’s not the mistakes you made in the past that count. It’s the mistakes you won’t make in the future.