Understanding Relative Hand Strength

One of the first things you learn when you start playing poker is absolute hand strength through studying a hand rankings chart. You discover that a full house is better then a flush, a flush beats a straight, two pair beats a pair, and the like.

Learning absolute hand strength is easy enough and something which becomes second nature with practice, however many amateur players make the mistake of only playing their cards instead of considering the strength of their opponents range of hands.

I made this novice mistake one of the first sessions I played live in a 1/2NL game. It was checked to the river and the player in early position made a pretty big bet on a coordinated board with no potential flushes. I had J8 and the river card actually gave me the second nuts, with the second best straight. I decided to raise his bet, got shoved and quickly called, only to discover I was up against the nuts.

If I played that hand again, without trying to sound results orientated, I definitely would have only called the river bet instead of committing my entire stack with the second nuts. Having thought about the hand, worse hands such as two pairs would have bet the flop or turn, so even though I had the second best hand, with the line the other player took, the relative strength of my hand vs his range of hands wasn’t that great. At best I was probably chopping the pot.

Like was demonstrated in the above scenario, a lot of the time the strength of your hand doesn’t matter, due to the fact that the actions and reads on your opponents will tell a story, and there is certain range of hands they can realistically have in certain spots.

Relative hand strength is an advanced poker strategy concept which takes into account the strength of your own hand versus that of your opponents range of hands based on how they play and their actions. If you have top pair top kicker, bet the turn on a relatively dry board and your opponent who is a fairly tight player raises you, then you have to consider that your TPTK hand is probably not good because a tight player who opt for pot control with a one pair type hand and against his range you more then likely have the worst hand. If you fail to consider your opponents range of hands and the relative hand strength of your hand vs the other player, it can be a costly mistake, because you are playing your cards with only absolute hand strength in mind, with no regard to reads on your opponents and their likely holdings.

The best way to explain relative hand strength is to give an example of a hand.

In a 50 NLHE online game I was dealt Kh Kc in middle position, make a raise to $1.50 and get called by a straight forward fairly tight player in the small blind.

The flop is 9s 3h Ks giving me a great hand with top set but their is a potential flush draw on the board and I make a standard continuation bet and quickly get called. At this point I am putting my opponent on a flush draw or one pair hand with something like 9x which doesn’t want to give up on the flop.

The turn card is 6s and the flush card. The other player checks and I bet $4.50 and he check raises to $14.50 Even though we have top set, there is now a flush on the board. I felt that my opponent would check raise the flop if they flopped a set with lower pocket pairs, so when you consider is now heavily weighted toward flushes and one pair hands which perhaps picked up extra equity on the turn.

I decide to call and the river card is the 2h, which really doesn’t change anything. The player in the small blinds bets $24. When a tight player makes a big bet on the river, you know it’s almost always for value, especially on a board like this, so I really have to think I am beat here even with top set when taking into account the relative hand strength of my hand versus my opponents hand. Like I previously said, I would expect him to raise the flop with worse sets, with card removal its unlikely they have a top pair type hand with only one other K in the deck, so their range of hands is heavily weighted toward flushes with the way they played the hand. It looks like they raised the turn with the intention of extracting more value on the river with another big bet. There is merit to perhaps even folding on the turn, but when you consider implied odds and if the river card pairs the board giving me the boat, I don’t think calling the turn raise is spewing too much.

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