1-Up-1-Down Hands

Poker Strategy
1

They are very overvalued.

Today’s lesson is to just not play them out of position and to be careful with them in position.

First, what is a 1-up-1-down hand? It’s a pocket with 1 high card (an A or K) and one unconnected rag. A7s, A4o, K6s, K3s are examples. Sometimes I call them a hi-lo hand but that gets confusing with Omaha games.

Second, what’s wrong with them? We got an A in the hole, right? A king is good, aint it? The answer is no, not really. The problem with these hands is that they are just about useless if they don’t hit the flop hard. remember, 1-up-1-down does not straight. It’s not connected.

Here’s an example. A7diamonds from UtG. We raise pre and get 1 caller. Perfect. Let’s flop this a few times. Remember, we are out of position.

flop v ~ 9s 4c, Qh

We whiff completely. This is a check-fold and we throw away our pre raise. If we bluff and get called we tell Villain that we hate money. Are you prepared to barrel bluff? I sure as hell aint.

flop x ~ 2c, Kd, 7h

We flop mid pair and our A kicker is pretty meaningless (we lose to a K and any card paired higher than a 7 on future streets). We hit soft and have a very weak made hand. Check-pray is no fun and even leaves us susceptible to air bluffs. We will lose a lot with this.

flop y ~ As, 5h, Jd

We flop top pair but our kicker sucks. Any villain with Ax is probably ahead, and if not we’re only guessing. Again, we hit soft and have a weak made that we think is strong. Overvalued and very dangerous, especially if we lead and get called.

flop z ~ Qd, 8d, 5c

We flop a nut flush draw which is great, but we are out of position. If we lead this and get called or we check and get raised, how many streets do we want to chase this draw? How much will it cost us? It’s a potential money pit with no guarantee.

Also note that all of these are dry boards. What do we do if there’s a straight draw, non-diamond flush or pair on the board? Bluff sure, but we are first to act after the flop. Risk of betting into something big is high! We just paid 3x or 4x pre to check-fold. We did it to ourselves.

Don’t even think about Q3 or J6 etc. Throw them away. Line the birdcage or something.

I learned this studying this video a few months ago. It’s the first hand in the first 15 minutes.

Hero is playing K8-hearts in the CO and gets himself in every kind of trouble with multiple pre-flop blunders.

1 ~ He’s playing K8s with the button behind him (personally I would never do this unless ICM).
2 ~ He gets into 3-bet 4-bet war with the button (who opened!), putting himself out of position. He’s effectively donating his chips.
3 ~ He fails to read the stacks and loses pot control with the huge bet sizes. When the hand is dealt, he roughly has 2/3rds the stack of Villain. By the turn he has about half what Villain has and the pot itself is a few chips bigger than his own stack. He can’t bluff this if he wanted to (unless he jams with his air).

Why? Because he has a suited king! Woo! Say it with me: O-VER-VAL-UED!

There’s a lot of talk from his coach bencb about how he played the flop and turn, but I am actually disappointed that he spent so little time talking about how he screwed himself royally pre-flop (although he does say that the 4-bet is too big but doesn’t explain why - pot control). Coach actually tells him that his hand selection is GOOD! Can someone explain this to me?

I saw Daniel Negreanu talking about a similar hand to some podcaster or a chat stream or something not long after I saw this and he just flat out said, “You’re out of position and you have a hand that you HAVE to hit, otherwise it’s a check-fold.”

THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!

You’re out of position and you have a hand that you HAVE to hit, otherwise it’s a check-fold.

What about Ax in position? This is actually a good low stakes opener as an exploit but you gotta know what you’re doing (I do it excessively myself). If you don’t, I recommend that you still stay away.

So, just fold these hands pre in early and not a bad thing at all to fold them pre on the button too.

The happy ending is that this student Matt Staples, three years later is now apparently making lots of money playing online and doing very well. Always love to see someone genuinely wanting to learn, get better and get paid!

1 Like
2

All great advice with the caveat that some of your example “danger” boards are actually examples of the few flops that DO favor Ad7d:

flop z ~ Qd 8d 5c
-We have an overcard, backdoor straight and the nut flush draw. Our equity is at least 50% against almost anything, and we still block pocket aces, for what it’s worth. This is a great flop to play for all the chips almost any way you like: cbet/call any size, open shove, check/raise all in. It’s all good. Dream flop.

flop x ~ 2c Kd 7h
-We flop middle pair top kicker with 3 outs to a very disguised strong 2pair. Backdoor nut flush is still in play. We are happy to check-call and be well ahead of all Villain’s bluffs, and even some of their value like 87, 97, 66 etc. If Villain floats a hand like AJ/AQ, which your own hand histories show some will do, they are in way worse shape than they expect and in the rare case that an ace comes off, we get all the money.
-It’s pretty easy to play our hand on later streets as a straightforward Villain mostly has Kx or not.
-Against players who bet too often/wide when checked to, this is a decent check-raise candidate as well, with 1 over, nut backdoor potential and blocking some of Villain’s nut range like 77, K7.

4

Maybe, for flop x.

Flop z is a slam dunk and everyone, even total noobs, should learn how to play a nut flush draw on the flop/how to play a suited ace (even out of position)preflop.

I’ve said elsewhere that suited aces in position are among the most profitable hand classes on Replay, maybe even more lucrative than mid-pocket pairs. Even OOP it’s just so hard to make a big mistake as long as you don’t fold before the river, and equally hard to be in really bad shape.

If the flop doesn’t contain 2 of your suit, just revert to pretending your hand is junk and don’t fall in love with a weak pair of aces against an opponent who is calling your bets.

Go for it!

5

@napkin_holder Your descriptions of the boards don’t really follow for the setup you give. For example:

This is absolutely a triple barrel board. Our opponent whiff’s way harder than we do on this board, and likely won’t be able to stand up to sustained pressure. Ad7d possibly has some showdown value, so I don’t think we need to turn it into a bluff every time, but I’m absolutely sure you can triple of with some air on this board as the PFR against someone who just calls behind.

Also, some of the hands you mention are never an open from UTG, but A7s is almost always going to be +EV, so are you really advocating to just not open these hands?

Here are two spots where I think all the hands you mention should be folded:

  • EP opens, we are in the small blind
  • We open and face a 3-bet

Your descriptions of the boards makes a lot more sense under those constraints.

Yeah, they’re short-handed, so ranges are wide, and the 3-betting range will also be wide and have a lot of bluffs in it. This hand is probably too good to fold, and the 4-bet can fold out some better offsuit Kx. You’re hardly happy with any choice though.

1 Like
6

I am closing this thread at the request of the Original Poster.

1 Like