Whether you are playing tournament poker with a fairly deep stack or cash games with deep stacks then one thing is clear and this is that good players understand the mathematics inherent in the game and look to amass chips and fold equity by putting down creative plays. Let us look at a situation where someone raised with A-J and you called with the 7s-5s. In fact if the stacks were deep enough then you could even know the content of your opponents hand and still make the call.
The flop will come numerous different ways that allows you to pressure your opponent from the hand. Firstly a pair will come on the flop around 17% of the time. So on boards like 10-5-5…..6-6-9….4-4-2 etc then not only are your opponents likely to not hit this board but your calling range is wider than their average raising range. Another good flop to launch bluffs and semi-bluffs on is suited and two suited flops. A flop that has three to a suit will arrive around 5% of the time and two to a suit 55% of the time.
So for aggressive players then these sorts of boards represent “outs” because they are boards that they can represent. If you have Ad-Jc and the board comes 10s-8s-4s and your opponent raises your c-bet then you have to fold. Another type of board that happens very often is to have two cards in sequence like J-6-5 or 10-5-4 for example. This once again allows the player to possibly float on the flop and look to represent hands stronger than what they actually hold on the turn. Say you hold 7-7 and the flop comes 10-5-4 and the turn brings a 3c giving you an inside straight draw. Even if a player has K-10 then they wouldn’t likely a raise like that.
