When it comes to poker tournaments, most hands end up being zero-edge situations, meaning that both players would play it the same way if the hands were reversed (ie. with an effective stack of 20BB, regardless if you hold AA against your opponent’s KK, or hold KK against your opponent’s AA, all the chips are going in).
Real edge comes during hands where you understand something your opponent doesn’t and can squeeze more value out of the situation than they would if the roles were reversed. One such situation is monotone flops (all three cards being the same suit), which happens on about 5% of flops. This is a spot that most recreational players (and even some regs) have not spent much time thinking about and pretty much navigate it blindly each time it comes up. Therefore, any insight you can gain on how poker solvers treat this scenario will give you instant edge over your opponents—so let’s do that.
The Set Up:
You open from the hijack off a 40bb stack and only the big blind calls. The flop comes J87 all spades and your opponent checks. What do you do?
If your answer is to ask “well, what’s my hand?” you’re already off the mark. According to poker solvers, this is a spot where you, as the in position preflop aggressor, get to bet every single hand you opened. Although it mixes in about 10% of checks (ranging from 2% of the time with QQ to 30% of the time with A7s), there is not a single hand that doesn’t predominately bet in this configuration. And this aggression only grows more intense the shallower you get. With 25BBs, the solver checks back less than 1% of the time!
And this isn’t as flop dependent as you might think. In our 40BB example, the solver bets a KQ9 monotone flop 100% of the time, an AT6 flop 84% of the time, and a 234 monotone flop 81% of the time. In none of these situations is there a single hand that checks more often than it bets. Knowing this, and that, unlike the solver, your ‘irl’ opponents will not be defending against your bets with a balanced range, you can simplify things by electing to bet 100% of your hands when checked to on a monotone flop. With that understanding, you’ll have officially secured some edge.
Going back to our J87 example, assuming you bet the flop, your opponent calls, and the turn brings yet another spade, putting four of them on the board. Once your opponent checks, you have yet another opportunity to employ edge by having a very specific plan. Although many players increase their aggression on this 4-flush board under the logic that they, as the preflop aggressor, hold more Ax and Kx hands than their opponent (true), the solver plays it the exact opposite. On a Qs turn, for example, it goes from only checking 10% on the flop to checking more than 40% of its hands. And the interesting part is which hands it checks and which it never checks.
Much of its checking range comes from hands with showdown value, so pretty much all one pair Jx hands, weaker two pairs like 87s and Q8s, and even a hand like 9To for the nut straight, choosing to bet only when it has the T of spades.
Conversely, a hand like AKo, with which many players get trappy when they hold a spade and give up when they don’t, is played hyper aggressively by the solver. In fact, it bets every single combo that holds the flush suit (regardless if it’s the A or the K) at 100% frequency. No slowplaying allowed! And even when it doesn’t have a spade, it still mixes between betting and checking with a slight lean (55% of the time) towards betting.
Finally, the solver plays pretty consistently across a wide range of offsuit river cards, betting between 40-50% of the time. It value-bets most of its flushes that aren’t small pocket-pairs, and balances that by bluffing with its weakest holdings such as 45, 65, and 67 without a spade. Interestingly, it also avoids thin value bets, preferring to check back all its sets and two-pair hands.
And so, to recap where you can gain edge against your opponents on a monotone board: bet everything on the flop and bet polar (only your best and worst hands) on the turn and river. Do that, and over the long run, it won’t matter which side of the AA vs KK cooler you end up on, because you’ll be printing chips in spots more players are just guessing and that, my friend, is the definition of edge.
Good luck!
