Coming soon: 9-handed poker on ActionFlop; a blind versus blind analysis

2024-09-01

ActionFlop will soon be expanding beyond heads up poker into multi-handed poker. When this rolls out, you will be able to choose between good old fashioned heads up 1/2 (stacks 200), and 9-handed 1/2/2 (stacks 120). When you choose 9-handed, the game will be played by you, the hero, against 8 bots.

Before you get too excited, you should know that the 9-handed game will initially be somewhat limited. Because the 9-handed game tree is so unwieldy, it is not completely solved. Because of this, while preflop will be 9-handed, postflop will be limited to heads up situations. When more than three players proceed to the flop, the hand will end prematurely and the pot will be divided by equity. (As a side note, you may have noticed that in the heads up game, when the players are all in preflop, the pot is also divided by equity. This reduces your variance from heads up all in confrontations and gives you a better sense of how you would fare in the long run from these situations.) To encourage heads up postflop play, the bots are a little biased to avoid engaging in multiway situations. Hopefully we can solve more of the game tree in the future, and tune the bots to keep the game enjoyable, realistic, and something you can learn from.

To whet your appetite, I played some 9-handed poker and found a hand that I thought would be worth analyzing. Let's dive right in.

Everyone folds to the blinds. You, the hero, are in the small blind with Pocket Nines. This is a hand you can call or raise, and you decide to raise. The GTO bot is in the BB, and he calls. The charts below show the ranges going into the flop. This being a battle of the blinds, the ranges are quite wide, with the SB's range uncapped, and the BB's range capped. This shows up most notably in the pocket pairs. The other notable difference is that the SB's suited range is more top-heavy.

Let's see a flop.

As the preflop aggressor, you should be thinking about c-betting. That being said, this is a blind versus blind single raised pot, so you're out of position, and you do need to think a little bit about flop texture here. As a rule of thumb, flops with higher cards are better for your range. Lower cards which are more connected (more likely to have straight draws), lower cards which are paired, and lower cards which are suited are generally better for your opponent's range. This particular flop is not great but not bad either. Your range should do more checking than c-betting here, but in this case, with your flopped trips, you should be c-betting small most of the time. It's hands like these that carry the rest of your c-bets. With most of your range mixing between checking and betting, you haven't really narrowed your range meaningfully after your flop decision to bet.

When the BB calls, you should be thinking about which part of his range calls. The chart below shows his strategy across his range distribution. Yellow means fold, blue means call, and red means raise. The thing to notice is that while the majority of his range comes along for the ride, he folds the vast majority of his high cards, so he will come to the turn with a lot of pairs and draws. You should already be thinking about how different turn cards will interact with his range.

Let's see a turn.

When it comes to turn cards, you should be most fearful of board pairing cards, with Nines and Twos being the worst since they are so over-represented in his range versus yours. You should also be afraid of clubs, since so much of his calling range was three- and four-flushes. The best turns for you are non-club Aces since your preflop Ax range was heavier and stronger than BB's. On a non-club Ace, you should c-bet just over half of the time. This club isn't great for you, so your range should be checking 65% of the time. As the chart below shows, your particular holding should be right around there: checking 70% of the time, and mixing the remaining 30% between betting small and betting large. You decide to bet 8 into a pot of 26.

When the BB calls, you should again be thinking about what that says about his range. The chart below shows his range distribution for this decision. The majority of his made flushes raise, but some just call. After calling, the majority of his range will be pairs, followed closely by various kinds of four-flushes.

Let's see the river.

The river was not a good card to bet, and definitely not a good card to call a raise. Ok, I admit it. I shouldn't have bet-called. I keep saying you, but I told you at the beginning this is a hand I played. Let's talk about why it was a mistake to bet. Recall that the BB's hand distribution after the turn was mostly pairs and four-flushes. The four-flushes got there and you don't have your own flush to make up for it. The chart below shows you should happily bet the majority of your made flushes, mixing in some checks. You can also do some amount of bluffing, but you should be doing it with the bottom part of you range: high cards, and low pairs like A3. A set is a strong hand generally speaking, but in this situation it's in the middle of your range, so it should check 100% of the time. On the flip side, if the river had come an offsuit Ace, you would be betting with your trips 90% of the time. In fact, on an offsuit Ace river, 82% of your range should bet with the knowledge that the majority of the BB's range is pairs and missed flushes.

Let's see the final result.

I hope you enjoyed this hand analysis, and I hope you are looking forward to playing 9-handed on ActionFlop. Stay tuned for more!