ORPHAN FLOPS

ORPHAN FLOPS
By John Vorhaus

To me the purest form of poker expression is heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em. From a strategy point of view, it offers the greatest opportunity to treat poker like a chess game and to make moves with both short-term and long-term impact in mind. In this column I'm going to talk about a common occurrence in heads-up play, and how that occurrence relates to your, and your foe's, mindset.

Much of what we talk about here is situationally applicable to full ring games, especially reasonably tight ones where most players fold preflop, and I encourage you to extrapolate accordingly. But at the same time, I encourage you to examine your feelings about heads-up play, because many players have a real prejudice against it, a prejudice I find unfounded... wrongheaded, even. They feel that by playing heads-up they're placing themselves at the mercy of a single foe. Is this thinking not exactly upside down? Shouldn't you, as a Killer Poker player, seek to put yourself in situations where your single foe is at your mercy? And if you had this dominate and crush idea in mind every time you sat down to play, wouldn't you perform better in heads-up matches and full ring games alike?

That's mindset, folks: In no-limit hold'em, it's almost always better to be the bettor, and it's certainly always better to have it in mind to bury your foes completely.

Okay, now let's talk about the common heads-up occurrence of an orphan flop, a flop that comes something like 7-7-3: no draws, and no cards either player is likely to hold, especially if there's been a raise and a call preflop. This orphan flop is just looking to be adopted by someone. Well, it turns out that there are two kinds of players in this poker realm of ours, those who adopt orphans, and those who don't.

Here's the mindset of the Timmy (timid player) who doesn't bet into this board: I have none of that flop, and I'm not likely to convince my opponent that I do. If I bet, I'm just opening myself up to a check-raise, and then where will I be? I'd better check, and be ready to fold if he bets. Why not? There's not that much money in the pot to begin with.

There's nothing too terribly wrong with this conservative mindset -- except that it completely surrenders control of the hand and, by extension, of the whole table. No self-respecting Killer Poker player would ever think like that. His mindset is more along these lines: That flop fully missed my hand, but it likely missed my opponent's hand as well. If I bet, he may or may not believe me, but unless he's prepared to raise on a bluff he'll have to let his hand go. Should I bet? Why not? There's not that much money in the pot, but in addition to winning it, I'm serving the greater goal of control.

So you bet and your foe folds. Now you've made the important discovery that he yields orphans. This gives you a certain carte blanche to attack subsequent orphans unless and until every single orphan flop that comes up, until such time when your foe shows some willingness to play back at you -- in which circumstance you can be more than reasonably certain that he has a piece of the flop.

Plus check this out: Your relentless pursuit of orphans will actually inspire your opponent to play worse. Suppose you raise preflop (as you're wont to do) and he's got a junk hand, a hand he knows he should throw away. If he's thinking about hitting an orphan flop and trapping you, he might go ahead and call. Of course, most of the time he'll miss the flop and have to surrender when you bet again. More profit -- and more control -- for you.

Never forget that in addition to building pots and thinning fields, raises act as active sonar, pinging your opponents for information about their strength -- and their willingness to use that strength. Raises define your foes. Define their style of play. Their tolerance for risk. Their willingness to bluff or semi-bluff or check-raise bluff. The more frequently you raise, in other words, the more narrowly you classify your foe's attributes. His reaction to situations such as the orphan flop are a microcosm of the macrocosm: If he's timid there, he's probably timid (and thus highly exploitable) elsewhere, such as in defense of blinds in a full ring game.

An added benefit of aggressiveness is that it defines you as well: defines you as a strong, relentless player who's not afraid to bet out, either with or without a hand. You define yourself as a player to be feared. And that definition, again, puts you in control.

Now, a lot of this thinking gets muddied in the context of a full ring game, where so many players can have so many different holdings that, for example, pure orphan flops are few and far between -- with several players in a pot, someone's bound to have something. Nevertheless, the principle remains the same: Either you're acting or you're reacting, and for the sake of owning the game, it's much better to act than to react.

This is why you see strong, aggressive players engaged in many more hands in no-limit than their cards would seem to dictate. They're after your whole stack, and they know that the route to this outcome is through aggressiveness and knowledge. Aggressiveness forces foes to make decision after decision, and gives them ample opportunity to guess wrong. Knowledge yields the information -- information derived through active sonar -- needed to make the right decision when whole stacks are at stake.

If you haven't played much heads-up hold'em, I suggest you get some on. Being involved in every hand will definitely steepen your learning curve, and watching your aggressiveness pay off will increase your self confidence. And even in your full ring games, keep your eye peeled for orphan flops. They happen all the time, and it's just a shame when they go unadopted.