If you have not already read the primer about using a HUD (Heads Up Display) then you’ll need to read it before going
further. If you are familiar with a HUD or have already read through the article, what we are going to do in this article is run a quiz for you by providing a hand up until a certain
point and then offer you the stats of the villain. This makes for a great exercise for when you use your HUD to make intelligent poker decisions while multi-tabling.
HAND 1:Â AQ OFFSUIT IN THE SMALL BLIND.
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In this hand the hero has AQ offsuit in the big blind. The villain in the hand is on the button and has primary stats of 44/20/1.5 and his steal percentage is 31%. He
continuation bets 88% of the time and his fold to check-raise is 100% (but only 4 hands). Instead of 3betting (the villain’s fold to 3bet is 10%) the villain our hero
flats to try and out play him post-flop. The flop comes T-6-9 with two hearts. Our hero checks and our villain predictably continuation bets.
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What Do You Do?
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What Happened:
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Because the villain is cbetting so high chances are he’s just playing his position, like he should be doing. The problem for the villain is that this is a pretty scary
board versus someone that calls to a raise.  Generally this board is actually a terrible board for him to be cbetting. Our hero recognized that he folds to a
check-raise at the flop 100% of the time, and even though it was only 4 hands, it’s time to see if the trend holds up. The numbers are telling us that this guy will
pretty much cbet anything and hates a check-raise. The situation in the hand is telling us that he’s cbetting a bad board. Time to make him pay, and our
hero throws in a raise, which the villain did fold.
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HAND 2:Â K7 OFFSUIT VERSUS THE SMALL BLIND LIMPER.
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The hero is again on the big blind with K7 offsuit, hardly a good hand but in this situation has all the power since everyone folds and his hand then assumes the button. The small blind
is a player who has a ~72 blind stack (a huge indication of fishiness) and has primary stats of 23/7/1 over a decent amount of hands. His flop check-raise percentage is 23% and our
hero’s image at the table has been fairly tight-aggressive. The hero does the right thing and raises on the limper in the small blind who flat calls. The
flop is A-3-Q with two spades, and our villain check-raises the hero’s continuation bet.
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What Would You Do?Â
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What Happened:
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The first thing the hero has to wonder is why is the raise so small. This is where the meta-game of poker takes over and the stats don’t tell you what to do
– this is where your note-taking and instincts take over. However, let’s disregard the size of the raise and look at this
opponent. He’s tight-passive basically, only in 23% of hands (in a 6max game which is kind of tight) and only raises 7% of the time (which is ridiculously tight for a
6max game). In addition his aggression factor is 1, meaning he’s only playing back at you when he has a big hand. Is that enough evidence to get rid of our
cbet bluff? You bet. Our hero chucks his K7 and waits for the next time to take advantage of this weak player.
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HAND 3: JJ FACES A RARE 4BET PREFLOP.
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With pocket jacks on the button our hero makes a smart 3bet with the button against a nitty tight-aggressive villain with primary stats of 17/14/2.4 who 3bets 6% of the time and folds to a 3bet 76%
of the time. In addition, this villain has a 4bet range of 1.4%. Basically, from the stats we can see that this tight-aggressive opponent doesn’t 4bet
lightly at all. The top 1.4% of hands (according to Pokerazor) are AA, KK and QQ. That’s it.
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What Would You Do?
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What Happened:
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You will find some players at certain stakes that say ship it in with JJ in this situation because you have a good solid pocket pair and you have some fold equity. The hero, on the other
hand, couldn’t disagree more. By putting in 40% of his stack the villain has actually already committed himself to shove all in with practically any part of his range
(or more!) so there really is no fold equity here. Also given that we’re putting the villain on a range of AA, KK or QQ or *maybe* AK suited, we’re
absolutely crushed by his range and the “best case scenario†(outside of him being drunk and shoving with 72 offsuit) is a coin-flip. Our hero makes the
fold, which was the absolute best thing he could have done here.
