Puzzles
#10
Range Structure
Advanced
40bb effective

The range made of good hands

You open the button, the big blind calls, and the flop is a low paired board. Your hand is fine. So is almost everything else you hold — and that fact, not your two cards, decides what you do.

  1. Flop

Hand info

Seats
BTN vs BB
Street
Flop
Pot
5.5 bb
Effective stack
37.5 bb
To call
Nothing — you may check

MTT, single raised pot, no ante. Blinds 0.5 / 1. You opened the button to 2.5bb and the big blind called.

Pot5.5 BB
D
HERO ·BTN
37.5 BB
SB
FOLD
BB
CHECK35 BB behind
UTG
FOLD
HJ
FOLD
CO
FOLD

FLOP · 37.5BB EFFECTIVE

FLOP · BB CHECKS

6-max table. Hero is BTN with 37.5 big blinds effective. FLOP: 5h, 5d, 4h. FLOP · BB CHECKS. Hero holds 8s and 7s.

Hand history

Pre-flop

  • BTNRaises to 2.5 bb
  • SBFolds
  • BBCalls 1.5 bb

Flop

  • 5♥ 5♦ 4♥ — pot 5.5 bb
  • BBChecks

The flop is 5♥ 5♦ 4♥ and the big blind checks to you. You hold 8♠7♠: no pair, and no flush equity at all — the board has no spade, so the suit does nothing. What you have is a gutshot. Only a 6 makes your straight. The book puts a hand like this in its GOOD equity bucket on this board: Table 118 prints 58% hand-vs-range equity for gutshots here, which is at or above the 50% floor for Good and below the 75% floor for Strong (p.596). You are last to act with 37.5bb behind and 5.5bb in the middle.

What is your action?