The Overuse of the WA/WB line Out of Position

[Lmn55d]

I'm not going to go as far as to say that the WA/WB check/call, check/call, bet line sucks when out of position like another poster did in the "Clarkmeister Theory" thread, but I do think he has a point.

I think it is overused in a couple situations at games like 10/20 6max. The main one that I see is when you flop an ace from the BB against a blind steal. Let's say the board is A82. Unless the guy has a pair of 8s or 2s, 34, or 45 you are way ahead.

The idea of taking he WA/WB line here is to minimize your losses when you are drawing to 3 outs and maximize your gain when your opponent is drawing to two or less (with a lower pocket pair or unpaired cards).

I think a lot of the theory behind this line in this spot is that you don't want your opponent folding a lower pair here. Instead, you want him to keep firing with it. The current state of the 10/20 6max is such that people rarely fold pairs on this board (or ever). Therefore, checkraising the flop often gains maximum value. Furthermore, there are some donks willing to 3bet you or raise the turn with weaker hands, so you get even more value when this happens.

A second big problem is when your opponent checks the turn with a hand he would have called a bet with. It is not uncommong for an opponent to check through here with KK/QQ or even 45.

One thing that is good about checkraising is that your opponents will often not believe you have the ace because you only called their preflop raise, and aces often 3bet. A lot of times they will peel the flop INCORRECTLY with a KJ/KQ sort of hand, which is sweet. So checkraising the flop often does not prevent them from pairing on the turn and paying you off.

One other thing is that you are forced to bet the river and decide whether you call a raise. If you always fold that is pretty exploitable. Against a lot of players, though, you are almost never ahead when raised. It is often just a really tough decision that is easy to mess up.

The check/call, check/call, bet line in this spot can be great against certain over-aggro or overly tight opponents. But against most I don't think it is optimal. I think checkraising the flop or calling and donking the turn is better. It is also good against players whose range you can narrow down such that you are often way behind (against a preflop capper for instance). Against such players, the risk:reward ratio isn't great.


I'd like to get some thoughts on this from some of you guys who play similar games.

I also have some thoughts about how the current state of the 10/20 6max game necessitates waiting until the turn to raise most good hands and heavily reducing flop semibluff checkraises HU OOP even with hands as strong as flush draws. If anyone is interested maybe I'll write about that in another post and we can discuss.

EDIT: Also, on flops like A86 there are a ton of draws that will 3bet or call the flop checkraise (79, 9J, 9T, etc.)