OTB #081: Ranking Flop Textures By Order of Difficulty and Importance

In tournament poker, understanding the different flop textures is crucial for making great decisions and taking the right lines.

However, not all flops are created equal—some are easy to play, while others are more complicated because they require mixed strategies.

When you start studying a new spot, I recommend beginning with building out your overarching strategy using aggregate reports.

Today I want to show you how to do that and also help you rank flop textures by order of difficulty and importance so you make your study and training as efficient as possible by focusing on the right things first.

Let's dive in...

Access the aggregate report

Click here to access a 30bb LJ vs BB aggregate report in Google sheets so you can follow along.

Step 1: Set up a filter

Click and drag from cell A3 to K3 (the yellow row). Then click the calculator button top left.

Then click on Create filter view:

Step 2: Filter by Board Texture:

Now you can click on the downwards arrow (filter) button next to 'Board Texture' and you can filter by specific boards like 2 Broadway, Paired and Axy:

Step 3: Build out your overarching strategy

Now work through all the board textures, and discover what you need to do on each. When you select just one board texture, the numbers you're looking for will be on the 'Filtered Average' row.

You can compare these numbers to the global average on the row above.

Here's what it looks like:

Flop texture	Equity	Check	Total Bet	Small Bet	Big Bet
Paired	62.6	16	84	83	0
K/Q + 2	60.1	6	94	63	31
2 broadway	64.6	2	98	60	38
J/T + 2	61.0	3	97	35	62
ABx	67.5	4	96	36	61
Low unconnected	56.4	31	69	22	47
Axy	62.5	0	100	48	52
Low connected	53.0	48	52	6	46
Monotone	59.0	5	95	77	18
J/T connected	59.8	10	90	52	38
ABB	69.3	0	100	10	90
BBB	66.3	0	100	14	86
Trips	65.1	0	100	81	19

I've ordered the Flop Textures by how frequently they occur and I recommend you do the same.

From this table we can now assess the easy boards, the moderately difficult boards and the hard boards.

Remember we're looking for big picture stuff right now so that we can identify which boards to focus on.

We're exploring 30bb LJ vs BB today and the easy, moderately difficult and hard boards discussed here are just based on this aggregate report. The overarching strategies will be different for each spot you study, which means that the easy boards here might be the difficult boards in other spots.

Easy boards

On ABB and BBB boards you always c-bet. The trick comes from choosing the right size. But they're easy boards because you just need to always bet on them.

Having said that, these boards don't happen very often, so while they're easy to study, they shouldn't be at the top of your list.

Moderately difficult boards

On Paired boards you should almost always use a small c-bet size, but there are some boards where you should check more. This is a big discovery already and should lead you to exploring those boards that you check in more detail. Paired boards happen almost 17% of the time so they're definitely worth studying.

On K/Q+2 (happen 16.22% of the time), 2 broadway (13.9%), J/T+2 (13.61%), ABx (9.27%) and Monotone (5.18%), you should pretty much always bet, but for a mix of sizes. Again, the tricky part here is knowing which bet size to use.

On Axy boards you should always c-bet, but it's for a mix of sizes. There's a much bigger mix here, which makes it harder to learn than ABB and BBB boards, but still relatively easy because you should just bet all the time.

On Low connected boards you should big bet or check, with very little small betting.

The other boards (J/T connected and Trips boards) don't happen often enough to worry about.

Hardest boards

For 30bb LJ vs BB, low unconnected boards are the stand out, toughest boards to study. This is because they have a mix of absolutely everything—check, small bet and big bet.

These boards happen 8.4% of the time so are definitely worth studying.

Planning your study

From that overview, it should be now clear to you which board textures to focus on and which to ignore completely. Here's how I would break it down for this spot:

1. Paired boards—they happen most frequently and there are some clear patterns that need exploring

2. Low unconnected boards—they have the most amount of mixing and are the toughest boards to learn

3. K/Q + 2 boards—they happen frequently and there's some mixing in c-bet sizes

4. 2 broadway boards—they happen quite frequently and there's some mixing in c-bet sizes

5. J/T + 2 boards—they happen quite frequently and there's some mixing in c-bet sizes

6. ABx boards—there's some mixing in c-bet sizes

7. Axy boards—there's some mixing in c-bet sizes

8. Low connected boards—clear big bet or check strategy that needs exploring

9. Monotone boards—they're tricky to play and have some mixing in c-bet sizes

And I wouldn't worry about ABB, BBB or Trips boards because they happen a combined 3.14% of the time.

Key Takeaways for Part-Time Players

• Use aggregate reports to find patterns, not to memorise solver outputs.

• Focus your study on flops where the strategy is easiest to implement first.

• Learn to identify difficult flops and accept that mixed strategies are inevitable.

  
  

Summary

Understanding the relative difficulty of flop textures can help you learn the betting strategies much faster.

By spending a little time on the big picture stuff first, you can prioritise the board textures that matter most.

The key is to identify actionable heuristics that guide your study and lead you to making better decisions in-game.

That's it for this week.

See you next time.

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