Quads vs Full House in High Stakes Poker Game
Even the best poker players in the world deal with brutal bad beats.
This hand features two powerhouse players going to battle: Kevin Paque and Sergey Nikiforov.
You might not know these guys if you don’t follow high stakes online action. But trust me when I say these are two of the best cash game players in the world.
The stakes are $50/$100 with $10,000 stacks. Let’s dive into the action.
Preflop Action
Sergey raises to $225 from the Cutoff with As Ah.
Kevin 3-bets to $1,150 from the Small Blind with 7h 6h.
Sergey 4-bets to $2,400. Kevin calls.
Simple Preflop Analysis
Sergey makes the obvious raise Pocket Aces. Any size from 2bb-2.5bb is optimal.
Kevin should usually fold with his 76-suited, but 3-betting at a low frequency is part of a good strategy. 3-bet bluffing with suited connectors like this helps balance out the premium hands with which he’s also 3-bet.
Sergey should always 4-bet with his Pocket Aces in this spot. If stacks were shorter (like 50bb), slow-playing the Aces would be reasonable. But with so much money behind, it’s imperative he builds the pot ASAP to maximize value.
Kevin has enough equity and playability to call versus the 4-bet. Suited connectors are the highest equity hands against premium pairs like Aces.
Advanced Preflop Analysis
Sergey’s raise with Pocket Aces is the correct play and his sizing is good. His range should be around roughly the top 30% of hands.
Faced with this raise in the Small Blind, Kevin should be 3-betting with the top 10-12% of hands for a size of around 4-4.5x the open. Suited connectors like 76-suited make for good 3-bets at a low frequency as they help with board coverage and play well on a variety of flops.
Versus a 3-bet in these positions, Sergey makes the correct 4-bet with Pocket Aces. His range should be made up of premium hands like Pocket Aces through Pocket Jacks, plus some Broadway cards and low-suited Aces at varying frequencies.
The optimal 4-bet size here is around 2.1-2.4x Kevin’s 3-bet size. This smaller sizing scheme works to put Kevin in a tough spot, having to defend wide, out of position, in a huge pot. 4-betting Pocket Aces is a must at this stack depth as there’s plenty of money left to be played for.
Once faced with the 4-bet, Kevin should call with his 76-suited. His range should be roughly half of the pocket pairs between Pocket Nines through Pocket Fives, all of his suited connectors, Pocket Tens or better, Ace-King, Ace-Jack suited or better, plus half of Ace-Ten suited, King-Queen suited, Jack-Ten suited, and Ace-Five suited.
Flop Action
The flop comes Ac Ks 6d. The pot is $4,900.
Kevin checks with 7h 6h. Sergey bets $490 with Ah As. Kevin calls.
Simple Flop Analysis
The flop gives Sergey top set and Kevin bottom pair.
Sergey should c-bet tiny with his Pocket Aces. This 10% pot bet size is very smart.
This tiny bet forces his opponent to consider calling with marginal hands (such as weak pairs and straight draws). If he bet any larger (even ~25% pot), his opponent would simply fold with marginal hands. He doesn’t want to let his opponent off the hook that easily, especially when he’s holding top set!
Faced with this bet, Kevin can either call or fold. Even though the bet is super small, his one-pair hand is unlikely to improve and is potentially drawing close-to-dead.
Advanced Flop Analysis
This Ac Ks 6d flop is one of the absolute best ones for Sergey’s range as the 4-bettor. This is one of the highest equity and nut advantages in the entire game of poker (something around 70-75% equity). According to the solver work I just did, 29.5% of his range is a very strong hand compared to just 3.5% for Kevin.
The optimal strategy in such a spot is to bet very small, even down to 10% of the pot. Sergey doesn’t have enough bluffs in his range to bet much larger. Even against a 10% pot bet, the optimal folding frequency in Kevin’s shoes is ~55%!
That is a much higher fold frequency than the Minimum Defense Frequency (MDF), which would have you fold only 9.1% of the time against this bet size.
This deviation occurs because the actual goal for Kevin is not to deny the profitability of Sergey’s bluffs, but rather to make him indifferent between bluffing and giving up.
Since Sergey’s bluffs already have a high expected value (EV) in the check-back line, you should look to offer him the same in the betting line by folding a lot. This way, Sergey doesn’t have a clear higher EV path for his bluffs.
Against this 10% pot bet, Kevin is already in a tough spot without a backdoor flush draw. Calling here is very close to 0EV.
Turn Action
The turn comes the 6c, making the board Ac Ks 6d 6c. The pot is $5,880.
Kevin bets $1,470 with 7h 6h. Sergey calls with Ah As.
Simple Turn Analysis
An action turn card gives Kevin trips versus the top full house for Sergey.
Kevin has several good options here with trips:
- Donk bet small
- Check-call
- Check-raise
Why is donk betting a good option here? Because this card is much more likely to connect with Kevin’s hand. When a card is much better for your range, leading out can be a good play. Learn more about this concept here.
By leading out, Kevin is trying to get value from hands like Ace-King or Ace-Queen. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s got just one out against his opponent’s made full house.
Sergey is right to only call. The pot is already big and he’s in position, so he has no incentive to raise with his full house. Not to mention that his opponent is close to drawing dead with his entire range.
Advanced Turn Analysis
The 6x turns are the second-best cards for Kevin’s range in the entire deck. The best card would be the Qx, as that completes a straight draw only he can have (Jack-Ten suited).
Three options are on the table for his specific hand: donk betting, check-calling, and check-raising.
On this turn, Kevin improves a lot of his range thanks to the 76-suited and 65-suited with which he calls the flop with. But he still lags in terms of nut advantage. This means that developing a donk bet range is appropriate, but it’s not a high-frequency strategy by any stretch.
Sergey has no incentive to raise with Pocket Aces as he’s blocking Kevin’s bluff-catchers, namely the top pairs.
This spot has some weird dynamics going on. For example, if Kevin also donks out with some top pairs (as he should), he should fold them against a shove. That would mean turning hands like Ace-Five suited, Ace-Four suited, King-Nine suited, etc. into bluffs.
River Action
The river comes the 6s, making the final board Ac Ks 6d 6c 6s. The pot is $8,816.
Kevin shoves for $6,620 with 7h 6h. Sergey calls with Ah As. Kevin scoops the $20,240 pot.
Simple River Analysis
Kevin hits his one outer for Quads to take the lead!
Now that he’s got the nuts, Kevin has to weigh his two options: go all-in or set the trap with a check. The better play is probably to go all-in now to try and get max value from a hand like Ax Qx, with which Sergey might consider checking.
Even though he loses to Quads in this instance, Sergey makes the correct call with the second nuts. He can (obviously) beat bluffs and only loses to the few hands that contain the 6h.
Advanced River Analysis
Given that he called a 4-bet preflop and donk bet on the turn, Kevin has two possible combinations of Quads in his range: 7h 6h and 6h 5h. There are simply no other 6h hands that can make it to the river here.
But let’s zoom out and consider how Kevin would play his entire range, which contains not only quads, but some bluffs and Ax hands as well.
He could go for a small barrel here with his Ax full houses, looking to extract thin value from weaker full houses (such as Kx or Pocket Queens).
He could also check with his full houses, but here’s where it gets interesting: if he’s faced with a shove, he has to realize that there’s not much incentive for Sergey’s hands to bluff (as all of his hands are full houses now).
This means that bluff-catching with a hand like Ace-Jack suited, for example, becomes marginal. His opponent will have higher full houses with Pocket Aces and Pocket Kings relatively frequently considering how narrow the ranges are here.
With his specific hand, both shoving and check-calling make sense, in theory. If he thinks Sergey will turn low full houses into a bluff, setting the trap with a check is a smart play. But I think it’s a safer choice to barrel all-in here than to bank on that kind of unintuitive play from Sergey.
When faced with that shove, Sergey has the easiest call in the world. He has the second nuts and the nuts are extremely unlikely at this point.
Final Thoughts
This was a sick hand where there was nothing that either player could’ve done better. Sometimes you flop top set and someone hits runner-runner full house. That’s poker, folks!
That’s all for this article! I hope you enjoyed both the breakdown and also seeing one of the best in the world getting smacked by variance!
It happens to all of us and we just have to roll with it. As usual, if you have any questions or feedback feel free to leave a comment in the section down below.
Want more high stakes analysis? Check out Phil Ivey Plays $248,000 Pot vs Eric Persson (Analysis).
Till’ next time, good luck, grinders!
