OTB #048: The Top 5 Flop Textures to Optimise Your Poker Study

I don't want to scare you, but there are 1,755 strategically different flops.

As I mentioned in OTB #005: How to quickly identify the heuristics using aggregate reports, thankfully you can group them together to make them easier to learn, like this:

1. ABB

2. ABx

3. Axx

4. 2 broadways

5. BBB

6. K/Q+2

7. J/T+2

8. J/T connected

9. Low connected

10. Low unconnected

11. Paired

12. Trips

A = Ace

B = Broadway card (K,Q,J,T)

x = low card (9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2)

K = King

Q = Queen

+2 = 2 low cards that are different

J = Jack

T = Ten

From that list of 12 flop textures, if you had to choose, which do you think are the top 5 you should study?

Today I'm going to show you the top 5 flop textures to study, and the ones that really aren't worth bothering with.

Let's dive in...

It's all in the frequencies

Here are the flop textures in order of how frequently they occur:

That means the top 5 most frequent flop textures are:

1. Paired boards

2. King or Queen high boards with two low cards

3. 2 broadway boards

4. Jack or Ten high boards with two low cards

5. ABx boards

And these are the 5 that you should spend most time studying.

Trips boards happen so infrequently that if you're short on time it's really not worth spending time studying them at all.

Monotone boards, while being somewhat tricky to play, actually only happen 5.18% of the time while rainbow boards appear 39.76% of the time and flush draw boards occur 55.06% of the time.

Also, Ace high boards happen 19.12% of the time so you might think that they should be top of the list, and I think that's fair.

You can put them at the top of your list if you like, but ABB, ABx and Axx boards can play very differently so I'd add them to the list after the top 5.

Summary

There are 1,755 strategically different flops and you can group them to make them easier to learn.

Then you can order them by how frequently they occur and you have the top 5 flop textures that you should learn.

So if you're wondering how you're ever going to learn the strategies for 1,755 different flops, you don't need to.

Focus on the top 5 instead because they're the ones that happen most frequently.

That's it for this week.

See you next time.