Poker Math by Gareth James: Types of Flop Texture 

Who Is Gareth James?

Gareth James, also known as Gazellig, is a SCOOP 2021 title holder and founder, teacher and instructor of MTT Poker School.

He was born in Eindhoven, The Netherlands but moved to the UK at three months old. After reaching 18, Gareth moved again, this time to Leeds to study music and then spent next 6 years living and teaching in London.

He started playing poker seriously in 2010 and became a poker coach in 2012, combining working as a small stakes MTT pro while teaching music — giving lessons in guitar, singing, ukulele and piano.

Gareth James is also an author of two books for poker players:

• “The Final Table: Play your best poker when the most is at stake”
• “Purposeful Practice for Poker: The Modern Approach to Studying Poker” in collaboration with Dr. Patricia Cardner.

How Many Flop Textures Poker Has

Since poker has 1,755 strategically different flops, studying them without grouping can make your poker education much more difficult.

So, Gareth James grouped them for all of us in 12 types of flop texture:

1. ABB boards
2. ABx boards
3. Axy boards
4. 2 broadways boards
5. BBB boards
6. K/Q+2 boards
7. J/T+2 boards
8. J/T connected boards
9. Low connected boards
10. Low unconnected boards
11. Paired boards
12. Trips boards

What letters, numbers and signs here mean:

Interestingly, Gareth insists that not all of these are worth your studying time.

Which Flops To Study Deeper

Gareth is sure that only five types of flops are worth of most of your studying time — we quote him:

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

Why this five?

Because of their frequency that you can see in this Gareth’s table:

While you can’t discern it here, A high boards are the most frequent boards that occur (19.12% of time), meaning you can add them to your “TOP to study” list. Still, keep in mind that ABB, ABx and Axy boards can play very differently.

As for boards that aren’t worth your attention if you’re short on time, Gareth highlights two of them:

1. Trips boards happen so infrequently that if you’re short on time it’s really not worth spending time studying them at all.
2. Monotone boards, while being somewhat tricky to play, these boards 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.

Community Reaction On Gareth’ Math

Many players praise Gareth James in the comments and share their thoughts and experiences too.

We chose examples of that to show variations of reactions, also adding Gareth’ answers on some questions.

Joey Ingram: Very interesting way to think about spot importance for studying – I usually group them by position importance but I’ve been thinking of building more training around board importance similar to this concept. I like the way you are thinking about it

James: Cheers Joey! 🙏 Are you doing more of say BTN vs BB rather than UTG vs MP because the former happens more frequently?

Ingram: Yes definitely more of that spot for my 6m study – I primarily work on cash games and HU deep stack study 

Not much for MTT training right now but this post gave me alot to think about for creating some new ways to think about spot importance

James: Got it! HU postflop strategy feels infinitely “easier” to study compared to MTTs because there are far fewer spots and no ICM:

1. Single raised pots
2. 3bet pots
3. 4-bet pots

The challenge I assume is when playing deeper and you have 5-bet and heck even 6-bet pots too? (Disclaimer: I might be biased as an MTT coach)

Stan Kriventsov: I don’t know if putting all paired boards into one category makes sense, to me, say, KK2 plays very differently from 933.

James: I agree. If you’re using aggregate reports to work out an overarching strategy for a spot then it’s nice to see how KK2 plays differently from 933 because you’ll see more betting on the former and more checks on the latter… and then you can try to work out why.

So start with paired boards, and then see where you deviate from the baseline strategy.

Taylor: Appreciate the effort and info. But this makes it easier?

James: Reducing what you need to learn from 1,755 strategically different flops to 12 should do, yeah.

Paul Otto: Will Tipton might have been the first to study flop subsets, later the PioSolver team. I don’t remember off the top of my hat but I think the 83 flop subset was large enough to give good solves while being still manageable for a human, like you’d know which 9xx existed.

James: It’s my understanding that the flop subsets were used to calculate Preflop EVs rather than being a good representation of all flops and/or help you study them effectively and efficiently. Could be wrong though, of course!

TravisT Poker Player and Streamer: I like the way you are trying to prioritize by occurrence, but the same way you split Ace highs, I guess different paired boards are different, too. But I certainly dig trying to analyze/organize how often boards happen and study accordingly.