On Saturday I posted the following two hands of limit hold'em for consideration:
Hand No. 1
Two limpers to Hero in the CO with Kc Qc. Hero raises. Big blind and both limpers call (8 small bets). Flop is Ad Jh Tc. Action checks to Hero, who bets. Big blind and one limper call (11 small bets). Turn is 6h. Action checks to Hero, who bets. Big blind check-raises, folding remaining limper. Hero 3-bets and big blind calls (11.5 big bets). River is 2h. Big blind checks. Hero ??
Hand No. 2
Two hands later, Hero is in middle position with 6s 8s. Two limpers, and Hero also limps. CO player raises. Big blind and both limpers calls. Hero closes the action with a call (10 small bets). Flop is As 7s 6h. Big blind checks, one limper bets, one fold, Hero raises. Pre-flop raiser calls, big blind folds, limper calls (16 small bets). Turn is Ac. Limper bets, Hero calls, pre-flop raisers raises, limper calls. Hero ??
My thoughts are as follows:
Hand No. 1 -- I considered what Villain's turn raise could have meant. He called through on the flop, rather than raise, eliminating hands like AK/AQ from his range. He might have been the type to slowplay AJ/AT/JT/JJ/TT/KQ on this board. What else could he have except for maybe a turned set of 6s (yes some of my opponents play that badly)? Based on all of that, "bet" seemed to be the right river play for me. I did not put him on his actual hand at all, which was Kh3h. He called the flop looking for a gutterball and backed into hearts. And of course he check-raised the river.
His raise on the turn is atrocious. Even if he thinks all of his 12 outs are clean (they're not -- 3 are to a chop), he only has 26% equity. He therefore can't be raising for value. And with two other players in the hand on a board of A-J-T in a raised pot, does he really think he can get everyone to fold?
Reading all of your comments, and thinking about it some more, I think I played this one fine and just got very unlucky. Checking behind loses too much value from a huge range of hands (a) that might check-raise the turn; (b) that I can beat; and (c) that will call a river bet.
Hand No. 2 -- I debated my action on the turn for quite a bit of time, and even remarked out loud, "Boy, that's a really shitty turn card." My read developed like this: early position bet out the flop, he probably has an ace. I raised the flop with my big draw (pair plus flush draw plus backdoor straight draw). Pre-flop raiser just called behind. Hmm. What could that mean? When the turn came down and early position bet again, I felt certain he had three aces, and the turn raise from the pre-flop raiser screamed big ace. Nothing else made sense with his pre-flop raise.
The only thing that gave me pause was the possibility that the early position player had flopped aces up or a set of 7s (with a 6 in my hand, I discounted a set of 6s). But given that he did not re-raise the flop or the turn, I felt confident he hadn't filled up yet. Most of these passive types play very straightforward poker -- if they have the goods, they bet/raise every chance they can get.
If my reads were right, I had seven clean outs to a winner. There was no spade left in the deck that could double pair the board, so the only problem was the two spades which would match each opponent's kicker and would fill them up. The pot was laying 13-to-1, a clear overlay on my 5.3-to-1 draw (7 winners out of 44 remaining cards, discounting the other two aces as being already out). But of course, there are the negative implied odds of making a flush that also makes a full house... What to do. My instinct was to call and pray. I am surprised at the number of people that said they would fold the turn. More on that below.
As it turned out, all of this was academic. I missed the river. Late position won the pot with Ad Kd for trip aces; early position flashed Ah 9c before mucking.
Jamie said "you may hit your flush that boat's up one of the villians and get squeezed for four big bets". I'm sorry -- if you get squeezed for four bets after making a flush in this hand, you suck at poker. The only way you're getting squeezed at all is if early position bets, you call, and late position raises. One of two things happens at that point: early position re-raises -- you dump your hand; early position calls -- you probably still dump your hand but since you close the action, and late position's range includes some hands you can beat, you *might* think about calling.
Consider the alternative -- early position checks, you check (you absolutely cannot bet even when you make your hand), and late position either checks if he's scared of the flush, bets his trips if he isn't scared of the flush, or bets his full house. If early position check-raises, you confidently throw away your hand -- no need to call two cold against that type of player. He has a full house 100% of the time he check-raises the river. If early position calls, you call one bet and hope for the best.
Thus the most you lose is two bets, but that's pretty unlikely. It requires early position to bet his unimproved trips into a flushing board against two opponents. More often, a spade river either costs one bet or gets checked through.
I can see the merit in the line suggested by many people of folding the turn because you could already be drawing dead. Without better evidence, however, I have a hard time putting either of my opponents on a full house. The most likely hand for the pre-flop raiser is AK/AQ/AJ. Given no re-raise on the flop or the turn from the early position player, his most likely hand is any other ace that didn't flop two pair.
After that, it's pure math. Four times out of five, you miss and fold (-1 big bet in those instances). The fifth time that you hit a spade that pairs up one of your opponents, you lose two big bets -- one on the turn, one on the river. That happens two out of the nine times you catch a spade. The other seven spades, let's assume it always checks through on the river and therefore you win 13 big bets. That makes your expectation of a turn call roughly:
(4/5 * -1) + (1/5 * ((2/9 * -2) + (7/9 * 13 [pot size on turn]))) = -0.8 + (1/5 * (-.44 + 10.1)) = -0.8 + 1.932 = 1.132
That is, for every time you call here, you can expect to earn an additional 1.132 big bets. Again, however, it assumes that neither opponent has yet made a full house. That is where hand reading comes into play. If you're not supremely confident in your reads, folding makes much more sense.
Thanks to everyone who responded. Sometimes it's useful to think about how someone else would have played a hand and evaluate the merits of other lines.
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