Comments on a hand

PokerStars Game #2611685179: Hold'em No Limit ($0.10/$0.25) - 2005/09/19 - 08:51:13 (ET)
Table 'Menippe' Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: canUtell307 ($10.05 in chips)
Seat 2: LQQKING ($36.30 in chips)
Seat 3: JACKSINHOLE ($59.60 in chips)
Seat 4: Iwind ($28.25 in chips)
Seat 6: 928racer ($24.65 in chips)
Seat 7: GordoB ($9.40 in chips)
Seat 8: issagi ($13.20 in chips)
Seat 9: firulay ($1.65 in chips)
GordoB: posts small blind $0.10
issagi: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Iwind [As Qs]
GordoB said, "yer pissing me off look"
firulay: folds
canUtell307: folds
LQQKING said, "sorry"
GordoB said, "lol"
LQQKING: raises $1.50 to $1.75
JACKSINHOLE: folds
GordoB said, "no u aint!"
LQQKING said, "lol"
Iwind: calls $1.75
palicante has returned
928racer: folds
GordoB: folds
issagi: folds
*** FLOP *** [4s Ks 5d]
LQQKING: bets $1.50
Iwind: raises $3.50 to $5
LQQKING: raises $29.55 to $34.55 and is all-in

What would you have done in situation? Would just like some unbiased opinions on would be the best thing to do in this situation, will post what I did and why afterwards . Also interesting to hear if you'd act differently before his ALL IN also.

I would have smooth called his bet and hoped to hit a spade on the turn. If you're just calling, he might give you decent odds to see a river, too.

Your raise is doubly unnecessary as you don't even have a made hand - you want to see the next card as cheaply as possible. You know that any flush will give you the nuts (straight flush excepted on his part), but you need to get there first, and there's a 65% chance you won't.

He's making what looks like a value bet here - which is great for you as it gives you pot odds to call - and he's likely, should you call, to make another value bet on the turn.

Assuming he has KK, which is certainly what he's repping (or AA - this would make sense if he puts your raise down to making top pair), then you will take his whole stack for sure should you make your flush (and he doesn't make a boat).

The answer to your question is that I would fold after his all-in. He repped strangth pre-flop and made a value bet on the flop - this means only 8 spades can be considered clean outs, and your pot odds aren't close to being good enough to justify a call.

You played the flop badly, but I hope it's clear to you why and if you learn from it, you'll be fine.

That's right, I agree now afterwards that I played the flop badly, I hoped he would just fold to my raise, as well as miscalculating my odds for the flush draw and adding a few % for my chance to make straight. What happened is that I called, he had AK and I lost quite a lot. But to look at it on the bright side, the good thing with loosing a bit on bad decisions is that I won't make the same one again.

You didn't play the flop badly. On the contrary you played it perfectly.

-You have position
-Opponent flop bet is weak
-You are drawing with an overcard
-You raised an odd amount
-There is a K or A on flop

In these situations it's a long term winning play to employ your fold equity. Especially with a K or A on board. These are the biggest rep cards. Quite often you're opponent will fold to a representation of them. Don't rely on your opponent to "give you odds". Remember this... YOU'RE NOT DRAWING UNTIL YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T PUSH YOUR OPPONENT OFF HIS HAND.

Typically, after raising like you did, the opponent will smooth call and check to you on the turn. Congratulations, you just accomplished two things... you bought a free card and you concealed your hand if the make card hits the turn. You improved your implied odds while simultaneously accomplishing the very best price to draw to 5th street. It's FREE!

There is only ONE drawback to this play, and you ran into it. Once in a while you opponent will be confident enough to repunch the pot HARD. In these cases, just fold. If this opponent continues to thwart your draw moves then call cheap flop bets only against this opponent instead of getting fancy with fold equity, and use the move on everyone else.

Don't race with a flush draw if that's what you did. This is poker not gambling. If your opponent was smart enough to realize you're drawing and wants you to race 9 outs for your pile, then give the opponent credit for a solid read and fold like a lawnchair.

Hmm, an interesting take from a player who's far better than me. The only defence I have is that I play at $25NL and Rondavu doesn't, and this is a very familiar pattern to me.

An aggressive player of probably limited talent has lain down a bet that's TOO SMALL to be a regular continuation bet (almost always 1/2 to pot size) and is itching to get at your stack. You have a solid chance of making your nut flush on the turn, and you can do this cheaply - so do it.

When you get to Rondavu's heady levels, follow his advice instead

Sooner or later you have to start using fold equity and confusion as +EV leverage. You want to create an atmosphere where you have the best chance to pull down a pot and/or increase implied odds to pull down a larger pot after disguising a draw. Calling is weak. Think about it. Is it really worth obviously drawing to a hand your opponent isn't going to pay off? Especially if they're weak enough to push off NOW. They see you drawing. Once a make card hits the pot dries up like the sahara.

At 25NL, a lot of opponents aren't smart enough to slow down when a flush hits anyway. Maybe implied odds are naturally higher without making a move like this. It may be +EV to simply draw cheap classicly and ignore the fold equity equation, since players are generally looser.

I think these moves are most effective at 50-100-200NL. Beyond that I'm only assuming that the players become good enough to reraise more often and kill your long term fold equity. I wouldn't know. The highest I've ever been is 400NL, and I was playing with a fast heartbeat. What a rush. $1,000 pots are sweet.

Interesting to get another view on this, I was not thinking like this of course, thinking to improve my implied odds by making the move and get to the river for these 5$, but it does make sense, if, like you both say, the players here are smart enough to understand the move. I think players vary a lot on the 25NL tables, some do crazy stuff that doesn't make sense at all, so I should figure out what kind of player they are first.

I have been playing for about a week now, and quite a lot that week, and I am familiar with the basic stuff, draws, pot odds, outs and how to play according to that. I also look at implied odds when I play, but I am not quite sure how you evaluate them exactly. In this case, would you evaluate the implied odds according to the pot it would be when he goes all in on the river? That is about 32$ or something around that, adding up his possible all-in bet on last round with what's already in the pot. And then my 5$ is just 1/6 of this, and with the 35% chance of flush it should give me good odds. Of course I should value my odds a little lower as it is not certain he will give river for free or just call my raise at all, but is this kind of the way you'd think? I find evaluating implied odds quite hard, and especially combining this with my read of the player, maybe it comes with experience.

An understanding of implied odds comes with experience. It's not as much a math thing. It's how likely it is you'll get payed off based on a number of factors...

-Opponent aggression
-Opponent confidence
-Opponent perception of your hand
-Your hands deception factor

A hand with good implied odds is one that both decieves your opponent, and is easy for you to escape from if it doesn't hit the flop. Suited connectors have tremendous implied odds. Small pocket pairs 22-66 have great implied odds.

Flush draws have bad implied odds, because a 3 suited board makes your opponent not want to put a lot of money in the middle. Starting to get it? Don't call raises with Ax suited. Bad odds.

Anytime you feel like you can get the best hand, while your opponent/opponents think otherwise very adamantly, you have yourself some tremendous implied odds.

There is a such thing as reverse implied odds. AK is a blackhole if played wrong in that department. It has potential for devastating reverse implied odds. It does dominate other aces however, so there is a happy side.

I think AQ is really bad for reverse implied odds. Pros hate it.

Very good explanation, thanks. Too bad it's hard to translate over to numbers though, I liked doing this and get to know my odds of winning pretty closely, so that I and can act acording to that. That there are so many factors to consider truly makes the game really interesting however, the more I play and the more stuff I read, the more I see there to learn about factors to consider when playing.

I also see how I can make a real nice profit learning more and getting better, about 70-80% of the times when I have lost some big pots I see later it is cause of some mistake that I've made. Sometimes the fold button is real hard to find when the pot gets big