Garbage hand wins a nice pot.

PokerStars Game #1639602257: Hold'em No Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2005/05/04 - 23:53:03 (ET)
Table 'Palatia' Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: dsaxton ($57.75 in chips)
Seat 2: stackem88 ($68.25 in chips)
Seat 3: badandy22 ($99 in chips)
Seat 4: stoneballer ($38 in chips)
Seat 5: Hudson II ($124.60 in chips)
Seat 6: Blkdog ($179.25 in chips)
Seat 7: 4under ($148.10 in chips)
Seat 8: Geopals ($259 in chips)
Seat 9: BUTCH 7 WINS ($33.35 in chips)
badandy22: posts small blind $0.50
stoneballer: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to dsaxton [6s 3c]
Hudson II: raises $3 to $4
Blkdog: folds
4under: folds
Geopals: folds
BUTCH 7 WINS: folds
dsaxton: calls $4
stackem88: folds
badandy22: folds
stoneballer: calls $3
*** FLOP *** [5c 3h 2s]
stoneballer: checks
Hudson II: bets $5
dsaxton: calls $5
stoneballer: raises $5 to $10
Hudson II: calls $5
dsaxton: calls $5
*** TURN *** [5c 3h 2s] [4s]
stoneballer: checks
Hudson II: checks
dsaxton: bets $43.75 and is all-in
stoneballer: calls $24 and is all-in
Hudson II: folds
*** RIVER *** [5c 3h 2s 4s] [Ac]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
stoneballer: shows [As 4d] (a straight, Ace to Five)
dsaxton: shows [6s 3c] (a straight, Deuce to Six)
Geopals said, "wow"
dsaxton collected $87.50 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $90.50 | Rake $3
Board [5c 3h 2s 4s Ac]
Seat 1: dsaxton showed [6s 3c] and won ($87.50) with a straight, Deuce to Six
Seat 2: stackem88 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: badandy22 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: stoneballer (big blind) showed [As 4d] and lost with a straight, Ace to Five
Seat 5: Hudson II folded on the Turn
Seat 6: Blkdog folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: 4under folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Geopals folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: BUTCH 7 WINS folded before Flop (didn't bet)

fear that one

my god i would hate playing with you. how much have you been making playing like this saxton? i might give it a whirl myself...

is it obvious that you play crap all the time, or do you sit out a lot of hands and just occasionally play some rags? what's your preflop fold percentage or whatever..

This is a bit baffling to me, frankly. You called a raise with a near-useless hand (it's not suited, it's two-gapped, and it's low cards), flopped nothing but a very low middle pair and a gutshot draw, and stayed in on the flop with a bet ahead of you and someone still to act behind you (who unsurprisingly raised - and you called that too)? I don't advocate playing strictly textbook poker all the time, but this seems like you were just playing to drive someone else crazy, not make money. I guess if Hudson had stayed in there was at least better implied odds, but as it turned out you didn't get near enough money to warrant the earlier loose calls.

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Originally Posted by ender555

my god i would hate playing with you. how much have you been making playing like this saxton? i might give it a whirl myself...

is it obvious that you play crap all the time, or do you sit out a lot of hands and just occasionally play some rags? what's your preflop fold percentage or whatever..

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I fold usually, but occasionally I play rags for a raise, and sometimes I'll call a raise with them for the challenge. Lately I've been finding that poker is a lot more fun when you play a wider range of hands.

I have experimented some with a pretty loose and aggressive style, raising a lot of trashy hands, but haven't been lately because I don't think my bankroll can handle the variance right now.

It just doesn't seem like it would be profitable at all in the long run. Yeah, when you hit you will get paid off big willy style, but how often are you going to hit it like that?

Most of the time you'll be throwing money away here.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

This is a bit baffling to me, frankly. You called a raise with a near-useless hand (it's not suited, it's two-gapped, and it's low cards), flopped nothing but a very low middle pair and a gutshot draw, and stayed in on the flop with a bet ahead of you and someone still to act behind you (who unsurprisingly raised - and you called that too)? I don't advocate playing strictly textbook poker all the time, but this seems like you were just playing to drive someone else crazy, not make money. I guess if Hudson had stayed in there was at least better implied odds, but as it turned out you didn't get near enough money to warrant the earlier loose calls.

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I can flop the best hand, or I can win through a bluff if I miss. I wasn't really intending on bluffing this hand necessarily, I was just interested in the challenge of playing a new situation. Here I flopped a pair and an inside straight draw, which is a fairly good flop for my hand. I have 5 outs for two pair or three of a kind, and 4 for the second nut straight. When the one guy check-raised, I figured I may be drawing dead to the straight, but I had a fairly good price to chase my hand to the turn.

did you guys ever read Daniels article in Cardplayer a while ago...he talks about how when he was learning the game once a month he would have what he called "Party Day". He woudl be raising and reraising with trash hands. just playing about loose and aggressive as you can. he goal for these days was to just break even. he now says that he learned more about playing winning poker during these days then any others

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Originally Posted by Ultimate George

It just doesn't seem like it would be profitable at all in the long run. Yeah, when you hit you will get paid off big willy style, but how often are you going to hit it like that?

Most of the time you'll be throwing money away here.

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I don't necessarily have to play the hand for value. He can miss with overcards and allow me to take the pot, or can have a made hand on the flop and I can represent a better one on later streets. I wasn't really planning on doing that here, but there are other ways of winning than at a showdown.

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Originally Posted by dsaxton

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Originally Posted by Ultimate George

It just doesn't seem like it would be profitable at all in the long run. Yeah, when you hit you will get paid off big willy style, but how often are you going to hit it like that?

Most of the time you'll be throwing money away here.

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I don't necessarily have to play the hand for value. He can miss with overcards and allow me to take the pot, or can have a made hand on the flop and I can represent a better one on later streets. I wasn't really planning on doing that here, but there are other ways of winning than at a showdown.

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That's true, but that's also true about better cards than 63o... any hand can win in the right situations, and given the right opponent. To me that's just what I'd call a "fudge factor" kind of like implied odds. If you're a good player you can fudge the pot odds a little bit based on your ability to outplay your opponent and win despite having the lesser hand. But I don't like to lean too heavily on it.

I understand what you're saying though. I've been experimenting a lot lately with playing & raising garbage hands. Playing like Negreanu suggests is a real learning experience - just try to raise all the time with basically any two cards, and see if you can break even over a long session. It can really hone your post-flop play.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

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Originally Posted by dsaxton

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Originally Posted by Ultimate George

It just doesn't seem like it would be profitable at all in the long run. Yeah, when you hit you will get paid off big willy style, but how often are you going to hit it like that?

Most of the time you'll be throwing money away here.

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I don't necessarily have to play the hand for value. He can miss with overcards and allow me to take the pot, or can have a made hand on the flop and I can represent a better one on later streets. I wasn't really planning on doing that here, but there are other ways of winning than at a showdown.

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That's true, but that's also true about better cards than 63o... any hand can win in the right situations, and given the right opponent. To me that's just what I'd call a "fudge factor" kind of like implied odds. If you're a good player you can fudge the pot odds a little bit based on your ability to outplay your opponent and win despite having the lesser hand. But I don't like to lean too heavily on it.

I understand what you're saying though. I've been experimenting a lot lately with playing & raising garbage hands. Playing like Negreanu suggests is a real learning experience - just try to raise all the time with basically any two cards, and see if you can break even over a long session. It can really hone your post-flop play.

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You can make an argument that your opponent is more likely to have nothing than a hand on the flop, and so if you're willing to bluff, you're justified in calling his raise with essentially any two cards. I'm not necessarily advocating this approach, but saying that a case can be made for it.

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Originally Posted by dsaxton

You can make an argument that your opponent is more likely to have nothing than a hand on the flop, and so if you're willing to bluff, you're justified in calling his raise with essentially any two cards. I'm not necessarily advocating this approach, but saying that a case can be made for it.

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I think you're right, but to me it applies more to heads-up (or at least isolated going to the flop) than a ring game with 3 or 4 calling. One of the hands most likely to call any pre-flop raise is a pocket pair, and those hands have something even before you do. If the flop comes out a bunch of low cards, you may be right that the original raiser's AK or AQ is no good, but Mr. Pocket 8s may be grinning from ear to ear. In short, to employ this as a winning strategy, I'd prefer to be the only caller, or be the one doing the raising before the flop. It can be awfully hard to bluff a player off an overpair, even if he wasn't the original raiser, and his pair is 8s to a board of 2 4 6.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

This is a bit baffling to me, frankly. You called a raise with a near-useless hand (it's not suited, it's two-gapped, and it's low cards), flopped nothing but a very low middle pair and a gutshot draw, and stayed in on the flop with a bet ahead of you and someone still to act behind you (who unsurprisingly raised - and you called that too)? I don't advocate playing strictly textbook poker all the time, but this seems like you were just playing to drive someone else crazy, not make money. I guess if Hudson had stayed in there was at least better implied odds, but as it turned out you didn't get near enough money to warrant the earlier loose calls.

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pay more attention, the guy raising has saxton covered, implied odds are enormous.. if saxon hits 2 pair or better he had a very high chance of doubling up.

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Originally Posted by Element187

pay more attention, the guy raising has saxton covered, implied odds are enormous.. if saxon hits 2 pair or better he had a very high chance of doubling up.

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Excuse me - "pay more attention"? Am I back in math class? Mr. Reynolds, is that you? :D

I've posted on these very boards - twice - about the strategy of calling pre-flop raises with low hands and taking someone's stack. The difference is, I advocate a very specific type of hand: low suited connectors or suited gapped cards, 4 and up. So the least hand I would call a raise with would be 45 suited or 46 suited. The reason is obvious - these hands give you a decent chance at flopping something "two pair or better." Two pair won't flop very often at all, but you've also given yourself a good chance to flop a flush, flush draw, straight, or straight draw.

With 36o you've got no flush possibilities at all. The odds of flopping two pair or trips are almost insignificant, so essentially you're chasing a straight - and since the hand is two-gapped and low, you're not as likely to flop a straight or straight draw like you want. For example if I play 56, I can flop any of these and feel good about it: 34x, 47x, 78x, 234, 347, 478, 789. If I play 36, what am I looking for? 45x, 245, or 457... that's it. Any other flop gives you a gutshot draw and then you're stuck folding or calling raises for horrible pot odds, which means losing money in the long run.

Implied odds... what you need to make on the hand is enough to cover your marginal (or we could just say "bad") call pre-flop. If you call a $4 raise pre-flop, you need to get that back in a great enough amount when you hit to cover all the times you miss and have to fold. Even if we count straight draws as made hands, and ignore the possibility of a low two pair getting counterfeited and costing you money, you're still talking about a chance of hitting the flop well under 10% with a hand like this. So to give this play +EV, or just break-even EV, you have to get something like 12 to 15x that raise on the rest of the hand. Here he's got a stack of $53 after calling the pre-flop raise; that's barely inside the range we're talking about, and he has to get his opponent to double him up pretty much every time he hits.

In my obviously-not-very-humble opinion, implied odds is a shorthand for "I'll call whatever I want as long as he's got some money left and I've got some money left." Good, winning poker players actually calculate those implied odds to the best of their ability; they don't just hope to make enough to pull it out in the end. Calling a 3xBB raise with 63o, I have to say, is almost guaranteed to be a -EV play unless both you and your opponent have something like 70xBB in your respective stacks, and the raiser is aggressive enough to pay you off even on an unhelpful flop - which you'll notice, this one was, and the raiser folded the hand.

(No offense saxton - I still say there's at least educational value in playing these hands from time to time and trying to break even or better with them. But I do think if you're just trying to win money on this hand, and not learn something specific about loose play, there's almost no part of this hand that was a good move. Basically every call here is a loose call that will lose money in the long run.)

More in-depth about played low cards for a raise:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...er=asc&start=0

I posted twice in here down toward the bottom of the first page. The second post includes some statistical information about the likelihood of flopping a real hand, and what kinds of payoffs you need to make it worth calling the initial raise. Notice that my best estimate was that even with a "good" low hand - low suited connectors - you'll win on the strength of the hand alone only about 10% of the time. Even if you bump that up to 15%, that still means you need to pull in 8-10x the amount of the pre-flop raise when you win to make that call a +EV play. And that's with suited connectors. With a non-suited, two-gapped hand like 36o, I wouldn't even want to figure out how much money you need to make to get to +EV. Of course, if you're a savant like Ripptyde who can play for a low pair and take AK's entire stack, more power to you; but most players are going to want to have something a little better than a pair of threes or a pair of sixes, because those hands are really hard to play correctly & your opponent still has very good outs if there are two cards to come.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

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Originally Posted by Element187

pay more attention, the guy raising has saxton covered, implied odds are enormous.. if saxon hits 2 pair or better he had a very high chance of doubling up.

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Excuse me - "pay more attention"? Am I back in math class? Mr. Reynolds, is that you? :D

I've posted on these very boards - twice - about the strategy of calling pre-flop raises with low hands and taking someone's stack. The difference is, I advocate a very specific type of hand: low suited connectors or suited gapped cards, 4 and up. So the least hand I would call a raise with would be 45 suited or 46 suited. The reason is obvious - these hands give you a decent chance at flopping something "two pair or better." Two pair won't flop very often at all, but you've also given yourself a good chance to flop a flush, flush draw, straight, or straight draw.

With 36o you've got no flush possibilities at all. The odds of flopping two pair or trips are almost insignificant, so essentially you're chasing a straight - and since the hand is two-gapped and low, you're not as likely to flop a straight or straight draw like you want. For example if I play 56, I can flop any of these and feel good about it: 34x, 47x, 78x, 234, 347, 478, 789. If I play 36, what am I looking for? 45x, 245, or 457... that's it. Any other flop gives you a gutshot draw and then you're stuck folding or calling raises for horrible pot odds, which means losing money in the long run.

Implied odds... what you need to make on the hand is enough to cover your marginal (or we could just say "bad") call pre-flop. If you call a $4 raise pre-flop, you need to get that back in a great enough amount when you hit to cover all the times you miss and have to fold. Even if we count straight draws as made hands, and ignore the possibility of a low two pair getting counterfeited and costing you money, you're still talking about a chance of hitting the flop well under 10% with a hand like this. So to give this play +EV, or just break-even EV, you have to get something like 12 to 15x that raise on the rest of the hand. Here he's got a stack of $53 after calling the pre-flop raise; that's barely inside the range we're talking about, and he has to get his opponent to double him up pretty much every time he hits.

In my obviously-not-very-humble opinion, implied odds is a shorthand for "I'll call whatever I want as long as he's got some money left and I've got some money left." Good, winning poker players actually calculate those implied odds to the best of their ability; they don't just hope to make enough to pull it out in the end. Calling a 3xBB raise with 63o, I have to say, is almost guaranteed to be a -EV play unless both you and your opponent have something like 70xBB in your respective stacks, and the raiser is aggressive enough to pay you off even on an unhelpful flop - which you'll notice, this one was, and the raiser folded the hand.

(No offense saxton - I still say there's at least educational value in playing these hands from time to time and trying to break even or better with them. But I do think if you're just trying to win money on this hand, and not learn something specific about loose play, there's almost no part of this hand that was a good move. Basically every call here is a loose call that will lose money in the long run.)

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Did you read the rest of the thread? I said that the hand does not have to be played for value, which is what your argument assumes. There are other ways of winning in poker than through having the best hand. I can win through a bluff on the flop in a wide range of situations (he could have unimproved overcards, or could have a made hand before the flop and be confronted with a scary flop), or I can represent a hand on later streets. I don't need "implied odds" to call.

And how is my calling a medium-sized bet on the flop a loose call with a pair and an inside straight draw? I probably have 9 outs to make a winning hand, and there's even a chance that I already have a winning hand.

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Originally Posted by dsaxton

Did you read the rest of the thread? I said that the hand does not have to be played for value, which is what your argument assumes. There are other ways of winning in poker than through having the best hand. I can win through a bluff on the flop in a wide range of situations (he could have unimproved overcards, or could have a made hand before the flop and be confronted with a scary flop), or I can represent a hand on later streets. I don't need "implied odds" to call.

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I mentioned that already, I could have sworn. To me that's a fallback position. You have to know you can outplay your opponents on the flop to use this to fudge the hand's EV. Daniel Negreanu can play any two cards against me and profit with most of them, I'm sure, but the rest of us mortals are bluffing each other all the time. I just assume that the bluffing basically washes out in the end, and I don't factor it into a hand's EV at any point.

For that matter, a certain amount of players are loose and/or aggro enough that bluffing is not really a possibility. Let's say you both flop nothing and you're in there repping whatever hand, and he goes all in with overcards - your bluff's dead in the water. It doesn't matter if he's bluffing back at you or is just a big fish or a big maniac; you can't always bail out a hand with a timely, optimal bluff.

To me, if you're a good player and optimal bluffer, it adds like 1 or 2% to the EV of every hand you play. That's about it. It shouldn't be part of your thinking when you make calls pre-flop, unless you are deliberately trying to win just by bluffing and making thin calls - i.e. what Negreanu does sometimes. But even he does it often just as an exercise, not to actually make money. He calls the style "Nutbar" and says when he plays that way, he usually just tries to break even, not win anything. That should tell you something right there. A real pro player known for making great post-flop reads and playing pretty loose just tries to not lose money with hands like these. Granted, he's playing better competition, but we're a lot worse than him.

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And how is my calling a medium-sized bet on the flop a loose call with a pair and an inside straight draw? I probably have 9 outs to make a winning hand, and there's even a chance that I already have a winning hand.

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I don't mind your call on the flop as much as your call pre-flop, but I do think it's loose. If he has an overpair you're just trying to suck out. If someone flopped a set or the straight (as happened here) you're way behind & trying to suck out. My opinion, if you think you're ahead there (i.e. playing overcards) you should raise right there and find out. If you think you're behind, I'd count about 7 probable clean outs (nudged downward for the possibility that making two pair won't be good enough to win), and tend to think that the pot odds don't support that call. It's borderline/loose... the pre-flop call was not too borderline/really loose. Also dangerous since there were others left to act. The more people see this flop, the worse it is for your hand.

Dan Harrington's book talks about not calling with marginal draws when the pot odds may be OK (or implied odds, or whatever) but there are still people left to act. The more people there are left to act, particularly if it's the original raiser, the more likely it is that you'll have to call a raise to stay in. You increase your EV by often folding a questionable hand that against one opponent (or when you were last to act) you would certainly call. I think he refers to this as the "sandwich effect" or something like that. Say I was in a hand where I played 78 suited for a raise and flopped a flush draw, but there are 4 in the hand and I am second to act, and the table is fairly aggressive. First player bets 2/3 of the pot. I'm not getting great pot odds here (in fact they are bad odds for even a flush draw) but I call because the implied odds are good, as we both have deep stacks. But then one of the players behind me raises, and the first player re-raises; now I'm paying a lot for my flush draw, and the pot's getting really dangerous. That's what you want to try to avoid. I'm not saying fold every draw when there's a couple people playing, but keep it in mind when you don't know how clean your outs are and the call is razor-thin to begin with.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

To me that's a fallback position. You have to know you can outplay your opponents on the flop to use this to fudge the hand's EV. Daniel Negreanu can play any two cards against me and profit with most of them, I'm sure, but the rest of us mortals are bluffing each other all the time. I just assume that the bluffing basically washes out in the end, and I don't factor it into a hand's EV at any point.

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It's not really rocket science. If you suspect he's weak you raise his bet or bet when he checks and take it down. Statistically, he's going to be weak the majority of the time anyways.

Aside from that, I think you're taking too mathematical an approach to this game with constant talk about "expected value." Poker is not a game where you're given some numbers, you type them into a calculator and find your "expected return." You have to intuit probabilities based on nebulous information and come up with a rough measure of which gambles are worthwhile and which aren't. There isn't much room for any kind of rigor in poker.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

For that matter, a certain amount of players are loose and/or aggro enough that bluffing is not really a possibility. Let's say you both flop nothing and you're in there repping whatever hand, and he goes all in with overcards - your bluff's dead in the water. It doesn't matter if he's bluffing back at you or is just a big fish or a big maniac; you can't always bail out a hand with a timely, optimal bluff.

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Huh? I don't understand this at all. You're saying that bluffing is not realistic because you can expect the other guy to come over the top even if he has nothing? Strange.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

If he has an overpair you're just trying to suck out.

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"Sucking out" is always what you're trying to do when you call with a draw. Does that mean you should never call a bet with a draw, because "suck out" is a bad term in poker?

Anyways, I only have to suck out if he actually does have a hand, and his weak bet looked like a post-oak bluff with overcards.

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Originally Posted by dalecooper

My opinion, if you think you're ahead there (i.e. playing overcards) you should raise right there and find out.

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I'm not going to raise and get involved in a big pot with a marginal made hand when I can't even confidently conclude that I have the best one.

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Honestly, I don't really see the point in analyzing this hand to death, considering I was playing it for fun more than anything else. I didn't know the poker police were going to arrest me for playing the hand.

This discussion has like -1% EV.

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Originally Posted by dsaxton

Honestly, I don't really see the point in analyzing this hand to death, considering I was playing it for fun more than anything else. I didn't know the poker police were going to arrest me for playing the hand.

This discussion has like -1% EV.

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Hey, if you have no interest in this, I'll stop talking about it. I was just having a friendly discussion here, and I kind of thought that was why we all came to this forum - to discuss how to play poker better. I'm not arresting you or telling you to play my way. I already mentioned a couple times that I make similar (albeit slightly different) plays on a regular basis, and have spent some time experimenting with playing like this just to learn from the experience. I don't think this is the worst play I've ever seen or anything, I just think it's kinda loose and on the wrong side of break-even. Just my opinion, you're certainly entitled to disagree, and it doesn't trouble me at all if you do.

On the off chance you are over-exaggerating your disinterest though, I'd still like to address the points you brought up.

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It's not really rocket science. If you suspect he's weak you raise his bet or bet when he checks and take it down. Statistically, he's going to be weak the majority of the time anyways.

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I understand that, I'm just saying that I don't think you can really factor in bluffing as part of your EV unless you know for sure you're better at it than he is. EV is a long-term concept. It only makes sense to think to yourself "I can play this hand and maybe bluff my way to victory" if you also think "I am better at bluffing than the average guy at this table, and therefore my bluffing success percentage will give me more wiggle room." To me, bluffing can make up for a lot if you're playing at a tight table where most players fold to big bets, and project their weakness in an obvious manner. If you have one or more tricky, aggressive opponents in the pot with you, bluffing is a risk that may result in no positive or negative expectation in the long run. Sometimes you bluff and win, sometimes they bluff and you lose, sometimes you bluff and get called (or raised, or re-bluffed) and lose. Without a read on all the people who are in the pot with you, you can't know for sure that bluffing is going to bail you out if your hand misses badly. It would be nice to think it always could - if so, I could play any two cards for any raise and expect to win in the end.

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Aside from that, I think you're taking too mathematical an approach to this game with constant talk about "expected value." Poker is not a game where you're given some numbers, you type them into a calculator and find your "expected return." You have to intuit probabilities based on nebulous information and come up with a rough measure of which gambles are worthwhile and which aren't. There isn't much room for any kind of rigor in poker.

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Chris Ferguson, Dan Harrington (WSOP winners) and David Sklansky (you know who he is) would emphatically disagree with you. I'm nowhere near as big a math nerd as they are. But math is a HUGE part of winning poker. It just is. The best, most intuitive player in the world still benefits from having at least a rough mathematical understanding of the odds of hitting his draws, or staying ahead of opponents who are on draws. You almost can't win in the long run in this game without at least understanding pot odds and the percentages on common drawing hands.

I don't actually do much math during games, but sometimes there's almost no other way to approach a problem. You don't always have good information or a great read. The trickier your opponents are, the more important it is to understand the long-term implications of decisions you make. That's what is so beautiful about Poker Tracker. If you think a hand is a good one to play, run it in your PT database and see what it's actually doing for you. A lot of plays like this although educational and fun, are basically leaks that cost you money. For example I play a lot of 47o because it's funny and I love posting the hand histories on here, but I know it's a losing hand for me; and if I get concerned about my bankroll for some reason, I'm going to stop playing it.

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Huh? I don't understand this at all. You're saying that bluffing is not realistic because you can expect the other guy to come over the top even if he has nothing? Strange.

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I'm saying if you are against the type of player who is super-aggressive or super-loose, bluffing is meaningless. You can't bluff a player who will call or raise you no matter what you do. Therefore the option to bluff does nothing for the EV of your hand; it's all about whether or not you'll win by the river. Against a player like that, all you can do is get your money in when you have the best of it, and hope.

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"Sucking out" is always what you're trying to do when you call with a draw. Does that mean you should never call a bet with a draw, because "suck out" is a bad term in poker?

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No, that's not what I meant... to me sucking out means calling with bad pot odds and not enough implied value and hoping to win anyway. Any time you are just saying "screw it" and calling & hoping, and then you win, that's a suckout. There are good reasons to call bets or make bets when you are behind, but just calling and hoping with longshot draws is bad poker. I'm not saying your play here was "bad poker," but I hope you see my point about this expression.

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I'm not going to raise and get involved in a big pot with a marginal made hand when I can't even confidently conclude that I have the best one.

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If you can't conclude you have the best hand on the flop, then you have to think your outs may not be clean, which gives you less of a chance of winning and makes those pot odds on that call more formidable... see what I mean? I'd be happy to raise here if I really thought my hand was best, but given the possibility that it isn't, that's why I would usually fold.