Fold here?

[dalecooper]

I'm not so much asking if you think he had the flush - more if you think it's a good move to fold in this kind of situation over the long run. If his bet had been smaller I would have been more inclined to call... not necessarily because the bet size indicates "yes, he has the flush" but more because it seems like he only needs to have it 2/3 of the time for this to be a negative expectation call for me. Basically, if I am working this out right, I have to give him a 33% chance of bluffing here just to break even.

(By the way, this result was partly my own fault for juicing the pot instead of laying down a real raise on the flop. But I suspect that if he was after the flush, he wouldn't have folded to a pot-sized bet anyway, seeing as the pot wasn't very large and this table was loaded with limpers and chasers.)

***** Hand History for Game 1459683640 *****
$25 PL Hold'em - Wednesday, January 19, 13:32:46 EDT 2005
Table Do the freak (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 8
Seat 3: malkroff ( $19.5 )
Seat 4: acerman32 ( $10.58 )
Seat 6: sturmgewhr ( $25.35 )
Seat 7: nbslim ( $26.72 )
Seat 9: POOKYTIME ( $38.55 )
Seat 10: alex89125 ( $32.6 )
Seat 5: stressball10 ( $37.3 )
Seat 1: jmonty43 ( $20.5 )
POOKYTIME posts small blind [$0.25].
jmonty43 posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to stressball10 [ 8c 8s ]
malkroff folds.
acerman32 calls [$0.5].
stressball10 calls [$0.5].
sturmgewhr folds.
nbslim folds.
POOKYTIME calls [$0.25].
jmonty43 checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8d, Ad, 6h ]
POOKYTIME bets [$0.5].
jmonty43 folds.
acerman32 calls [$0.5].
stressball10 raises [$1].
POOKYTIME calls [$0.5].
acerman32 calls [$0.5].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]
POOKYTIME checks.
acerman32 checks.
stressball10 bets [$2].
POOKYTIME calls [$2].
acerman32 calls [$2].
** Dealing River ** [ 3s ]
POOKYTIME bets [$10].
acerman32 folds.
stressball10 folds.
POOKYTIME does not show cards.
POOKYTIME wins $20.45

[SteveO]

Well seems like a good laydown to me but you know it's your own fault for letting him get to the river so cheap. It's been said 1000 times that its better to win a small pot w/ the set than lose a big one.

On some occasions I make that call just to keep him honest with his crappy A or crappy Arag 2 pair.

You have to bet the pot or 3/4 on turn.

[a500lbgorilla]

It's a good fold becuase the pot was so small.

Gee, I wonder who's fault that was.

Show some nuts with the nuts, boy.

-'rilla

[dalecooper]

Well seems like a good laydown to me but you know it's your own fault for letting him get to the river so cheap. It's been said 1000 times that its better to win a small pot w/ the set than lose a big one.
...
You have to bet the pot or 3/4 on turn.

I would most always bet about 3/4 on the turn, but I suspected the flush there and wanted to draw out a check-raise (if one was coming) as cheaply as possible. My feeling was that the real problem here was my flop bet, not the turn bet. He either had the flush or he didn't, by the turn. The turn bet was still about half the pot so he wasn't getting ideal pot odds for a flush draw anyway, if that was what he had (say, one high diamond). Arguably I could have made that a $3 bet instead of $2, which makes his odds worse, but my real goal at that point is to find out if he has the flush, not to give him bad drawing odds.

Show some nuts with the nuts, boy.

You bastige. Yeah, that I know. I had slipped into a quasi-slowplaying mode because I was running hot and winning all my showdowns. It was admittedly a mistake. I really should have bet harder and protected the hand.

[dalecooper]

By the way, I should mention that part of the reason for the less aggressive betting is that I'm deliberately trying the Harrington approach to no-limit. I'm just reading his recent book and I want to see how the style suits me. As he points out, a lot of times you don't have to bet the whole pot to give people unfavorable pot odds, and I find that the smaller swings in my stack make me a happier poker player. No tilt at all for me in the last few days, even when cards were cold. That doesn't excuse the micro-raise on the flop, but still...

Good fold, but you really should have raised it up much more than minmum on the flop.