Q&A #93: A River Scare Card Kicks Up A Perfect Storm

It’s a definite call when you have to be ahead 20% (4:1) but it’s a tough call when you have to be ahead 25% (3:1)???

IMO this is a standard call against most players. AA, KK, 33, AQ, KQ, QJ, QT and bluffing hands are in his range too often. If he has a flush, straight, or QQ, JJ or TT, so be it.

While foe-dependent, if you make a habit of laying down sets when scare cards hit and you are getting 2:1 or better, you are throwing away money.

If he was on a flush draw, I think you gave him good odds to call on the flop. There was 12.5 bb in the pot when you bet 15, making it 27.5 bb. It’s 10 to him to call, so he’s getting 2.75/1 pot odds. Being about 4.2/1 against hitting the flush, he only needs to find another 1.45/1 in implied pot odds (he’d actually be in worse shape than that since you have boat outs). That’s 14.5 bb more he needs to win: an easy call.

If you’d raised the pot on the flop (to 22.5 bb), you’d be giving him 2/1 pot odds, a lot harder call. I’m not saying I bet/raise the pot every time there are draws out there.

Your stacks aren’t deep enough to justify his call on the turn with even an excellent draw, so I think you bet enough.

I assume this was NL with 50 cent/$1 blinds? We usually call that NL $100 online, from the max buyin.

If I’m supposed to lay down a set in this situation, I’m not good enough to do it, getting 3/1 anyway. When your sets lose you’re having a bad session, that’s all.

Hmmm SelfMade. I think you are being a tad harsh on criticising his flop raise. True, if we knew the villain had a flush draw we’d probably bet more. However, at this stage there is no reason to belive he does have a flush draw. His range includes, top pair, overpairs, missed overs and complete bluffs. I really don’t think there is any need to be blasting him out of the pot.

You say he is 4.2/1 against hitting the flush. Again this is true. However, bear in mind that hero already has a set. In reality the villains odds of beating heroes set is over 5/1 since a few cards which complete flushes also complete full houses and quads.

I do agree this hand is nasty. I don’t think I’m good enough to lay down either getting 3 to 1. I honestly believe that calling and folding the river are so close in terms of EV that its not worth sweating over. At the end of the day, whatever hero did on the river, I feel he has played the hand well. Its just “thats poker” a bad card hit.

I’m not criticizing, AFCBeer, just discussing. As I said, I don’t bet/raise the pot every time there are draws out there. But the amount you should bet/raise with draws on the board (as there usually are) is certainly something I’m interested in discussing.

I think the hand was played good. The only decision for me is the river.

Of course you can argue whether or not you should do X pre-flop, flop, turn but in this case I agree with those streets.

The river is so ugly, I don’t think he shoves all-in with a pair or twopair here, he’d just check and want to see a free showdown.

The flushdraw and straightdraw got there. I think the river is a fold, that was my first feeling. Although in lowlimit games it can never be a big mistake to call, but I don’t like it here.

I agree that it is close though.

Haven’t seen me on posts in a while? You know why? Because NL Hold’em sucks.

I switched my game to 7 card stud about 4 months ago, and I’ll tell you what, I’m so glad I did. Game requires much more skill, much more thinking, more discipline and more patience.

As a result, all the donkey types who in hold’em continually dished out the bad beats to me are now suffering to me in stud.

NL Hold’em is a joke. It allows donkeys to capitalize. These same donkeys if they were to play me in fixed stud would be taken to the cleaners.

Ed is a great guy don’t get me wrong. But hold’em is much more psychological than stud. How can you determine someone’s play, and someone’s range when the player you are trying to read doesn’t even know what they are doing.

If the percentages worked out the way they were supposed to in NL hold’em (which I have found online and in person they never do) I would have been able to do it for a living. But the donkey magic in NL hold’em is amazing… and I’m not talking about losing with 2 pair… I’m talking about flopping sets and they call all-in’s with gut-shots and catch.

Since I have changed my game to stud, my success has increased 10 fold. I am a consistent and profitable player making good money playing 10-20 stud in person.

Poker is a war of information… and a war of patience. Stud is leaps and bounds better than hold’em because I use my patience and the extra information to my advantage to destroy the donkeys.

Donkeys may prevail in NL hold’em but they get destroyed in stud.

I saw Chris Moneymaker in person last week. And do you know what I saw? A poker player no better than myself, who just happened to get lucky.

Moneymaker was the best thing and the worst thing for poker all rolled up in one.

Every donkey and computer geek now thinks they can be a poker pro. Unfortunately all these donkeys are playing NL Hold’em and not stud. If they were to play stud they would be wiped out quickly by good players. But since hold’em is more of a game of luck they can occasionally win and stick around.

The WSOP is a sucker’s bet. You vs. 2000+ computer geeks. Even the best poker player in the world can’t stand up to that mob.

I think most poker players who do NL tourneys are donkeys. They watch the game on TV and think they can play.

It’s unfortunate that the fish mostly play NL hold’em because that is what they see on TV.

Stud is a dieing game… because it’s not advertised like hold’em… and because you need more than half a brain to be successful at it at the bigger limits…

yes

this is why NL hold’em sucks

switch to fixed stud and eat the donkeys alive

I think you played the hand fine, apart from the turn bet, which as Ed has already pointed out is where you could have bet more.

When you bet 30 into 37.5, you are giving the villain pot odds of 2.25 to 1, which is fine to price out any remaining draws. The problem is the 50BB you have left behind. This means villain is calling 30 to win a possible 117.50, which is nearly 4 to 1. If he has naked flush draw then he is not getting the right odds because you have a set and he only has 7 outs instead of 9 (although he wont know that). But if he is playing AhKh then the extra 3 gutshot outs make this roughly a break even call for him.

So AFCBeer is right when he says that calling or folding the river are pretty much the same in terms of EV.

On the turn, I think if you did a rough calculation as to the implied odds you were laying the villain and saw that it was nearly 4 to 1, you would see that you needed to bet more to ensure that him calling was –EV. You would also see that the 50BB you had left would mean you were getting 3-1 on a river push and that this would be difficult to lay down whatever card fell.

Given all of that I like betting the pot on the turn, which then means the hand plays itself on the river. Bet the pot on the turn and you are not offering adequate implied odds for him to call profitably, so you can get all in whatever falls on the river and know that your turn play was still profitable for you.

A couple notes about the flop bet size discussion:

- If villian is on a flush draw, he most likely only has 8 turn outs to a winning hand, giving him about 4.9-to-1 to hit. The 8 is either in our hero’s hand, or is most likely still in the deck and would give hero quads over a flush if it hits (although there is a chance that villian has 8:heart: x:heart:, in which case he does have the full 9 outs)

- While we may be giving some implied odds on the flush outs that don’t improve our hand, we have some offsetting advantages:
- Position. We’ll be able to react better if a flush out hits.
- Our redraw to a full-house or better gives us our own supply of implied odds. This allows us to profitably give him better odds than we could if hitting a flush guarantees him a win.

Also, I agree with Beer’s comments about the FD only being part of his range. Playing as if we always had to shut out his stronger draws isn’t always going to be the profit maximizing move.

Thanks Ed, for deconstructing the hand - I ended up having a tough day so to see something positive come out of it is a plus! Thanks also to those guys here, and on the message board, who shared their thoughts (and yes, it was 100NL). At times I feel like playing poker online can be a pretty lonely pastime, so just to get a little feedback even, was a buzz. In the end, after being put in a bind on the river, I can look back now and think that, yeah, a bigger bet on the turn would have made things much easier as I would have been ‘committed’. As it was, I felt pretty much committed anyway, but now I feel a lot wiser as to the thought processes of what more experienced players go through, which is really useful.

Also, I just got your latest book in the post Ed, and after a quick read through I can see that a lot of what you’re talking about is in the book - I can see myself reading about SPR and the Commitment Threshold again, again and again!

(By the way, I know that we don’t always want to be results oriented, but I did end up making the call even though I *felt* beat, and was then shown the 6h 7h, for the flush. I then promptly felt sick…)

hi Ed,

would you explain why does B&M turns the call into a fold? because i think one could argue either way: e.g. you should call so that people try to bluff you less, or you should fold to establish a tighter image, so that you can bluff more later. it’s obvious that table-image weighs more in a live game, but in this case i’m not sure what image you’re trying to create…
(or maybe it has nothing to do with the image - c’mon, just explain it a little more.

thanx,
lamer

Ducks is 100% right. Limit hold-em is worse, but the donkey plays I see constantly are maddening. Playing tourneys is a quick way to make a profit, which is why I and a lot of players play them. Any good player though will stick to Omaha and Stud, or they will just play the NL cash games. A lot of your donks will cower to bets for real money, when a loss of chips means a loss of real cash. That being said, pot odds are important, but donks swear by them. I think that chip stack size and position at table should have a lot to do with how you play a certain hand. I tend to play small pots and will occasionally fold the best hand, especially if I know two guys will show down, to see how people play hands. Once you know, then you strike. Even though this guy was chasing, I wouldn’t have bet the flop and pop the turn to see if this guy would fire. That way, you didn’t build up a pot you can’t avoid losing more chips to on the river. If a draw hits the river, you can get out without overextending your chip stack. Each plays differently, but I like to pick my spots and put max chips in only when I am stone bluffing or have a monster.