A POKER PROBLEM FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
i am in the cut-off with 5 callers already in and i have the Kh, Qh, i cold call and so does the button. 7 people see the flop.
flop is Ah, Th, 9h. i have flopped the nut flush with a draw to the royal.
everyone checks to me and i check. the button bets 15 dollars into a 14 dollar pot and everyone folds back to me. i call.
the turn is the Kd. i check and button bets 20 dollars, i raise to 50 dollars and he calls.
the river is the ace of diamonds pairing the board.
THE QUESTION IS HOW DO I PLAY THIS NOW? THE OBVIOUS WORSE CASE POSSIBILITY IS, OF COURSE, A FULL HOUSE.
more info: my opponent is a middle aged man of indian descent. he has been passive up to now and has dwindled away about 80 dollars of his 200 buy in when this hand happens. by the river he has about 70-74 dollars left.
i will leave this up until i get some response from you players out there.
flop is Ah, Th, 9h. i have flopped the nut flush with a draw to the royal.
everyone checks to me and i check. the button bets 15 dollars into a 14 dollar pot and everyone folds back to me. i call.
the turn is the Kd. i check and button bets 20 dollars, i raise to 50 dollars and he calls.
the river is the ace of diamonds pairing the board.
THE QUESTION IS HOW DO I PLAY THIS NOW? THE OBVIOUS WORSE CASE POSSIBILITY IS, OF COURSE, A FULL HOUSE.
more info: my opponent is a middle aged man of indian descent. he has been passive up to now and has dwindled away about 80 dollars of his 200 buy in when this hand happens. by the river he has about 70-74 dollars left.
i will leave this up until i get some response from you players out there.
posted by Ron Shock | 8:55 AM
7 Comments:
Wow,
That's a hard one. You can't put him on aces or he would have raised preflop. You can put in Ace King which sucks. I play online more than live and so I would put him on a straight and balls or a lower flush.
There is a enough in the pot to satisfy my lust, so I would probably check the river and call any bet. Now, having said that, if I am going to call any bet, why not put him in and get some fold equity.
I think this one comes down to sitting and waiting and watching and getting a read.
I am not good enough to fold the nut-flush here and would want all the money in.
thom ingram
poetguru.com
--
Ron, I love you as a comedian and LOVE that you play poker and blog. You bring thought, joy and cards to the world. Thanks.
On the river, I think your choices are pretty simple. You can either bet to put him all-in or check and then call a bet if the button offers one. I really don't think you can ever lay this down, even if the button moves all-in behind your check. So, I guess I'd have to push, since I'm going to call anyway.
If I had to guess the button's hole cards, I'd guess Q-J. That holding fits in with all of his actions: the limp from the button pre-flop; the bet to try to steal the pot with a straight draw on the flop; and the call of your check raise with the straight on the turn.
Or,I could be wrong and he has 9's and I lose a huge pot.
here is what i think is the (was) the best course of action and reasons why:
first of all, when raised his bet on the turn and he CALLED i must put him on one of the following hands: a. small flush, b. two pair or c. trips. i cannot think of anything else he would have called with. i am discounting the straight because he had show no aggression previously so i don't think he would have made a bet on the come with a flush and an ace on the board.
when the board pairs EITHER one of us could have had those hands and the ace is the real scare card. so, i think the best course here is to make a small bet such as 25 dollars which looks like a "please call me bet" so unless he has aces full of kings he has to only call and not raise. if he does raise i can then throw it away.
problem is, i thought of this after i checked and called his all in bet for 73 dollars. lol. he had 9's full of aces.
see, once again, the real secret of hold-em is to maximize your winnings and minimize your losses. the wins will take care of themselves and emphasis, in my opinion, is to keep the losses down. if i had done what i should have done it would have saved me 48 dollars. well, that day i finished up 126 so it would have made a major increase in my take home pay.
Ron,
You are a god. No the god, but a god.
And Brian was right (although after losing his money in that situation too).
I posed this question to my fellow poker addicts at work and then all had their money in too.
Thanks for the problem. More of these would be useful.
-thom
Problem is, just about no one's good enough to lay down the nut flush. If the guy had pushed all in on the flop with his set, you'd have called and gotten rivered. The full house certainly wasn't a lock, and there was $144 in the pot leaving him with only enough money to make a 1/2 pot sized bet. If he did that it would cost you 74 to get 218, and it's probably more than one out of three times he doesn't have the boat.
Sometimes you just get unlucky.
yes, but there is a "right" way to play everything. i didn't do the "right" thing and it MAY have cost me an extra fifty dollars. if he had raised my 25 dollar bet on the river i would probably have thrown it away. but the small bet in this case,with this board, i don't think he would have raised because though he had a fh, it then was very possible that so did i.
one of the wonderful things about poker is that it can be talked about and analyzed to no end and i love that about it.
I think I'd have done exactly what you said you should have done.
I'd make a "call me" bet to see where I stand. Because he's projecting a table image of one who will telegraph exactly what he has with a bet like that.
I get this info mostly from his flop actions.
I wouldn't put him on Q-J because a passive player wouldn't raise after the flop with that draw. He'd wait until he hit it. (Quite a few players would -- a tight, passive player wouldn't.)
He also wouldn't raise on that flop with 10s with a bad kicker or any single 9.
The range of hands you can put him on at this point is: Small flush, any set except Aces (he'd raise preflop with these), A-K, A-Q, A-J, A-10 or A-9.
You could also put him on a lesser Ace, but by the turn I discount this because you've already called one of his bets, and he's not going to make another one if he thinks you've got him outkicked. I also don't think he makes a bet on the turn with A-Q or A-J because he's afraid you've already hit a better hand.
I'm pretty confident at this point that he's got either two pair or a set. Or a smaller flush.
By the time he gets to the river, You can discount the smaller flush, because the paired board would make a tight passive player check right then and there, fearing the boat.
Therefore, if you make that $25 bet, you're pretty sure that IF he raises you, he's not blinking at the flush (or straight) possibility at all.
All this is of course contingent on him being a passive player, showing up and hoping to get the best hand one time and double his stack, recognizing he's not good enough to get in a whole bunch of pots without the best hand. Or at least unwilling to do so.
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