Charging for draws and having "vulnerable" hands

[Greg J]

I have seen several posts recently on this board about "charging" people to draw because they had vulnerable hands.

One of the more intelligent responses to this I have seen came from Entity:
[ QUOTE ]
Against these two opponents, I don't know that he can do much to protect his hand, but he's pretty close to a lock. Regardless, he needs to put more money in because HE HAS THE BEST HAND, and it's likely to stay that way. You like money, right? Bet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bingo!

This notion of vulnerable hands is in Sklansky and Malmuth's books -- and as I understand it (I don't have the texts handy now) they are reasons you don't slowplay strong hands. Against most players in the microlimits, this does not apply. This concept of charging the draws is being misapplied.

Let's say you have T2s /images/graemlins/club.gif in the big blind. The flop is Q73 all /images/graemlins/club.gifs. You correctly bet out, get raised, and 3 bet (the raiser calls). Question: Why are you doing this? Many posters would probably answer "because you want to charge anyone with a higher club. My hand is vulnerable." No, no!! Wrong, wrong!!

Now while it is true that checking this and allowing a free card is a HUGE mistake here, you should not be betting because you have a vulnerable hand. You should be betting because you most likely have the BEST hand!

Let's say somehow you KNEW no one had the the A, K, or J /images/graemlins/club.gif. Does this make it okay to check here and allow the free card? Of course not! Especially against micro players, many of whom will call down with any piece of the board, or even just for the hell of it.

The time to consider a bet for vulnerability purposes is when you would otherwise consider slowplaying -- which is something you should do rarely at the micro limits IMO.

Doing the right thing is important, but getting better at poker means knowing why you are doing something.

This is not directed as a personal criticism of anyone in particular -- i think a lot of otherwise good micro limit players subscribe to this fallacy of thinking regarding vulnerability.

Good times /images/graemlins/smile.gif
Greg

[Entity]

This is a great post. I think people need to focus on the why more here, and not so much on what. I only started to understand this after reading a post by Ed about "charging the flush draws."

If you have a J-high flush (two clubs in hand and three on the board), and I show you an Ace-high club with a non-club, and I bet into you, you should raise every time, and then some. Why? Not because you want to "charge me" to draw to my flush, but because you have the best hand now, and will have the best hand 68% of the time at the river. For each dollar that goes into that pot, you get $.68 and I get $.32 (assuming heads up play). So if you put $50 into that pot (and I have to match it), you're getting $68 out of it, theoretically. Sounds like a good deal to me.

If my Ace-high flush draw gets there, it gets there. In limit, there's nothing you can do to get me to fold that draw before the river, but honestly, you don't want me to. You want me to raise you back, and raise some more, and some more. Get all the money in while you're ahead.

Rob

[AaronO]

Greg-This post epititomizes everything good about this site. Excellent logic and discussion. Thanks for the post!