Busted draw criteria

You are playing HE with a full table, you get to the river with one opponent. Your draw has busted, the oppponent bets, and you only need to be right 5-10% of the time to make it worth calling.

Your opponent is agressive, so he might have busted too, but he got to bet first.


1. Do you have any card holding criteria which helps you choose whether to call or fold or raise? For instance, will you call only with an A or K or some (any) pair?


2. Do you have any board criteria? For instance, if the board got really scary at the end (the 4th of a suit, for instance), would

you raise?


thanks,


Mark

Number 2 is an interesting criterion.


Many players will not bet the river unless they have a very strong hand or a busted hand. So, if the board does have four of a suit and this player bets, he probably has the trump Ace or a nothing hand...he will not have the trump King, a set etc. Against this type of player, a bluff raise is worth considering.


Just the other day, I had AK in the big blind and had 3 bet a player who had raised in middle position. He capped it.


The final board was T8736 in that order. Rightly or wrongly, I played check/call on the flop and turn. When the river card came, I wasn't very displeased because knowing this player, I knew that if he bet, there was a good chance that I had him beat with my AK. When he bet, I had an easy call. In fact, perhaps a checkraise might have been better in the event that he too held AK (as it turned out, I called and he had AQ).

These are the wrong questions. You should be asking [1] What do I think the opponent has or could have [2] What does the opponent think I have and [3] What does the opponent think I think he has.


Thinking like this will answer most of your questions. If the opponent knows I play reasonably selectively before the flop it would be silly of me to make some spectacular bluff when the river is a random 2, since surely that card could not have made me anything ..err.. the opponent thinks that card could not have helped and will be very suspicious when I raise.


If the opponent is an assertive raiser pre-flop then he probably has two non-paired big cards. If the flop is all small then he probably still doesn't have anything and I should call with marginal holdings like bottom pair, but can also bluff raise if I have nothing.


If the opponent knows I will not call a double bet before the flop with small cards heads-up, then I have little ability to represent anything except a big pair. I should bluff-raise, then, only when some big card comes.


skp gave good advice for scary boards, but with routine boards lots of players will bet reasonable hands for value that they would much prefer not to have to call a raise. Tend to bluff raise when the final card could reasonably have made you something.


- Louie

If you only need to be right 5-10% of the time to make it worth calling, then you need to call 90-95% of the time to make bluffing unprofitable. So if you have a good idea which cards are almost certain to make your opponent's hand, and which cards make your hand, you should then probably choose 1 or 2 more cards to fold with, and call with the rest (assuming your hand can reasonably beat a bluff). That's the game theory point of view. I have nothing to add to Louie's advice as far as playing the board and your opponent, except that you obviously need to know something useful about your opponent in order to make a non-game theory strategy correct.