HH from $5+.50 on Stars

[wulfheir]

Villain has been seeing a lot of flops and calling hands down with mid and low pair all tournament.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (5 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

SB (t3180)
Hero (t1850)
UTG (t5690)
MP (t1250)
Button (t1530)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 4/images/graemlins/heart.gif.
<font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, SB completes, Hero checks.

Flop: (t300) 2/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 6/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 4/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">SB bets t150</font>, Hero calls t150.

Turn: (t600) J/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">SB bets t150</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to t300</font>, SB calls t150.

River: (t1200) 6/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">SB bets t150</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to t1250</font>, SB calls t1100.

Final Pot: t3700

[nuclear500]

Comments.....hm.

Did he have the Ace high or set/two pair on the flop and hit his boat?

If he boated on you or had Ax /images/graemlins/heart.gif, so be it. Only thing you should have done differently was raise a more significant portion of your stack on the turn. You min-raised him. I doubt he's going to believe you for a flush.

[Sidekick]

Preflop is fine.

Flop is fine.

On the turn you have to raise more. If you know he plays mid and low pairs then you have to make it too expensive for him to see the river if he is playing a set. I'd raise to at least 750 (current size of the pot) here. If he's on a set then doing a min raise is not going to push him off his set.

On the river you know villain likes to play small and medium pairs. Villain called your min raise on the turn so you have to figure that he had his set, now the board has just paired and villain leads back into you. Pushing on the river after the board pairs and villain leads into you is a big mistake. Just call him down at this point.

Nothing you can do about the river card, but if you had raised more on the turn you might have pushed villain off his hand. Even if you didn't, you would know that villain most likely has you beat on the river and you can then just call the min bet or even fold knowing villain probably just hit his boat.

Hope this helps.

[wulfheir]

Thx for the replies. I'll try raising more on the turn next time when I hit my flush.

Result: When the board paired, he got his boat. Because he was on trips, and knowing his play, I'm not sure if I could have gotten him off the pot at all. Perhaps this is just a case of a flush being beat by a boat and move on.

Signed,
Waiting for 15 consequetive loss streak to break.

[Sidekick]

I don't really want to beat a dead horse here (and if you understand this then just ignore the rest of this post), but it isn't just about 'raising more' next time.

What you are trying to do in this situation is to make a raise such that villain makes a mistake by calling with incorrect odds (or folding and you take down the pot).

When you raised only 150 into a 750 pot, you gave villain correct odds to call your raise (he has 10 outs to beat your flush giving him slightly better than 4:1 odds to hit a better hand).

While we all get frustrated and want to win all our hands when we are ahead, it really isn't about that. You have to think long term when you are working on your game. 'Luck' hits everyone from time to time, but over the long haul it's those players that make correct bets based upon odds and information that will be the long term winners.

It is hard not to be results oriented (especially during a losing streak), but you have to evaluate your play based upon did you make a correct decision and give your opponent incorrect odds to call you and make his hand. If you have played the hand correctly you shouldn't look at whether you won or lost the hand. Just take comfort in the fact that over the long run you will be a winner in those situations.

Hope this wasn't redundant for you.