Monster draw on scary board

[ohkanada]

Playing 6-12 last night at Canterbury. I am in the BB with JsTs. There are 4 or 5 limpers.

Flop is AsAcQs.

So I flop a royal draw and gut shot. I check. A few limpers check. Bet, call and I call and others fold. The second caller refuses to raise pre-flop so it is possible he has AQ or even QQ.

Turn is a 8c.

I now have a double gutter and royal draw. I check, next player bets, a call and I also call.

River is a 9d.

So I have hit my card. I decide to bet out instead of going for the checkraise. I bet and get called and omy hand is good. I don't see the other hand he mumbled AT.

I am sure if I checked my opponent would bet and I could checkraise. The problem is that opens me up to being 3 bet if someone does have the boat. I figured if I bet out and I get raised I call and see if someone has the boat. Was I too cautious on this board? Any other comments welcome.

Ken Poklitar

[pudley4]

I think you played it fine. A lot of people out there will check it down on the river, so you might not have gotten anything if you checked. If you're sure he would bet, then I'd checkraise.

As a side note, this hand shows an important reason why a suited hand is so much better than the same unsuited hand. The extra flush outs turned a marginal flop call into a monster draw. While you don't make a flush very often, just being suited can sometimes give you the extra outs needed to stay in a hand and win.

[ohkanada]

So you think it is worth the risk on this type of board to get 3 bet?

In this hand I would have picked up a few extra bets because it is possible the guy who folded may have called another bet from the original bettor but folded when I bet out after showing no strength.

Ken Poklitar

[JTG51]

I'd often bet or check raise this flop. If no one's got an A (there's only 2 left and no one raised preflop) you have a great chance to win without hitting your draw.

[Ed Miller]

Agree... the best opportunities in the world to bluff are those where you have 12 outs and a very scary board.

[Bob T.]

I would probably bet, and call the raise, rather than checkraise, and call the three bet. Canterbury also seems to be the unofficial home of checking down the river, so you might not get any bets here by checking.

Good luck,
play well,

Bob T.

[ohkanada]

I probably should have bet the flop. Very unlikely I win it with 5 limpers but I do have a lot of potential with my hand. Checkraising may limit the customers and no one with an ace is folding.

Other than the King of spades I have no cards that give me the nuts. How fast do I want to play this type of draw on a paired board where many limping hands could have been drawing to 1 card?

How about the river? Would you go for the checkraise on the paired board? And pay off a 3 bet?

Ken Poklitar

[Punker]

I would have given maximum action on the flop to make my decision easier at the later point when I may have hit my hand. If it ends up being capped on the flop, my whole turn decision is based on two situations:

1) I make my hand, straight or flush. If so, give as little action as possible to get to showdown.

2) I don't make my hand, straight or flush. I check the bad beat pot since I will be drawing at a strong possibility for bad beat money (a board of AAKQ with me having a royal and someone else real excited about their hand should almost guarantee it). If there's no bad beat and I have been given maximum action at this point in the hand, I drop it. If the bad beat is enough, I continue, giving minimum action to showdown if I make my hand, folding if I miss (obviously).

[marbles]

Very interesting hand. A thought:
Instead of the flop coming AsAcQs, consider a flop of AsQcQs. Keep the turn and river cards the same.

Anyone else amazed at how much one seemingly small change can alter the way a board is played?

[ActionBob]

The extra flush outs turned a marginal flop call into a monster draw

How are the flush outs "extra outs" that turned a marginal call into a monster draw? From what I can see the flush outs are the "main outs" and the main reason why you would call the flop.

-ActionBob

[pudley4]

The "extra flush outs" I'm referring to are in comparison to JTo. They each have 4 outs to the straight, but the flush draw has the "extra" 8 outs to the flush.

My point is this: He didn't win with the flush, he won with the (backdoor) straight. However, because he had the flush draw, he was able to easily see the hand to the river and win. If you compare this hand with JTo, you can see that JTo would have a hard time calling on this flop, and might not have won this hand, while JTs pretty much knows he's going to the river.

There have been a few posts recently where people question the value of being suited by saying something like "You only make flush 3% of the time, so being suited isn't really worth much". This hand shows how valuable being suited can be.

A perfect example would be to take this same flop but turn the aces into 2 /forums/images/icons/spade.gif 3 /forums/images/icons/heart.gif . Now JTo can't even call one bet on the flop, but JTs will, and he'll win with the backdoor straight.

[Louie Landale]

The following is a reasonable, but NOT compelling argument.

I don't like your lose-2-instead-of-3-bets argument. Most of the time you have the best hand and you want to maximize it; therefore generally bet if the opponent will check and check-raise if he'll bet.

Now, if you are paranoid that he will CHECK the river that means there is a pretty good chance his hand isn't so strong on the turn; so since you have a big draw you can and often SHOULD go for the spectacular turn check-raise semi-bluff. This will look REAL convincing. Note that this raise only costs 1 bet since you are going to call anyway.

Playing it the way you did makes sense if he's a weakish-tightish type who is almost sure to have an Ace on the turn (so semi-bluffing is out of the question for you), but will routinely check it on the end unless he fills (so check-raising the river is out of the question). Otherwise, often check-raise the turn or check-raise the river.

- Louie