raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Party Poker 1/2 Hold'em (9 max, 8 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is SB with A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, UTG+1 calls, MP1 calls, <font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, Button calls, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: (5 SB) 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 2[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(5 players)</font>
Hero checks, <font color="#CC3333">BB bets</font>, UTG+1 calls, MP1 folds, Button calls, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, Button calls.

Turn: (6.50 BB) 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, BB calls, UTG+1 folds, Button calls.

River: (9.50 BB) T[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, BB calls, Button folds.

Final Pot: 11.50 BB

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Not good.

A good estimate of your outs is that you have 4 for the gutshot, 1.5 for the bdfd, and 1.5 for the overcard = 7 outs. This makes you about a 6:1 underdog. At the point where you raised, you had only 3 opponents, so your raise isn't even close to being for value.

(It's a little more complicated than I made it sound like above, because you get two chances to hit your gutshot and/or overcard. Then again, the turn card may well spoil your bdfd, and I'm not sure your overcard is really worth 1.5 outs. Technicalities aside, this hand is clearly worth a call, but not a raise).

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

ahh [censored], right right. I'm awful. Holy [censored] I have a lot of work to do.

Thanks man!

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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A good estimate of your outs is that you have 4 for the gutshot, 1.5 for the bdfd, and 1.5 for the overcard = 7 outs. This makes you about a 6:1 underdog. At the point where you raised, you had only 3 opponents, so your raise isn't even close to being for value.

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This is not to say that this might not be a good raise, as a semi-bluff. It's just not good if you think you're raising for value.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

I estimate your outs on the flop as 4 for the gut-shot, 1.5 for the backoor nut flush draw, and perhaps 1.5 for the A overcard. That was certainly enough to call the flop bet with 8 sb in the pot.

However, I am not sure that you should include the 1.5 outs for the A overcard in your calculation to determine whether you can raise this flop for value. Thats because if you pair your A, you could still lose the hand.

Anyway if you consider 5.5 outs for your gut-shot and BDFD on the flop, then I calculate that you would need 5 opponents to call to be able to bet the flop for value. (I wont bother you with the maths.)

So I think you were short of about 2 opponents on the flop to be able to raise your hand for value.

Nonetheless, nice hand. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

I'm not sure I would even give 1.5 outs to the ace. In SSHE when they suggest to give 1.5 outs to overcards it's when we have strong overcards such as AK, AQ, etc, in which we expect the ace to be strong if not behind something like two-pair. In this case, we can hit our ace, still be behind two-pair and also be behind a bigger ace. I would maybe discount as far as it just being 1 out. Not that it really matters in this discussion.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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However, I am not sure that you should include the 1.5 outs for the A overcard in your calculation to determine whether you can raise this flop for value. Thats because if you pair your A, you could still lose the hand.

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But isn't that why you only count them as 1.5 in the first place? If you ignore them completely you are effectively saying that there is 0% chance of winning if an A turns up.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Another concern is that our GSD is not a draw to the nut straight. In fact, it's not even a draw to the 2nd nut straight. (Though admittedly 63 is a pretty unlikely hand. 76, on the other hand, is not.)

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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However, I am not sure that you should include the 1.5 outs for the A overcard in your calculation to determine whether you can raise this flop for value. Thats because if you pair your A, you could still lose the hand.

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But isn't that why you only count them as 1.5 in the first place? If you ignore them completely you are effectively saying that there is 0% chance of winning if an A turns up.

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Agreed. We discount them from 3 to 1.5 because they might not win the hand for us. Wether or not 1.5 is low enough is an entirely seperate question, personally I don't think we win this with an A often enough to count even 1.5.

So many opponents will play literaly any Ace to the river. There is no lower Ace that we can beat in this hand. I'd say about 1 or maybe even .5 sounds more like right to me. But there is certainly a non-zero chance that an Ace will make us a winner, so we have to count something.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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So many opponents will play literaly any Ace to the river. There is no lower Ace that we can beat in this hand. I'd say about 1 or maybe even .5 sounds more like right to me. But there is certainly a non-zero chance that an Ace will make us a winner, so we have to count something.

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I totally agree. I'd feel obliged to call when an A hit, but I'm certainly not confident enough to raise.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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Anyway if you consider 5.5 outs for your gut-shot and BDFD on the flop, then I calculate that you would need 5 opponents to call to be able to bet the flop for value. (I wont bother you with the maths.)

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I'm assuming that you're measuring his equity with two cards to come, but if his backdoor flush goes away on the turn he might not even have pot odds to call a turn bet with nothing but a weak gut-shot draw and a questionable A. I don't like to look at flop to river odds unless I know I'm going to have odds to call a bet on the turn, which, depending on the size of the pot, usually means at least 7 outs, and often more.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Here is my grunched out count:

3 As: heavily discounted because it's a top pair hand and because we have a lousy kicker= 1.5 outs

4 4s: to the 2nd nut straight, nearly pristine= 4 outs

BDFD: 1.5 outs

So I count 7 outs. There are 3 others in the pot with us, so I don't see this as a value raise. We are out of position to take a free card, and we're not folding anybody because they're already committed for one bet. I don't think I raise here.

-------------pauses, reads thread------
Dangit, missed the 45678. I still don't raise.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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This is not to say that this might not be a good raise, as a semi-bluff. It's just not good if you think you're raising for value

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Who are we semi-bluffing? Everyone has already called 1 bet. Do we really expect them to fold for one more?

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

I agree they're unlikely to fold on the flop, so leading the turn after a flop c/r could be considered the entire semi-bluff sequence.

I'm actually surprised he got 3 callers on the turn after doing this.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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Anyway if you consider 5.5 outs for your gut-shot and BDFD on the flop, then I calculate that you would need 5 opponents to call to be able to bet the flop for value. (I wont bother you with the maths.)

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I'm assuming that you're measuring his equity with two cards to come, but if his backdoor flush goes away on the turn he might not even have pot odds to call a turn bet with nothing but a weak gut-shot draw and a questionable A. I don't like to look at flop to river odds unless I know I'm going to have odds to call a bet on the turn, which, depending on the size of the pot, usually means at least 7 outs, and often more.

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Are you talking about betting or calling the flop when you say you don't like to look at flop to river odds? If the pot is big enough, you should generally call with strong BD draws (like a BDFD to the nut straight) on the flop. You have to re-evaluate the turn, of course, but you can't discount flop -&gt; river odds completely, which is why we assign outs to those draws.

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with this in your post, but it wasn't clear to me whether you were talking about betting/raising or calling.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Just thought I would add a reason why I wouldn't raise this even if it would be marginally profitable; your relative position to the raiser. The 4 is a semi-hidden out, which probably wouldn't prevent BB from betting out again on the turn. Also, since he's BB, and betting into 3 ppl, he's not very likely to be bluffing, so if you do spike the 4, you'll be able to checkraise the field for big bets instead.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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Are you talking about betting or calling the flop when you say you don't like to look at flop to river odds? If the pot is big enough, you should generally call with strong BD draws (like a BDFD to the nut straight) on the flop. You have to re-evaluate the turn, of course, but you can't discount flop -&gt; river odds completely, which is why we assign outs to those draws.

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with this in your post, but it wasn't clear to me whether you were talking about betting/raising or calling.

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I wasn't very clear, sorry. I was talking about deciding whether or not to bet or raise a draw for value on the flop.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

BD draws confuse me a bit when I'm trying to determine pot equity on the flop. You're essentially drawing to a draw from the flop to the turn, but you're looking at your odds of completing the BD draw from the flop to the river.

I usually make equity decisions based on outs that I can count on all the way to the river and end up ignoring BD draws when deciding whether or not to bet or raise a draw for value because they will likely vanish on the turn anyway. The 1.5 outs that they represent would rarely make the difference between just calling and betting or raising anyway, as it doesn't represent much in the way of pot equity.

I guess with a discounted open-ended straight draw it could make the difference between calling and betting or raising vs. 3 opponents . . . pretty marginal, but maybe I'm missing out on some value bets.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

Basically the odds of a backdoor flush coming in is the product of getting one flush card on the turn and another on the river:

(9/47)*(8/46)=3.3% chance of your flush coming in.

It just so happens that a 1.5 outer is 1.5/47=3.2%, so we can say that a BD flush draw is worth 1.5 outs.

Straights are a bit more complicated since the odds are different depending on the kind of straight you have, and can be 1.5, 1 or 0.5 outs depending.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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However, I am not sure that you should include the 1.5 outs for the A overcard in your calculation to determine whether you can raise this flop for value. Thats because if you pair your A, you could still lose the hand.

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But isn't that why you only count them as 1.5 in the first place? If you ignore them completely you are effectively saying that there is 0% chance of winning if an A turns up.

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No I am not ignoring the 1.5 Ace pairing outs completely. I am counting them when considering whether to call the flop bet.

However, I dont think that they are good enough to include them when considering whether to raise the flop for value, because they are not outs to a nut hand.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

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Are you talking about betting or calling the flop when you say you don't like to look at flop to river odds? If the pot is big enough, you should generally call with strong BD draws (like a BDFD to the nut straight) on the flop. You have to re-evaluate the turn, of course, but you can't discount flop -&gt; river odds completely, which is why we assign outs to those draws.

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with this in your post, but it wasn't clear to me whether you were talking about betting/raising or calling.

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I wasn't very clear, sorry. I was talking about deciding whether or not to bet or raise a draw for value on the flop.

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Just to clarify an earlier post. I was including outs to a bdfd in my considerations as to whether to bet/raise a flop for value, because the outs were to a nut hand.

I was not doing the same for outs to pairing the Ace, because they were not outs to a nut hand.

I would consider all the outs when deciding whether to call the flop.

I dont know whether other posters would agree with my approach or not, but that was the basis for my considerations. I also agree that 1.5 outs wont have a huge impact on the decision most of the time.

Anyway in this particular hand, I think that it was clear that the OP did not have enough equity to bet the flop for value.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

This is a thin value raise. You have 5.5 outs to strong hands, and maybe 1.5 outs for your ace. I like it, though. Even if you get a little less than even money, you're getting implied odds when you hit.

Re: raising the flop for value - countings outs exercise
 

7 outs. 4 outs for gutshot. 1.5 outs for draw to Ace (reduced from 3 because of weak kicker). 1.5 outs for backdoor flush.