[Dave G.]

[ QUOTE ]

This is bad flop advice IMHO. You have two overcards and a gutshot that's good most of the time if you hit it. That's as many as 10 outs, although realistically with the 2-flush it's closer to 6. That being said, you're in position and it's been checked to you. You need to give opponents the chance to fold, so bet this.

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I disagree.

Lets assign each player with a %40 chance of folding on the flop to your very suspicious bet. In reality, this is probably too generous, particularly as the OP described a couple of them as calling station types, but for arguments sake we'll use it.

In such a case, your flop bet only has a %6.4 chance of taking down the pot right there.

There are 8 SB in the pot, and it costs you 1 SB to make this play. Your folding equity on the flop is .064 * 8 = .512 SB. That is, you can expect to gain .512 SB for this bet if everyone folding is your only way of winning. So you are spending 1 SB to try and win .512 SB. This is clearly a losing proposition. And remember, these folding percentages are extremely generous - in reality, your folding equity will be much lower. Also, those times that you are checkraised and call it, you lose an additional SB, which even further lowers your equity. We can round it down slightly and say you have .5 SB of folding equity.

In order to bet this hand profitably, we need another source of equity - that is, we need more pot equity to bet this flop. On the flop, I'd give 1.5 outs for the aces, 1.5 outs for the 9s, and 1.5 outs for the 3s, giving us roughly 4.5 outs (all are discounted for the possibility of river redraws and reverse implied odds). Using an equity estimate, we have roughly 4 * 4.5 = 18% pot equity on the flop. .18 * 8 SB = 1.44 SB. Total pot equity = 1.44 + 0.5 = 1.94 SB. Expressed as a percentage of the pot, 1.94 / 8 = 24.25% total equity.

Against 3 players, we are contributing 25% of the pot. Thus, we have a pot equity deficit. A bet here is very marginal at best. On the one hand, we may have more outs than I've estimated, but on the other hand, we may have much less folding equity too. We can also have much fewer outs than I've estimated.

Betting is therefore a breakeven proposition at best, and is probably slightly losing as long as noone checkraises us, but when someone checkraises us, betting becomes a huge loser, especially if you call it and don't improve, or are forced to fold a live hand that would have improved to the best hand on the turn.

Thus, to me, betting is clearly an inferior play to checking behind.