How Would You Play This Hand?

[fnord_too]

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I am kind of shocked by the amount of people who say "You cannot let BB draw for free here." This is absurd, if he is drawing it certainly is not for free, since you already bet, and if he is drawing he has compounded his error by raising (which needs to at least raise the suspicion that he has the nut flush).

Also, I have seen people pontificate that BB would never check raise the nuts here. Ludicrous. If he never c/r'd with the nuts his play would give away too much information for him to be what I would term a tough player.

I would be thrilled to be convinced that I am wrong, because I would undoubtedly have learned a lot.

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You are incorrect in complaining about us saying we're allowing him to draw for free by just calling. Yes, we bet, he check-raised us. There is ONE hand that beats us at this point, and a ton of possible draws that have the potential of costing you the pot if you allow your opponent to see the river.

Sometimes people are so consumed with obtaining the maximum value on their hand that in attempting to trap their drawing opponent they become the one trapped in the end, with so much money in the pot.

Yes, it is possible a "tough" opponent would re-raise with the nuts, but I still believe if he did have the nuts he's going to continue to trap you and not push you out of the pot.

His re-raise to me, screams that he's looking for you to lay down and obviously if you don't, for information on what your holding is. He probably believes, based on all the post-flop checking and your bet, that you are on a steal, and he can push you off it and take the pot down right now with his check-raise.

He does not, in my opinion, have this hand won. He may not even have a good draw. But given the number of callers pre-flop he could indeed have any holding, and I don't see a point in risking allowing a scare card to fall and you get bluffed out of the pot or get beat if he does have the draw.

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Come up with a distribution of hands he may have with probabilities. Then for each determine how he reacts to a reraise on the the turn. Then consider likely action for the river on the check given the various river cards that can come. Unless your distribution is comprised 100% of sets, I don't think reraising here is anywhere near the best choice (unless you think this tough opponent is going to spew chips with a weaker hand. If that is the case though, I would not consider the BB tough and would certainly play the hand differently.) You say you don't think he has the hand won (though you do acknowledge that he may), and possibly does not even have a good draw. If that is the case, why let him make a good decision to fold? Why not give him a chance to bet on the end with a worse hand, and NOT give him all your chips when he does have the nuts? I tend to c/r with marginal hands that I want to resolve; I agree that he probably does not have the ace high flush, but even given that you are better off calling and hoping he takes a stab at the end with a lesser hand (again unless you specifically know he has a set, assuming he will fire at the pot about 1/2 the time if he misses and all the times he hits, and you will pay off on the end. This is looking at the worst case scenario, since he will likely make a value/blocking bet on the river with a lot of decent, but lesser hands.)

If a scare card comes, and you called on the turn, you will not likely be facing a huge bet on the river by a hand that beats you. More likely you will face a small bet to inhibit action by a lesser hand, a small bet by a huge hand, or a check by a player who has given up or is looking to check raise a monster. An all in on the river in this hand if you call the turn would be a very odd bet since it would be almost twice the size of the pot.