Am i allowed to just fold this flop?

[Catt]

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If your opponent turned over a K and showed it to you before he bet, you still shouldn't be folding this flop.

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I think that's debatable.

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and if he turns over K6? Unless the "debateable" part centers on CO's likely action behind us, folding is just plain bad.

[LoaferGee12]

I guess my question was more should I be playing this hand to draw or like I have the best hand. I did the latter but it just felt like spewing.

[blackaces13]

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If your opponent turned over a K and showed it to you before he bet, you still shouldn't be folding this flop.

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I think that's debatable.

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No it isn't. We've got 5 outs against any K except AK and KQ, and we're getting 9.5:1. There's no debate there.

Rob

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You left out KK, granted its a very small possiblilty but if its out it will really drain us if we improve in the hand. We're not closing the action, there's a chance that the CO has a hand that really hurts us like a set, KQ, or even Q6 if its suited and he's a bad player, a flushdraw is out there, and an Ace puts 3 broadways on the board which is always dangerous.

I'm not saying that calling, or even raising is necessarily wrong. I'm just playing devil's advocate here a bit because IMO there are a lot of negatives working against us drawing to 2 pair in this hand and to say that the small overlay in pot odds make this an obvious call is an overstatement IMO. There is a significant chance that A) we can hit our hand and still lose with an expensive 2nd best hand and B) we will be charged more than the 1 small bet to draw on this flop.

The aggression tendencies of neither opponent in this hand is mentioned but if the CO loves to raise with position and the BB is LAG then the value of a call is diminshed enough to make it wrong IMO. My point is that it not as black and white as simply saying "we're getting better than 8:1 with middle pair, its a call".

[Sinnister]

good to know

[fflyer]

I don't mind calling one bet, but I am not raising here, and I am certainly not calling any more bets on the turn unless I know my opponent likes to bet his draws into a pre-flop raise.

[Catt]

All good points. But I'd put on the other side of the ledger that we most liekly have immediate odds to call, without taking into account that the bets get bigger next round and, those times we aren't up against one of the monsters you point out, we've got a significant overlay in implied odds going for us when we hit the turn. If I knew CO was loose-passive (unlikely to raise behind me) I'd probably not fold this flop if it were laying 8 or 8.5 bets to me.

Edit: I'd just add that I don't think there is a significant chance we hit our hand and make an expensive second best. Yes, there's a chance, but I dispute the significant. even after the flop lead, this guys hand range is really, really big.

[Entity]

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There is a significant chance that A) we can hit our hand and still lose with an expensive 2nd best hand and B) we will be charged more than the 1 small bet to draw on this flop.

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The chance is not significant at all that we will pay more than 1SB to see a turn card, unless we choose to do so by raising, which is a reasonable consideration given the likelihood of BB betting a worse hand into you (and yes, it is considerably likely that a standard Party player will lead a flop like this with a hand that you currently crush, but has odds against you -- many players live by the mantra to bet straight and flush draws without considering the likely outcomes of position, facing the field with multiple bets, etc.).

We've got a good holding -- in fact, a reasonable chance of having the best holding -- and too much of a hand to be folding here. Folding on flops like this routinely when led into is at least a small, but more likely a significant, leak.

There are situations where we will have to tread carefully on flops like this; 4-way situations without reads where one person has already folded, however, are not those situations.

You can't play poker looking for situations where things might go wrong and so you should tread carefully; situations like this where the pot is already large (yes, 4.75BB is a fairly large pot) come across often enough that you need to be willing to accept the fact that some of the time, you will be behind, but the pot is worth fighting for. If CO has a hand like A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] you'd do very well to fold his gutshot+BD flush immediately, and you can't do this by calling.

Your example about KK is ludicrous, even if it was meant to be a "devil's advocate" example. By that same logic, we should be folding QQ or AA here, and we're folding neither of those hands on a flop like this.

BB will have you beat often here, but sans read, a standard player will be betting a draw often enough that you would like to fold out CO's range of hands on this broadway board more often than not. If you aren't willing to fight over pots like this you're going to be losing money in the long run at poker.

With no reads provided, this is never a fold. Against a standard Party $2/4 player I'd raise the flop, then, depending on CO and BB's reactions to my flop raise, either bet or check the turn (usually bet), and check the river. It's a very reasonable course of action for this hand.

Rob

[mockingbird]

After reading all the responses I am somewhat more confused than when I started.

You really dont have a bd str8 draw, since you would have 8 cards to hit on the turn and then only 4 to hit on the river. Not the 8 and 8 that I think of as a bdsd. Also, someone mentioned that if UTG does have a K he probobly has a J or T also, what else does he call with UTG? So hitting a J or T could give UTG an oeds, not the gut shot that hitting a J or T on the turn will give you.

Also, I dont think you have 5 clean outs to trips or 2-pair.
Hitting any A could complete an oesd and hitting the Ah could complete an oeds and a fd or give someone a redraw to a flush.


It depends on the read on UTG and you don't seem to have one. He could easily be betting a good drawing hand - ThJh or Ah6h, or JcQc. Without a read I think I give him maybe a 2/3rds chance of having a K but certainly greater than 50%. ( A completely blind guess, I really have no idea. )


IF UTG, or CO for that matter, has a K 50% of the time then:

50% of the time you are ahead and you are drawing to slightly less than 5 outs. In this case, I think I would stick to my first instinct on seeing this hand. Raise the flop to try and get long shots out and to try for a free card.


50% of the time you are ahead to a hand that has atleast 9 outs - again, a wild guess. This case would certainly warrant a flop raise as well.

If UI fold to a turn bet or take the free card.

If UI on the river and no one bet the turn or reraised the flop, a little more questionable, it depends on the two additional cards and if CO is still in the hand.

I wish someone could give a definitive answer on this one.

[blackaces13]

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which is a reasonable consideration given the likelihood of BB betting a worse hand into you (and yes, it is considerably likely that a standard Party player will lead a flop like this with a hand that you currently crush, but has odds against you -- many players live by the mantra to bet straight and flush draws without considering the likely outcomes of position, facing the field with multiple bets, etc.).


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We've got a good holding -- in fact, a reasonable chance of having the best holding -- and too much of a hand to be folding here. Folding on flops like this routinely when led into is at least a small, but more likely a significant, leak.


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BB will have you beat often here, but sans read, a standard player will be betting a draw often enough that you would like to fold out CO's range of hands on this broadway board more often than not. If you aren't willing to fight over pots like this you're going to be losing money in the long run at poker.


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Apparently you forgot that my initial response of calling being "debatable" already assumed that BB had flipped up a K. My entire post which you responded to with the above quotes was written under the assumption that BB has a K.

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Your example about KK is ludicrous, even if it was meant to be a "devil's advocate" example. By that same logic, we should be folding QQ or AA here, and we're folding neither of those hands on a flop like this.



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Again, this was still using that assumption that BB showed us a single K and I admitted it was a very slim possibilty. I felt it at least deserved mentioning however since you provided AK and KQ as the only hands with a K in them that are bad news for us. Also, nowhere did I suggest folding anywhere in this thread, I just said that the question of what to do, especially if BB shows us a K, is more complex than just saying "We are getting 9.5:1 with middle pair If you fold here you are bad at poker."

That being said I don't see how using any of "my" logic would have us folding AA here. I'm simply saying that KK should be taken into consideration however slight the chances of it being out are due to how expensive it would be to be against it. If you think the chances of him having KK are 1 in 10,000 then you won't have to adjust your strategy at all to account for its possibilty but you're still considering its presence and that's all I'm doing. I never said anything about folding anything because I'm afraid that BB has KK and suggesting that I did is ludacris.

[Entity]

I was pointing out that saying KK is even a remote consideration here is ludicrous, and pointing out that we should be "debating" our course of action with QQ and AA in a similar light if you genuinely believe the possibility of it.

If you believe that there is some room for debate it would seem that folding has some validity in your mind, and at this juncture, I don't. There are situations in which folding is clearly correct (BB flips over KK, AA, AK, or KQ), but these situations are sufficiently rare that folding is not a reasonable course of action, given no other information, in this context.

I was simply pointing out that if you believe that calling is debatable (i.e. folding has merit), then you must believe the same for AK, QQ, or AA, respectively, on this board.

The most likely hand for BB is a single weak King. I'd estimate the possibility of him betting a hand like this at around 60%, though obviously this estimate depends on the individual in question. We have 5 outs against that hand.

The next most possible hand, given the way the hand has played out so far, is a drawing hand like JTs or two hearts (A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]X[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], etc.). From my experience I'd say that this is probably around 20-25% possible. On the average, these hands will have about 8.5 outs against us, if he's betting either a flush draw or a straight draw. That leaves us with 38.5 outs against that range of hands.

Though most players would generally checkraise a hand like AK/KQ here, there's some debate over that, and we can say that against those hands, we have 2 outs. I'd say we're up against a big hand like that 10% of the time.

5% of the time we may be drawing dead against a very oddly played 66 or KK, but again, we have to weight the odds for these hands accordingly, since in general players will checkraise a big hand far more often than they will bet out with it. So 5% of the time we're drawing dead.

The remaining 5% of the time, we'll be up against odd hands that we can't understand betting, but our opponents have some logic for. This includes some hands like 77 that bet to find out "where they are," some hands like A6, and bluffing hands. Against these we will generally have between 45 and 42 outs, depending on the combination of cards (a hand like 76s has 5 outs against us).

Even if we skew the results of these handranges toward the extremes (our opponents will always bet 66 or KK or KQ and never checkraise them; our opponents will never bet a draw), we have to weight the likelihood of all of these hands together before coming to a reasonable action for this hand.

This basic way of guesstimating how many outs you have and whether you should continue in the hand is skewed, of course, by the fact that CO is still in the hand, and occasionally there will be more outs against us than we would like (in the event that we're up against J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and KQ, for example, we're drawing dead).

In order for folding the flop to be more profitable than calling/raising, we’d have to be drawing to around 4.5 outs on the average, to account for the times that we have to pay two bets due to a raise from CO behind us. What this means is that even if BB is betting a hand like KK or 66 into us as high as 20% of the time (betting a King 55% of the time, a draw only 5% of the time, never betting a hand like 77, and betting a hand like KQ 20% of the time), we should still continue with the hand (the weighted average of outs against that range of hands is 5.075). There are other considerations – reverse implied odds, etc. that come into play on this hand, but even the remote possibility of someone betting a currently worse hand skews this to an easy call (and, given the presence of CO, a raise).

In our “normal” scenario envisioned (5% 66/KK, 60% Kx, 20% draw, 10% KQ/AK, 5% 77), we have 13.075 outs against the bettors range of hands.

Obviously there are situations where a fold is the right play – but my snide point about AA/QQ is that there are situations where folding those hands is the right play too, but as a default, folding does not enter into our vocabulary with those hands, and it shouldn’t with this hand either.

If you want to do your own weighted odds calculation and let me know where you think my numbers are messed up (there are some obvious considerations that are hard to account for -- CO's presence and the fact that a hand like J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] has 15 outs twice, and all flush/straight draws have two chances to draw against you), that would probably be a good place to start. The reason I post so dogmatically that I think folding this flop is terrible poker (and I don't think there's much room for debate about it) is that these numbers are all in the back of my head, though I don't have perfect estimates on all of them, and I understand that the very possibility of someone betting a draw here brings my odds of having the best hand WAY up).

Rob