A8s.....river play?

I too would like to focus on the flop. Did anyone else think fold when it came to the flop?

[Fryguy]

::doublechecks::
Yes you have the nuts. Overcalls aren't for use when you have the nuts. There's a good chance somebody here has a straight, or possibly a lower flush. BB seems to like this hand; you want to get the opportunity to go into a raising war with him. And there's a decent chance at least one of CO/Button will come along for 2 bets.

Also, I consider raising this flop with reads. Buy the button + free card + backdoor flush + 2 overcards (although one is [censored]), makes it at least worth a consideration.

[Nikademus]

Grunching

Raise. You have the nut, with no reads except that the button is a fish. If you call, you might get a call from him, you might not. BB will likely call your raise. Either way, I wouldn't expect much more than 1 more BB here.

That said, I would have folded on the flop.

[numeri]

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That said, I would have folded on the flop.

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How many outs do you give hero? We're getting 11.5:1 on the flop, with 2 overcards, (1 admittedly very weak) the nut BDFD, and an ugly BDSD. It seems to be at least 4 outs to me.

[aargh57]

Yeah, that's what I came up with too. At 11.5 to one I think you are definitely getting proper odds to call here. I think raising's better because you may buy yourself some Ace outs in a pretty big pots, plus it may help you by thinning the field if you hit your 8.

Raise the River - take command of the hand. This has the added benefit of advertising that you are an uncreative chaser - it can't hurt to let the new players think you've got gills. Also, why not give the others a chance to spark a raising war?

Now, if I had any type of read on the BB or CO I might play it differently. But with unknowns, I'd rather be aggressive.

[istewart]

Raise preflop and raise the river. Flop is close but I would fold.

[numeri]

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Raise preflop

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Care to elaborate? We have no reads on UTG+1. We're not buying the button very often. CO and BB are unknown.

I don't get it.

Raise the river.

[jrz1972]

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In this case raising pretty much guarantees you 1 more BB and the possibility of more. Calling only guarantees you the current pot size with the possibility of more...against unpredictable unknowns I would have to go with the more direct approach...

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It's not really fair to single out one poster here, but this quote exemplifies the mistake I see in how many people are approaching this problem.

You are probably right that raising guarantees one extra BB at least, while calling might get you zero extra BBs. (Technically, Villain might be bet/folding, but I'll grant that's unlikely). But poker is a gambling game, and it is frequently right to give up a bird in the hand if doing so gives us a sufficiently good chance to get two in the bush.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that BB will call a single raise but will fold if it's two to him. (That should be reasonable. Like I said before, he might be bet-folding, or maybe he's a fish who will call two more cold with an overpair, but I think the typical player will call one but fold to two.) In this case, there are basically two cases in which calling costs us money:

1. Everybody folds behind us after we call. That's extremely unlikely. Most of the time, at least villain will call with his crap pair or he will have hit whatever draw he was pursuing.

2. Somebody calls who was willing to coldcall two bets if we raised but won't raise himself if we just call. Again, this seems very unlikely. If we raise, we are folding out crap pairs and getting called only by straights and flushes. But those hands would have raised if we called.

It is very unlikely that we lose any bets by just calling. I'm not going to try to assign probabilities to those events because those sorts of numbers tend to be arbitrary, but suffice it to say that it would be surprising if we lost anything by calling.

On the other hand, there are a couple situations in which calling gains relative to raising:

3. We get overcalls from two opponents holding crap pairs that would have folded to a raise. Not too likely, but possible.

4. Somebody after us raises his straight or flush, allowing us to trap BB and possibly the other opponent for extra bets. I see this as being more likley than 1, 2 or 3. In this case, we at least force BB to toss in a couple more bets and also gain another bet from the raiser (who may very well have just called our river raise but now puts in 3 bets).

Not only is scenario 4 the most likely of the meaningful, non-break-even scenarios, it's also the one that involves the biggest payoff. The more I think about, the more call-reraise seems clearly +EV relative to calling.

It is true that calling has a lower downside than raising, but it also has a larger upside and a probability distribution skewed toward that upside. It's a gamble, but it's a good one IMO.

Even if one disagrees with this analysis, you absolutely have to get away from thinking about only the worst possible scenario for various plays and what various options "guarantee" you. Playing for guarantees is very rarely good poker.