Textbook wait for turn in huge pot?

I probably wait and raise the Turn for value unless a Spade hits.

[MattiasL]

I disagree with the posters that prefer to wait for the turn, and think you should definitely raise the flop.

Yes, you miss the chance to fold out the gutshots, but I would not expect these hands (Only three: JT, QJ, QT) to be that common in this hand that was threebet preflop, and you do not lose very much equity against them anyway (smallish overlay on the flop and turn calls). Folding gutshots becomes much more critical on for example a JTx board.

Since the pot is huge you actually need to put pressure on even weaker hands to fold. You should raise to fold any pair or PP with a spade.

Of course raising the flop also builds the pot, which has value (even if we prefer weak draws to fold, the major part of additional money into the pot is our EV).

[Jake (The Snake)]

I'm not going to commit to raising or waiting, but a few points to consider in favor of raising the flop:

1. How vulnerable is our hand, and do we have redraws?
2. Are your opponents always going to have gutshots? If not, is there any reason to wait?
3. What exactly are the odds you are giving your opponents on the flop and the turn, and are they that much different?
4. Just because you make it so a gutshot should fold the turn doesn't mean you have done something magically profitable. If he almost has the odds to call, then you probably haven't gained that much value on the turn, and likely could have gotten more by just raising the flop.
5. Will your opponent always bet the turn, giving you the chance to raise?

[bobhalford]

I don't wait for the turn here. I wait for the turn when I have a really strong hand like a set and there are no big draws on the flop. Here we have 4 (!) opponents, 3 of whom called 2 cold preflop, and a preflop raiser. I figure they might call 2 cold on this flop now that I have a flop donkbet from MP3. The pot is big and I feel fortunate to have such a good hand and such a fortuitous donkbet on this flop. So I raise the flop and 3/4 of them call. That's fine, makes the pot bigger and I'm still a huge favorite unless I get popped on the turn by a flush or a slowplayed 77. I figure there to be a flush draw, QJ/JT (diamonds or spades) in the worst case and maybe hands like KJ/KQ/AQ/AJ etc. going along thinking they have odds to hit trips or two pair. With all these opponents against me, I'm thinking that there are a certain number of cards and card combinations that might beat me, and the pot is so big I don't want to lose the hand to TT/99 or QJ when one of these collective outs appears on the turn or river. I guess this is called protecting the pot. Something to notice is that someone with 99 would have the implied odds to hit a set with nearly 20-1 odds on the flop. I want to clean out cards that beat me, no matter how unlikely it is for them to hit. Unless we are 2-3 handed, I want them to fold 99. I want QJ/JT out because if both those hands are out there then there are 6-8 bad cards to give them the straight, not to mention the spades and backdoor flushes. Part of the reason I want to raise is because I think these 4 outer hands will call the raise. But if they fold QJ, I'm not unhappy at all. I'd hate to have that hand hit on the turn and then lose a big pot instead of winning a big pot because I didn't shut out the QJ with a flop raise.

There are also hands like KQ that might go along for the ride on the flop but not on the turn no matter what the flop action was. They would call one or two on the flop but never get past the turn unless they hit trips/two pair. So you get less bets from these people by waiting for the turn. They don't want to pay on the expensive street when it looks like they are badly beat after the flop action - hands like KQ/KJ/AT/AJ. Some of the time they will call anyway trying to hit that miracle on the river ( after you've made the pot is so big with the flop raise) and you collect bets both on the flop and on the turn. A turn raise just shuts out the hands you want calling, when you could have raised the flop, collected more bets, and then given them the temptation of calling for 1 bet on the turn instead of 2.

Also, you have to think about the likelihood of the flop bettor continuing on the turn after he was called in so many spots on the flop. Thing is, the bettor might have to have a set to bet again on the turn, cause AQ will check more often than not, despite having been only called and not raised on the flop. So much of the time, the "wait to raise on the turn" doesn't work out very well because you will have to bet out on the turn, and then if a "bad" card hits you will have to check, often with the best hand.
In waiting for the turn you have to hope that something like a Q,J,T or spade don't hit, because then you are in a confusing situation. You have to go into check/call or bet/call mode which is uncomfortable and makes river decisions more difficult. After raising the flop, you will usually only get raised on the turn by a better hand, and then you can call with odds to hit your boat on the river. Maybe there is some math that says to wait for the turn, but then you have to plug in so many variables about the likely hands out there and their willingness to call raises on the flop vs. turn, etc. It may be close either way, but instinctually I raise the flop and cap it if 3-bet because I have a good hand in a big pot and I want to take it down. I don't care if I'm allowing people to call "correctly" with their gutshots or whatever. Calling 2 cold on the flop is much less favorable for my opponents than calling one small bet. I want to have control over the hand so that I don't have to deal with any surprises when any potential bad card hits.

[Buckmulligan]

Adding to what jake says to consider, raising the flop may induce some players to improperly fold gutshots.

Raise now (on the flop) when you are ahead and charge everyone. Do you really want to wait for the turn with someone potentially sitting on a 4-flush? A check-raise (3-bet) by someone on a spade turn will suck big time.

Plus, who cares about protecting your hand anyways in this pot. No spade draw is folding. And those inside draws can chase away all they want.

[W. Deranged]

I would raise the flop.

1. Your hand is very, very strong. Not only is it almost certainly the best hand at the moment (save exactly 77), but you have four outs to the effective nuts. Your equity here is massive. You are making tons and tons on every bet that goes into the pot on the flop and turn. In my opinion, playing in such a way that you minimize the number of bets going in total (as waiting until the turn almost certainly does) is actually going to cost you a considerable amount more value than the value you losing by giving up a few razor-thin value calls to gutshot hands and so forth.

2. Raising likely gets you more action. Opponents will call two cold on the flop with tons of crap and fold for two cold on the turn. While you note that gutshots may be getting marginally correct odds to call on both streets is we raise the flop instead of the turn, consider:

a. Raising the flop and the betting the turn only allows your opponents a couple of opportunities to make neutral or marginally profitable calls. Unless action gets crazy on the flop (in which case protection becomes totally impossible) nowhere will opponents with gutshots (or lesser draws) being making hugely profitable calls.

b. Calling the flop and raising the turn allows your opponents to play the hand totally perfectly in the vast majority of situations. Most any reasonable hand will have odds to call one on the flop, but not to call two on the turn. Therefore, many opponents will correctly play both streets. Raising the flop and betting the turn at least allows your opponents to make mistakes: maybe a gutshot barely getting odds makes a bad fold, or a hand like TT makes a bad flop peel, and so forth.

3. The turn card is really not that likely to greatly increase our equity. A broadway card or a [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] may sometimes put us behind, but often it won't (in fact, usually a broadway card will not make anyone's gutshot, and a good percentage of the time no one has two spades). One of the primary reasons I like waiting until the turn is when our flop equity is not particularly well defined, and the turn card will greatly increase the clarity of the pot. That is not the case here, as our equity is huge and no turn card is going to significantly increase our equity.

4. Other things to consider include some comments by Jake and Bob, particularly concerning the fact that there is no gaurentee that the turn gets bet if we don't raise the flop (note that that scenario is an absolute disaster from every perspective), and concerning the high percentage of the time that our opponents don't even have the draws we're worried about.



So, in other words, I think a lot of you are really overthinking this hand. We have a monster, and we need to extract value. In a huge pot where protection is difficult, sacrificing obvious value for marginal improvements in protection is really not the right way to go.

Wouldn't we be more inclined to raise the flop with a set? I'd think our equity edge would be signigicantly higher, and we're happy to have plenty of CC'ers.

[WalkAmongUs]

I think waiting for the turn is perfect here. Flush draws will come along anyway. Your main concern here IS gutshots and weak draws. Waiting for the turn is the ONLY thing you can do to protect your hand here. This pot is big. Focus on winning it, not extracting every last cent from it.

Winning this big pot more often is going to be way more profitable than sacrificing the entire thing in order to get in a few extra small bets on the flop.

Yes, its not guaranteed that the turn will be bet but its very likely that it will. You must take this risk.

Also, you're equity can change a lot based on what the turn card is. Your hand will eat up the equity of the gutshots and weak draws that you knock out. Also, any flush draw's equity will drop top ~20% when no spade comes on the turn. You will most likely pick up most of this equity as well. Not to mention if a dangerous card comes on the turn, you save bets AND you can call profitably for a full house draw.

Getting extra BB on the turn when you have more equity is clearly more profitable than a few extra SB on the flop IMO.

Like an earlier poster said, if this isn't a perfect example of waiting for the turn, I don't know what is.

[W. Deranged]

I've said it once, but I'll say it in digest form:

1. In general more bets go in by raising the flop. Waiting for the turn is not really a "value play."

2. Everyone is very skewed in their concepts of pot protection. I think it's helpful to think about how much we are giving up by failing to protect our hand:

Let's take a gutshot for an example:

Let's say we raise, one guy cold calls, and it's up to "Dude with Gutshot" (DwG). DwG is getting a little less than 11.5-1. Needing 10.5-1 to call, he calls correctly. But how bad is his call here for us , really? He's making like 8-9% or so on his 1 BB investment, meaning that allowing him to call is sacrificing no more than like .1 BB. Since we don't have claim to all of that, the amount he might actually be "taking from us" by calling correctly here is something like .08 BB.

If he makes a similar call on the turn getting something like 14-1, his call is more profitable, but we're still losing less than like 1/3 of a BB.

Compare those relatively tiny losses that we incur by allowing gutshots to make marginally profitable calls the to the amount we lose by failing to give our hand the proper action and killing our turn action by making it easy for everyone to fold.

3. People need to realize what a MONUMENTAL DISASTER it is if we don't raise the flop and it's checked to us on the turn. The likelihood of this happening is almost enough in itself to convince me that it's better to raise the flop.

4. Waiting till the turn makes much, much more sense when you average flop equity is lower . Our flop equity is huge here.