leakcheck hand

[Jake (The Snake)]

Hey Damaniac,

I think that you are thinking about the right things... but:

1. There is a chance we have the best hand since the flop has some straight draws.
2. We can win this hand by folding our opponent.
3. A free card would be nice.
4. Our equity is pretty good anyway.

I agree that "cleaning up outs" is WAY WAY overused as an excuse to raise flop in mediumish pots like this one. If you actually do the math, most of the time you'll find that you only clean an out, hit it, and win the hand about 2% of the time. That 2% DOES matter, it just is never a good enough reason on its own to raise.

[damaniac]

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1. There is a chance we have the best hand since the flop has some straight draws.

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Well the straight draw would be KJ/QJ/J8/J7. If you plug those in with a lot of possible top pair/middle pair/lower PP combos (all I can really think of), we have a decent deficit (it was around 10% or so I think, but who knows what this guy's range is). Anyway though if he bets his draws he probably bets most of his top/mid pair hands here, and even if he bets his top/mid pairs hands, it is no guaruntee that he'd bet all his draws, especially the weaker ones.
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2. We can win this hand by folding our opponent.

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Er, given an unknown at 2/4 I'd be surprised if he fold top/middle pair here. Maybe a lower PP. He isn't folding a draw before the river most likely. There is something there, but I'd like a bit of a read first.
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3. A free card would be nice.

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Indeed, and I bet we get one a lot here, so this is a really good reason. I often wonder how one looks at how often you need to get a free card compared to your equity to make it right. I realize the equation isn't that simple necessarily, but they have to have some relation.

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4. Our equity is pretty good anyway.

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Yeah, but this isn't a great reason. This just mitigates the times we're behind. It's like raising the turn with a flush draw or something, noting that if you get called, you have a lot of outs anyway. And you certainly do, but if the other guy isn't going to fold some % of the time (or will have a worse hand), it's still a -EV play. Same here. If we don't have the best hand x% of the time or set up a fold on a later street (that we want) x% of the time, saying we're not that far behind the bettor doesn't matter that much.

I don't hate it or anything, I'm just not sure it's the optimal play without reads. At 6-max I do this all the time though, I just wonder about 2/4.