my flush draw rivered me top pair. should i call the river?

[Adam22]

he had like 78 or 89. glad you guys think i played it right, i think i call on the river when i'm beat too much.

[brettbrettr]

I'd prob call here, you're getting great odds. But after he check-raises the field on the turn, I wouldn't expect to win very often. *But* people do weird [censored].

[einbert]

[ QUOTE ]
he had like 78 or 89. glad you guys think i played it right, i think i call on the river when i'm beat too much.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a weird psychological part of limit hold em, and one of the reasons many good players make bad laydowns is because of this psychological aspect.

You are getting 7-1 on the end and you call. Let's say 75% of the time you lose and 25% you win. Since the loss happens so much more frequently, our mind remembers that we lost a bunch of times and only won a few times. Naturally we don't take into account the fact that when we lose we lose just one bet, but when we win we win more than four bets.

It's pretty easy to understand this intellectually but to accept it from an emotional standpoint is a totally different thing. I highly reccomend that you start using excel to plot out what you think are "borderline" river calls. Write down the pot odds you were getting and keep a tally of whether you won or lost. After 100 or so calls getting N to 1, you can come up with an approximation of whether you are showing a profit with those borderline calls or not. (By the way I don't know the standard deviation on these things but I imagine it is quite high. And probably gets higher and higher the bigger your pot odds are. So you will need a decent sample size to make this kind of analysis). If you are winning way more than enough to show a profit, it means you are probably folding too much in other situations. If you are not coming close to showing a profit on these borderline calls, it might mean you are simply paying off too much. If you are breaking even or are up or down a little (after a decent sample), you're probably doing well in this area.

By the way the effect these calls have on you can be much more draining when you are running bad than when you are running good. ALthough it doesn't make sense rationally for this to be the case, our brain interprets losses and wins differently based on what has happened that day, that week, that month. I have found that when I am running good I can make these calls confidently knowing that I am showing a profit, but when I am running bad this is one of the first areas of my game I begin to question. The truth is that when you're running bad, your decisions are usually on average harder than when you're running good and that just snowballs the effect running bad already has on you, which is to make you feel like a losing player.

Anyway, in your hand I definitely wouldn't have bet the turn, but given how the hand played out I am definitely calling the river.

[SenecaJim]

Definite call. Think you will see a quality queen turned over. He knows no one is going anywhere if he bets out on the flop or if he raises and they have to call another bet.

He probably waited to see no heart on turn and the 8 is a bonus because he now negates a lower 2 pair and nice scare card to maybe get the pot right there or set up to take it away on river, specially if flush doesn't come in.

I think you must call this river and I think you win it.

[SenecaJim]

whoops, missed the last post. Well, still think you have to think scenario is possible enough to call river.

I think an aggressive player would play the top 2 pair the same as the trips in this case and with the reads he probably had on everyone, though your turn bet might have thrown him off and he would have only bet the river with the trips himself.(plus you not reraising would tell him you didn't have a set even if he didn't ).