dingas
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009, 2:52 PM
QUOTE (RISEorFall @ Monday, November 9th, 2009, 9:31 PM)

i'm ok with the flop. yeah we have a FD but the QJx fits a lot of utg opening hands and it would suck to get 3bet with just our overpair and 8 card fd. also, if he is opening weaker hands we could be way ahead of like 5678 or worse, and theres not much harm in flatting, since he folds total air but may bet the turn with it. we can use our position if trouble cards hit the turn.
I wanted to return to this hand becuase I feel pretty strongly that just calling the flop is wrong. This logic for calling is not convincing. This is a common play in no limit holdem, where we might think about flatting with AA on this flop to let villain continue to bet his TT, but it is very rarely a good play in omaha (it might make sense with top two on a K83 rainbow flop for example, but it is not that common).
The flop is so drawy that villain's range contains very few hands that are pure air. Most of the weak hands in his range have at least a board pair or a gutshot, but many of these hands will have trouble calling a flop raise. That's the main reason why it is vital to raise - to protect our hand against these holdings. If we give villain a hand like JT87 (middle pair+gutshot), it is almost impossible for him to continue against a raise, but he has something like ten outs (varies slightly depending on suits) to make the best hand on the turn plus backdoor draws. There is no way you will recover enough equity from villain double-barrelling with air than you will lose by giving someone with ten outs a chance to beat you when he would have folded to a raise.
Another major reason for raising is that we are a significant favorite against many of the hands that "hit" this flop for villain - KT9, AKT, KKT, KQT, KK with spades, T9 with spades, etc. He may decide to play fast with these hands, which would be a big mistake for him, and very profitable for us.
Another reason to raise is that there are a few made hands that have a hard time calling a raise - bottom 2 with no draws and so on. Even if he folds a better hand only a small % of the time, that's more profit for us.
Finally even if reraised and we are beat it doesn't suck that much because we still have excellent equity against 2-pair and reasonable equity against sets.
In summary, this is a raise on the flop and it is not even remotely close. Pretty much the only way a raise would not be clear is if villain's range for betting out on the flop includes only wraps+2pair or better. Even then though it would probably be at least not terrible to raise and get it in.