Just sat down like five minutes ago. Villian shourt stacked at like $20. How do you like hte push for the striaght flush draw? Thinking if he calls I'm 50/50 plus fold equity.

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
5 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is BB with :q :t
UTG calls, CO calls, Button folds, SB calls, Hero checks.

Flop: :9 :j :7 ($2, 4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2, UTG raises to $4, 2 folds, Hero raises to $33.5, UTG calls all-in $15.7.
Uncalled bets: $13.8 returned to Hero.

hmm. i'd probably rather call and see the turn. if you hit, then play accordingly. if not, you still have position, outs, and fold equity.

seems standard, and you're much better than 50/50 to TP; it's more like 3-2 in your favor unless it's like QJ. You're even a slight favorite to two pair.

Yep, I like it.

Even a set doesn't have you in that much trouble.

push everytime.

shouldn't be debatable.

- Jordan

k, sounds good.

he called with K 4 , so I was in much worse shape then you'd expect. heart came on the turn, and I missed my 1 outter (8 ).

bad luck mate

ps I love his UTG call with K4s.

meh - in a 5 player game, K4 sooted actually is a decent hand, imo.
Not saying I'd always be calling it UTG, but I'd be much more likely to
see a cheap flop with it when shorthanded than I would be in full ring.

Bad.

We are ahead of pretty much everything on this flop.

Pushing is +EV.

i'm not saying pushing is bad, but I don't see how its "bad" to see the turn before committing.

pushing the flop is +EV but we have a +EV situation. i suppose since the villian has a short stack then pushing seems more favorable than usual. in a deeper stacked situation i would even more want to see what develops later in the hand.


perhaps there's something i dont see about the hand that makes it a better play to get it in with like 55% equity (considering the villian's possible hands JJ,77,99, higher flush draws, top pair, any combo of two pair) than waiting to either put money in after we make a hand or be able to fold to a big bet when the turn comes a 3c.

we are OOP, so this adds to the pushing case. i would personally still call this. i feel like either play is okay.

Well, they are probably both +EV situations, however a lot of the times we will be priced out on the river.

Our equity plummets if we miss on the turn, and not only that, but it'll be hard to win much from a lot of villains.

If we can get it in on the flop, we guarantee getting the money in with an equity edge against his RANGE, and we guarantee getting paid off when we hit (I know there's the counter point to losing more when we miss), and we also get to see both cards.

I suck at math, but if someone could do an EV calc of getting it all in on the flop vs seeing a turn, and of course factoring in when we hit, and when we miss and are priced out.

Paging Actuary.

- Zach

I'm going to make a move on the flop.

We're out of position actually.

If he bets the pot on the turn ($10), we're still getting break even pot odds at 2:1. The other $5 is going in if we hit on the river, so that would be a call I think. If he goes all-in, then we no longer have the correct odds and we should fold (assuming no outs to pairs are good, and I think that's a good assumption).

As far as fold equity, not very many bricks are going to look scary to our opponent given the action. As it turns out you might've been able to win the pot with a bluff on the river if you both missed, but I wouldn't plan on that.

Because we win
$8 100% of the time the x% of the time he folds
and we win
$20 50% of the time the (1-x%) of the time he calls.

If we call and price ourselves out for the turn,
We win Unknown amount when we hit a transparent draw 25% of the time on the turn
and lose $2 75% of the time when we fold the turn cause we're priced out.

Looks fine to me. How many more outs do you need before you can be aggressive if you said no?

I understand what you are saying.
Your point is that we might as well wait to see if we really do make our hand before investing a lot of money.
But in poker, this cautious strategy loses a lot of potential money.

Let's look at the 3 possible scearios:

We call the flop - and we miss the draw on the turn

If you miss your draw on the turn, you are then the underdog.
Your draw is strong. But only if you get to see BOTH cards (turn and river).

At this point, with only one card to come, you may not be getting the proper odds to call another bet.
So you never really gave your draw a full chance to produce anything for you.
This is bad.


We call the flop - and we hit our Flush on the turn.

Wonderful.
We made out hand.

But with 3 hearts now on the board, our opponent will get scared.
He may fold immediately.
But he will certainly slow down.
So, in most situations, we will not be able to get him to pay us off completely.


--> So when we wait to see the turn, we usually encounter a lose-lose situation no matter how the hand turns out.
We lose more often (since we didn't get to draw out on the river, and we win less (since opponent gets scared away).


We push on the flop without waiting for the turn.

Villain will either call or fold.

If he calls, we are happy because we got all of our money in with an equity edge.

if he folds, we are happy, because we won the pot for free!

Win-Win situaiton.


--cm

good post, cm.

i just feel like we're getting called mostly by hands that we wont beat >50% like sets or higher flush draws. the only thing I can see calling that we "beat" is a straight or two pair, both unlikely.

and hands that we're making fold like top pair, lower flush draw maybe, higher flush draw, etc. are hands we want to play against (except Kxh and Axh). the only one we would ever -want- to fold is a better flush draw. everything else we want to get more money in, which we wont do by pushing.

thats why I like calling. a set will slow down to the third heart, but not fold. same goes for a straight.

I certainly would want top pair to fold.

We talk about getting 'em in as a "favorite", but that's really a fall back at this point. We'd prefer them to fold since the edge is small in terms of our showdown value.

nico, why would you want top pair to fold? that's a hand that we're ahead of.



and why would we risk 18$ to win 8$ in this spot? I realize we've got outs and all. but we could risk 2$ to win that same 8$ and have not much less of a chance (hitting a good turn) than if we try to get him to fold.

How do you risk $2 to win $8? $8 is the minimum EV of the hand if we push. There is negative expected values of just calling the 2.

Because then I get the money in the pot.

EDIT.
OK, I can give the long answer, too. If our opponent has a hand like AJ such that we 3 outs for queens we're about a 1.5:1 favorite. If we both had a billion dollars in front of us and the pot was still just $10, I'd want him to call as much as possible.

Here, though, the pot size is large enough that even if the hero pushes after the villain's raise on the flop, the villain is still getting the correct odds to call. He makes money by calling. There are only two players. Therefore the hero loses money.

The preflop pot is 2. Hero and villain put in 4 each on the flop. 2 + 4 x 2 = 10.
Then the hero pushes for 15.70. 15.70 + 10 = 25.70. Villain has to call 15.70. So his pot odds are 25.70:15.70 or 1.63:1. 1.63 > 1.5, therefore he should call.

Looking at it another way, he trades $15.70 for 40.3% equity in a $41.40 pot or $16.68. So he makes about a buck. He's putting additional money in as a dog, but it's right for him to do so because the pot is laying him sufficient odds.

There's a stack size at which we prefer that he call our all-in for these known hands.

amount he has to put in = his equity in the pot
amount he has to put in = (his hand's chances) (the size of the pot)

Let b = our bet size
Let p = pot size before our bet
Let c = the chance the villain has to win the hand

b = c(p + 2b)
b = cp + 2bc
b - 2bc = cp
b(1-2c) = cp
b = cp/(1-2c)

(I note at this point that as c approaches 50% our bet size becomes infinite. That's an encouraging sign toward my math being right.)

In our case:
c=0.403
p=$2 + $4x2 = $10

b = (0.403)($10) / (1 - 2 * 0.403)
b = $20.77

So if he has more than $20.77, we want him to call our push with AJ.

Checking:
-----------
Pot is $10 + 2($20.77) = $51.55
His equity is (0.403)($51.55) = $20.77.

That was fun and all, but queens are far from clean outs without knowing the hands.

good stuff David.

Zach I'm flattered.,

yeah, easy push here.

great read by villain.
but actually, he only needs to put us on a draw occassionally to make the call +EV, right?

another reason I like the push, is the times we over bet stronger made hands and get called again by draws that are ~35-40% to hit, yet <28% after redraws to us.

This isn't always true, though. There are often times where both players can make +EV decisions on the same street. This is especially true in limit. The reason for this is the dead money that is already in the pot. So in general, if a player makes a play that earns him money, that doesn't mean that the other player is losing money (though I think it implies that someone made a -EV decision earlier in the hand).

For example, say the pot is $50 on the turn. The Board is:

T Q 2 4

Player A: QQ 70%

Player B: J K 30%

If player A goes all in and bets $15 on the turn (which is a +EV play since he's ahead in the hand), player B can call with a positive expectation.

Neither player is "losing" money on this street since both of their decisions are +EV. This is because the pot is large and because Player B made -EV decisions earlier.

That's exactly the same sort of situation we have in the hand I analyzed. I'm just using "losing" a bit more broadly. In either hand, the OP makes a profit when he's betting as the favorite. He makes money when the other player calls, but he makes more money when the other player incorrectly folds. So, loosely speaking, I say he "loses" the difference when the other player calls.