Picking up where I left off, I want to first take a moment to address some of the questions and comments that came up in the discussion thread. First of all, I should say that I agree with Bombjack’s skepticism about the preflop call. It’s pretty thin.

Now, when it comes to the sizing of the bet on the flop, the point was - correctly - made that perhaps a smaller bet would have been preferable in order to keep the pot smaller with our vulnerable hand. That’s a good argument. I wouldn’t chastice anyone for betting a smaller amount than the full pot here, say $8 or $10. However, I think that betting the full pot size is better against all but the most weak-tight opponents. Unless we have a solid reputation of only betting very strong hands (I usually don’t), I have a hard time figuring that a hand like KQ is going to fold to $12, but call $8.

However, and it may seem I’m contradicting myself here, if I’m wrong and we actually end up folding out some hands that would otherwise have called, the “cost” for us in terms of loss of expected value is offset quite a lot by the fact that we’re out of position. Being first to act, we shouldn’t mind as much if our opponent makes good laydowns compared to when we’re in position. We’re the ones most likely to make big and costly mistakes in this hand, not him.

We should also be wary of giving up too much information about the strength of our hand on the flop by sizing our bet according to our hole cards, although that’s a less important argument than the previous ones. Overall, I choose to bet the pot because I believe it has the highest expected value.

Now back to business.

I take off my MP-hat and put on my button-goggles. What’s my take here?

I’m in position against a single opponent. I’ve flopped the nut flush draw with an ace overcard on a harmless looking board. I have all three options open to me at the moment; fold, call and raise. All three have their merits. Let’s examine them one-by-one. Although Phil Gordon likes to start by examining the most aggressive option first, I’ll be boring and start with folding:

Folding

Realistically, my opponent’s range has my hand dominated a large portion of the time. Pocket pairs, bigger A-x hands and even KQ and QJ have me in bad shape. If I want to win this pot, I need to either make a hand before showdown, or bluff my way to glory. I’m being offered only slightly better odds than 2:1 (adding in the blind money) to call with a hand that seems to have somewhere around nine outs to win. Possibly a few more though, as the three aces will be valid outs for me some of the time, and also the three nines some part of the time. Gauging myself to have around 11 outs is probably fair. Clearly I don’t have the necessary pot odds to continue. Folding is a viable option. Perhaps not the best, though.

Calling

If we’re going to find arguments for calling, we need to think through the possible range our opponent will have based on the preflop action and his c-bet on the flop. We look at his preflop range first; what can we expect a typical opponent to raise to 3xBB with preflop? If he’s very passive, as I find most NL players are, not much and we’re probably in pretty bad shape. But if MP is anything like me, his range will be around the best 12% of hands, and sometimes a few more hands thrown in, like suited connectors down to 87s. How do I fare against this range?

His range: 77+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo (chances are you find this to be a much too big range - keep the discussion up!)

Against that range, on this board, I think I’m in pretty good shape. Some of the time, I already have the best hand (ace-high) and all of the time I have a draw to the nuts. PokerStove tells me that my ace-nine is about 47% to win against his range. Being offered 2:1, folding is clearly not right.

However, that may not be his range any longer, because now we know more than just that he raised preflop; he also followed up with a bet on the flop. What does that narrow it down to?

Clearly, any hand with a queen in it. I believe he would be making a mistake if he didn’t bet all of the pocket pairs that he would open with (barring maybe QQ and 77) since they are in strong need of being protected. AK will often - in my case, almost always - make a continuation bet. AJ might check. Another flush draw might check. Let’s say that his range, now that he made another bet, is

77+,AQs+,KQs,QJs,AQo+

Clearly, I must be in worse shape against that range. How bad? PokerStove says that I’m 42% to win.

That’s still pretty big. If I was sure my opponent would always check the turn if I called, I’d be getting immediate pot odds good enough to call. Thing is, my 42% to win needs time to materialize, and by calling the flop I’m only being guaranteed one card. If I knew I could see both cards for this price, it’d be a done deal, but I’m not there quite yet.

How are my implied odds? Against the range that we put him on after making the c-bet, it’s hard to imagine that I wouldn’t win another dime if I hit my flush. Even with the worst possible hand, the AK, I would sometimes manage to squeeze out another few dollars (and when I hit my flush by scoring the king of spades, quite a few more dollars). At best, I will stack him. If he flopped a set of queens or sevens, I’ll win big if I hit my flush on the turn since he will often be willing to stack off.

It’s bordering on impossible to figure out proper implied odds, especially while at the table and under the clock. Suffice it to say that here, I believe our implied odds are decent on average. They’re not great, but his hand seems to be of some strength at least, so they’re surely “something.”

Finally, we have position. Regardless of which hand he’s holding, he will have a difficult decision to make on the turn if we call the flop. He’s very liable to make mistakes, ranging from betting into us some of the time when we turn the flush and checking some of the times we don’t. There’s money to be had here.

Raising

Stealing the pot outright by raising here is not a terrible idea, either. It’s a semi-bluff with huge equity and some of the times it will work out so that we raise on the flop and get to check behind on the turn if we don’t hit our flush, which may be a cheaper way of seeing the river than calling twice. Against the range we put him on, where we’re virtually certain that he has the better hand, we will unfortunately get called often. Furthermore, we will get re-raised some of the time, too, and if there’s one thing we don’t want, it’s to pay more than we have to. We want to see the river card as cheaply as possible if the turn isn’t a spade.

Against timid opponents, capable of folding TT and AK and similar on this board, raising might be +EV. I’d do the actual calculations, but since I wouldn’t be able to do it at the table, I won’t here. My gut feeling is that it’s somewhat +EV to raise, but it’s thin. Feel free to check if I’m right.

Calling, however, I feel is not thin.

Button calls $12.

What do you think?

Returning quickly into the role of MP:

Seeing button make the call is a worrying, but not yet a cause for panic. We did hope to get value from worse queens and some pocket pairs, and that may be exactly what has happened here. If I don’t improve by the turn, my plan is to fire a second barrel, probably around half the pot.

If button had raised, I would have called. If my hand doesn’t improve by the turn, I would have called again, but probably lay my hand down if button makes it three barrels (i.e. bets the river as well). I wouldn’t know if I’m ahead or behind, I wouldn’t know how to get value out of what may be the best hand while simultaneously avoiding giving away my stack when I have the worst of it, and I absolutely hate being out of position.

The fact that MP’s situation is such a dire one when button makes the call is exactly why making the call is good. Next post deals with MP’s take on blank turn.