Let’s look at a common scenario in limit hold ‘em. It’s not a pleasant one, but it’s common nonetheless:

You have 9♠ 9♣ in middle position. Folded to you preflop, and you raise. The button, your run-of-the-mill fish who’s slightly too loose preflop, slightly too passive and often makes somewhat questionable calls postflop, calls two bets cold and the big blind calls as well. The flop comes 8-5-2 rainbow. This is an excellent flop for you, of course.

The big blind checks, you bet, the button calls and the big blind folds. Heads-up, the turn brings a Q. Not as awful as if it had been an ace, since aces are more commonly played, but still a threatening overcard to your nines. You bet. Button calls. You’re not really sure what he has anymore, but it could be something like A8-suited.

River brings another deuce, making the final board 8-5-2-Q-2. You have two pair, and likely the best hand still. You bet, and the button calls. He turns over QTo and takes down the pot.

Recognize the situation? It happens all the time. Specifically, what happened was that he made a somewhat loose peel on the flop (very common), but then never actually raised with it. Let’s examine this closer:

Going into the flop, there were 6 bets in the flop (rake ate the small blind) and your bet brought it up to 7, giving him 7-1 on a call with two overcards and a long shot backdoor straight draw. If all of his overcard outs were live, he was getting odds of 47-6, or slightly less than 8-1, which is not quite enough. Of course, he probably has ample implied odds to make up for it if he thinks you’ll bet the turn again.

Here’s the problem* though: He wasn’t confident enough to bet even his top overcard out when it hit. Instead he just called. He didn’t raise the river either, so it wasn’t a matter of just smooth calling, to avoid shutting you down. No, he probably hit that pair but started doubting that it was good enough. You could have KK or AA for all he knew. Maybe a set? Maybe AQ or KQ? Scary.

There are two morals to this story that I’m telling you, and they are connected:

1. If you’re drawing to outs, you should do so with the assumption that they will actually give you the best hand. In this case, if he even looked at his pot odds, he must have been counting on all six of his overcards being live, otherwise he was wrong to call. Of course, presuming that all of them are live is a big mistake on his part, since he really can’t rule out AA/KK/AQ/KQ/ATs from your range. He made the mistake of overcounting his outs. This is dangerous, because it leads to calls that are losing propositions. Be careful with this. Depending on your read of your opponent, you should probably discount at least somewhere around 3 of your outs here, as many of the hands a tight player will raise with in middle position has QT dominated.

2. After hitting his outs, he didn’t realize his implied odds. So we’ve noted that he has overcounted his outs, meaning that his odds are actually a lot worse than they seemed. Still, he has a chance of making up for this: He needs to get paid off properly when he actually hits his outs. He should have been able to pick up at least one more big bet somewhere in this hand, but failed. If he had raised on the turn or the river, I could have forgiven him for peeling with QT, but now that he didn’t he’s just costing himself money.

These two morals together bring us to today’s suggestion:

If you’re not confident enough about your outs to raise when you hit them, and the pot odds are indicating that it’s a close call, lay it down.

It’s easy enough to understand, but it’s a common mistake. Because the fact of the matter is, when you peel on the flop you’re taking a “cheap” card in the hopes of winning big bets on the later streets. But ask yourself what you’re hoping will come on the turn. Don’t just automatically call with overcards, but instead try to figure out how you will feel when one of those overcard outs hit. Would you feel fairly confident that you had the best hand? A typical situation for what I’m talking about is this:

Again, you have 9-9. You think your opponent might have a big pocket pair, or some kind of broadway cards. The flop is 7-8-J. How many outs do you have?

It’s impossible to say for sure, of course, but here’s something that you must stop to consider: Even though a T would give you the near-nuts (it’s unlikely that your opponent also has a 9, given that you have two of the available four), you can’t quite as easily count on the two remaining nines to be outs for you. If you spike a set on the turn, the board will be an extremely vicious-looking 7-8-J-9, and all of a sudden he may have a straight. Would you feel confident raising on that board? I’m not arguing for insta-folds in situations like this, but I’m trying to point out that you need to consider the outs you think you have and how you would feel if they actually hit.

When you’re faced with a decision that seems like it’s a coinflip in terms of pot odds vs. odds on hitting, my humble suggestion is that you fold when your outs are potentially weak and call when they are potentially strong.

Best of luck,
Fredrik

* There’s another problem here, and I hope some of you caught it: He wasn’t closing the action. The big blind could very well have been waiting to checkraise. This pushes it from “it’s close” to “it’s an easy fold.” Yet another thing that you should always, always, always consider.