Anatomy of a Flush Draw Chase

We all come across loose villians that pick up their flush draws from time to time, but are they really crazy when it comes to chasing these draws? I put some situational variables into a hand evaluator to find out and open it up for discussion.

First we'll use a hand where villian has: 9hTh

Flop comes out: Ah Ts 5h

Probabilities at this point:


By the river the villian has a combination of probabilities that equal a 70% chance to take out your AJ+ hand if he decides to chase his draws should your hand not improve along the way. If a brick comes on the turn he's still left with 48% for the river.

Next we'll change the flop to give the villian a little less equity to see the numbers.

Villian has: 9hTh

Flop comes out: Ah 8s 5h

Probabilities at this point:


By the river the villian has a combination of probabilities that equal a 46% chance to take out your AJ+ hand if he decides to chase his draws should your hand not improve along the way. If a brick comes for the villian on the turn he has 33% chance of still beating your hand on the river.

Discussion Questions
1) What do you think of draw chasing with the chances on the 1st situation?
2) What do you think of draw chasing with the chances on the 2nd situation?
3) Do you go balls deep when playing these kind of hands? If so, is it a specific situation from above?

Personally, I haven't looked at the probability numbers for these situations until now and have played tight and folded by the turn if there was no improvement. Which in the case of the first hand, it looks like I was making a big mistake by folding the turn. Am I crazy to now think that the loose players aren't so dumb for calling hands like these down to the river (especially the 1st one)?

In scenario 1 villain has about 50% equity not 70% against AJ

No, they're still dumb most of the time though there is some merit to "flush draw+pair arrr-in!" in some situations.

Swap the positions and say you have the 9hTh on the first flop. What if villain has AhJh? You're crushed right? Just because a villain will improve past TP a certain percentage doesn't change the way we should play our hands. We need to value bet if we have the most equity right now. With TP on that board vs a loose passive then we need to value bet every single time, he'll call with J9 not just his monster draws. If the turn changes the board texture and strengthens his hand range then we can think about checking.

As for how I would play the 9hTh hand, it depends on my opponent, but in general quite strongly, but I'm an aggro tard We have a fair amount of equity right now against pretty much anything even if he has Ax we're like 30%.

I know it sounds strange I'm talking about both sides in quite opposite ways and my ramble doesn't make a lot of sense to me but I hope you understand what I'm saying.

Actually very good stuff here, I hope you get lots of feedback.

Remember when chasing non-nut flush draws that you could hit your flush and lose to a bigger one. Also depending on stakes getting extremely aggressive with flush draws may not be +EV as you need villain to fold often enough to make that 36% equity payoff. Also another thing to bear in mind is that when you face extreme aggression on a 4 flush board you are often up against a set trying to protect their hand so hitting 2 pair may not give you the winning hand at showdown.

I think position is very important on Flush draws as you get to act after your opponent. If you have the draw but are OOP villain can re-raise you if you c-bet or check behind as well.

Ideally you would rather have AhTh on a As5h8h draw giving you top pair and the nut flush draw. Obviously the more outs you have the more aggro you can be with your draw. King high flush draws are nice when the A is part of the draw which will happen about 16% of the time as you then have the nut flush draw but 84% of the time you are drawing to the 2nd nut flush so you really want to have position here.

Anyway very nice post!

The original post uses probability calculations, which looks at the chance that a given event will occur in the future. You're right on the equity number, and most of use this and factor in the EV of a certain play to help us make a decision. I took a different approach to analyzing a loose players call down that most of us haven't looked at. The 70% probability comes from adding flush, straight, three of a kind, and two pair by the river. If the turn card doesn't help any of those, then the probability jumps down to 48%, because certain combinations aren't possible anymore. Most of us would dump a 9hTh hand on the turn to a large bet because the equity isn't there to support our decision of continuing, but could we fault a villian for calling down with a 70% chance of improving over 2 streets to something that could take down a really nice pot?

I'm an aggrotard too when I know the equity is high for my hand, but should we learn to factor in this probability amount to combine with our equity/EV decisions since it affects the future equity of our hand? Equity is solid, and probability is putting your future at mathematical chance.

The level of aggression our villian has makes hand reading much easier. I agree with your comment on position and flush draws. Situations like hand 2 become cake because a cbet or donk bet raise usually results in a turn check from the player OOP and we could easily check the turn for the free river card if we don't improve on the turn. Your AhTh on a As5h8h hand would have the same probability chance of improving of 70% by the river as the hand 1 example, but with the TP it becomes increasingly stronger in terms of equity.

This is such a great exercise for any poker player to do. Most players these days just pokerstove a range, and whilst they end up knowing the equities involved there is little understanding of the actual way its arrived at.

Having said that using stove is a great resourse, but should'nt be used exclusively.

He does not have a 70% chance of winning if he is against Ax.

Most of the 2 pair hands will be counter fitted by Ax, i.e. you make 2 pair, he makes trips, you make 2 pair he makes a higher 2 pair. His equity in the hand against Ax is 50%

I do apologize if you're using english as a second language and what I've posted is confusing, I'll try to break it down a little more. The percentages you see in the original post aren't the "winning" chances. They are the mathematical probability of improvement for that hand on each betting street. Hopefully that makes sense wording it that way?

Instead of using a point of view based of PokerStove (which is what we normally do and learn from), this is another perspective to try and make sense as to why loose players will call us down sometimes. We always feel a little tilted when they turn over 2 pair or better with some ridiculous hand and we're holding AK or some other monster hand. Showing villian's mathematical chances for hand improvement vs ours might tell a different story that doesn't make them so crazy after all.

Can anyone let me know if what I've been posting makes any sense to you?
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I'll give another example in this post that defines both hands.

Hero's Hand: AsKd
Villian's Hand 9hTh

Flop: Ah Ts 5h

PokerStove Equity Results: 49.899% (AsKd) vs. 50.101% (9hTh)
Probability Results for the Hero:

Probability Results for the Villian:


PokerStove tells us equity wise it's a coin flip from the flop. Probability for hand improvement on each person's hand tells a different story. The chaser against the TAG with AK is miles ahead of the hero when it comes to hand improvement probability on future streets. The best way to put it is, the TAG hero becomes an easily trapped spewing ATM for the loose villian.

Why would someone be correct to draw to a counter fitted hand?

Your whole argument is that villian can draw and improve 70% of the time, yet against any reasonable hand 20% of the time that jhand will be counterfitted.. hence Pokerstove gives an equity value of 50% not 70%

So whats your point.. villian should continue so he can loose with 2 pair rather than fold a single pair because its nicer to loose with 2 pair?

This topic reminds me of this hand.





You see... On the turn a 4 and 2 make a two pair for Dwan. Too bad it wouldn't help at all huh?

Tom Dwan ended up with trips on the turn, and won the hand. I must be onto something interesting with this discussion if Dwan would throw that much money into a hand when he pretty much knows what Greenstein has.

Lol wat?

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

990 games 0.001 secs 990,000 games/sec

Board: 2s 4s Qh
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 50.202% 50.20% 00.00% 497 0.00 { AcAd }
Hand 1: 49.798% 49.80% 00.00% 493 0.00 { KsQs }

That's the reason he did it and the only reason.

Even in the worst case range the dead money makes it profitable. Plus Barry isn't unknown to do some crazy stuff, he's no nit.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

11,880 games 0.001 secs 11,880,000 games/sec

Board: 2s 4s Qh
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 61.515% 61.52% 00.00% 7308 0.00 { AA, 44, 22 }
Hand 1: 38.485% 38.48% 00.00% 4572 0.00 { KsQs }

I'll avoid putting anymore into this thread. Anyone can open up pokerstove and see the same crap we always look at. It's even on my desktop as a shortcut. Sorry for taking an abstract look at loose chasers and wasting time.

You still havent explained why a villian would be chasing 2pair in the first scenario.

PS gives an equity of 50% in that situation because thats the chances of you improving and winning.

You are quoting a figure of 70% (which I can see where it comes from) but do you really think villian is thinking anything other than FLUSH DRAW FLUSH DRAW FLUSH DRAW as if he makes 2 apir with anything other than the 9 he dosent improve at all.

If he makes 2 pair with anything other than a 9 he dosent beat a single hand his weak second pair no kicker didnt beat before it improves to 2 pair.

So again, what your point?

Why would villian be correct to chase this draw when we factor in all the 2pair hands he will improve to and still loose?

Can we blame villian for calling down 3 streets, improving to a dominated 2 pair and losing his stack.. yes we can blame him, but we wont hold it against him as its good for us.

I deserve an award for getting this reply. It might be your longest post on these forums and a valuable one. Your example connects perfectly with what tenbob said a few posts back about this being a good poker exercise for any player. Like myself, yeah I get to know the equities from using pokerstove all the time, but trying to make sense of probability output and how it factors in can be confusing without a good example like you gave to show how it works down to the equity values we see in pokerstove.

TBH it just says what my other posts said.. its just longer.