You donk, you bet a draw!!!

#1 3rd January 2010, 4:14 AM

This is written for newer players who either play all draws passively or are frustrated by agg players who play draws aggressively. The general thinking is, I think, that we don't have a made hand, so why would we put money in the pot/be aggressive?

The below example is from PLO - but it illustrates an idea that I thought'd be useful for newer NLHE players. Villain (BTN) flops the nut straight with no redraws - in other words, Villain has the best possible hand on the flop, but cannot improve to a better hand. Hero flops a 17 card wrap straight draw (i.e., any 6, 7, T, J, or Q makes Hero a straight) and a backdoor flush draw (i.e., runner/runner clubs) making Hero, on the flop without a made hand, a 62/38 favorite over Villain. Villain raises Hero's flop bet, and Hero happilly pushes to get all in. Of course, 38% of the time that Hero does this, he's going to lose $23.65, but 62% of the time Hero's going to win the pot against the flopped nuts - pretty nice, right?

The key ideas here are that we're getting it in without a made hand purely based on the possibility of hitting one of our outs, and that we're actually a heavy favorite to win the pot against a hand that is the nuts on the flop.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/452693
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $59.40
Hero (MP): $26.90
CO: $18.00
BTN: $23.65
SB: $14.65
BB: $31.35

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP with Jd Qc 7c Td
UTG calls $0.25, Hero calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, BTN calls $0.25, SB calls $0.15, BB checks

Flop: ($1.50) 5c 8h 9d (6 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $0.90, CO folds, BTN raises to $4.15, SB folds, BB folds, UTG folds, Hero raises to $13.90, BTN raises to $23.40 all in, Hero calls $9.50

Turn: ($48.30) Ts (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($48.30) 8c (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $48.30
Hero shows Jd Qc 7c Td (a straight, Eight to Queen)
BTN mucks 7s 4s 6s 2c
Hero wins $45.90
(Rake: $2.40)

It's rare in NLHE, though, to get those massive combo draws. Here's a big combo draw - we've got 8c7c on a 9c6c2d flop, giving us a straight flush draw. We're 54.44% favorites over AA on this flop, 51% favorites against two pair hands, and only a 42% dog to 99 and a 43% dog to AcKc, the two worst hands for us to be up against. Change the flop to 9c6d2c, giving us a combo draw (a flush draw and a straight draw, but not a straight flush draw). We're now a 53.9% favorite over AA and a 48% dog to two pair hands, and now are a 40% dog to a set and a 35% dog to AcKc. The edges are slimmer, and we're up against hands where we can be a serious dog in the combo draw scenario.

In NLHE, though, we've also got fold equity - FE isn't as much of a factor in PLO, but it's a huge potential factor in NLHE. By betting, you're giving Villain the opportunity to fold his weaker made hands (say, second pair or TPMK) because of the threat that you'll continue betting on the next street (this is called leverage). And if you hit your draw by the river, you can go to showdown having "sucked out" on the guy who called down w second pair.

Then there's the pot equity - this is the chance your hand will be good at showdown against Villain's range of hands relative to the amount of money you have to keep putting into the pot to get to showdown (i.e., above, the % chance your hand has of winning relative to the amount of money in the pot). This is why playing suited and/or connected cards in position is so important - you can continue being aggressive when the turn adds outs to your hand.

As an example, let's say you 3bet from the button w Ac3c and the cutoff calls you. Flop is Tc6d2h, which misses you, but you cbet anyhow cuz it probably missed the cutoff, and he calls. Turn is a 4c - our hand wasn't worth anything other than a cbet a minute ago, but now we've got 12 outs to a probable nut hand - 9 for the flush and the other 3 fives - and the three remaining A's may make our hand. We can continue being aggressive and represent a big hand here - if he folds cuz of the heat, we're happy, and if he calls, we've got a decent number of outs, so we're still happy. He'll be a little ticked off when a 5 hits the river and yell at us in chat "You donk!", but we'll be happy taking his money.

Adding your fold equity and pot equity, and using leverage to increase fold equity, allows you to be more aggressive and to take more frequent pots.

If you haven't already, try plugging in various drawing hands into Pokerstove and checking how they do against various made hands (i.e., top pair, sets, two pair, etc.) - you may be surprised by the amount of equity you can have, and the amount of overall equity you have when you add fold equity and pot equity together.

Remember, aggression is good!

gl and see you on the felt.

#2 3rd January 2010, 4:44 AM

Hey, I resemble that kind of donk . Another good thread slycbnew & as usual, your insight is greatly appreciated!

#3 3rd January 2010, 4:50 AM

Please keep posting these... I learn so much.Are you using program to calulate your outs and odds just an auto thing?

#4 3rd January 2010, 4:53 AM

I agree with you 100% on the example hand. However, with that strong a starting hand, you could even raise pre-flop, as a majority of flops would connect with that starting hand somehow. You could weed out some of the smaller pairs or draws and make sure you are going up against a AAxx or AKxx or similar type of hand.

#5 3rd January 2010, 5:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juniorsdaddy

I agree with you 100% on the example hand. However, with that strong a starting hand, you could even raise pre-flop, as a majority of flops would connect with that starting hand somehow. You could weed out some of the smaller pairs or draws and make sure you are going up against a AAxx or AKxx or similar type of hand.

I'm still tentative pf, thanks for the suggestion!

I was thinking (correctly or incorrectly) that I liked the hand in a multiway pot, I wasn't keen w the bottom gap being two ranks, and that raising was unlikely to get me position (i.e., players behind me were playing 70%+ of their hands in raised and unraised pots) - but that might be a reason to raise in and of itself .

#6 3rd January 2010, 5:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the lab man

Please keep posting these... I learn so much.Are you using program to calulate your outs and odds just an auto thing?

I use three programs to look at equity (number of outs I do off the top of my head) -

1. HEM, which gives me my equity on every street when I do hand reviews after my sessions

2. Pokerstove, which is a free app (www.pokerstove.com), which calculates equity of sample hands and sample ranges for holdem - someone recently posted a vid in the video forum talking about stove, haven't checked it out, but I'm sure it's good. If you don't have this, there's no reason on on earth not to get it and play with it.

3. www.propokertools.com, which is also free, and does pretty much the same thing that Pokerstove does, except for Omaha hands (Pokerstove doesn't do Omaha)

While playing, I'm not using these tools, it's for post-session review to make sure I was making good decisions when I was playing. In PLO in particular, putting ranges on players and calculating equity is difficult because of the number of possible hands, and there isn't time to plug stuff into a program to do it for you - so I make the best decision I'm capable of, mark hands (in HEM's HUD) I'm not sure about, and run equity after the session. For HE, you get used to it pretty fast since the number of possible combinations of ranges and equity are more limited.

I'm aware of www.twodimes.net, but haven't looked at it yet, I think it's similar to propokertools.

There's also a tool called Pokerazor, which allows complex modeling of stuff in a similar way to pokerstove, but it's not free and is a little too intimidating for me . stu_ungar and chuckts, though, have posted several excellent threads about this tool.

#7 3rd January 2010, 7:18 PM

Very nice post, slycbnew.

One more thing to consider when playing draws aggressively is the implied odds when you get called and hit your draw. Usually you can actually get even more money into the pot after you hit, and that improve your odds substantially, enough so that barreling weaker draws can become profitable.

#8 4th January 2010, 1:43 AM

Yikes, this is a pretty key consideration that I forgot to include - thanks!

In the backdoor fd/sd example I provided above, if Villain feels like Hero is full of it cuz he's got an agg image, or if Hero has a nitty image and Villain thinks Hero's playing a pocket pair, or if Villain has been slowplaying AA or a set, he may bet the river or shove over a river bet Hero makes, allowing Hero to potentially stack him w his backdoor flush or straight. This is equity that isn't captured in fold equity or in pot equity, hence the term "implied odds".

As Belgo points out, adding implied odds to fold equity and pot equity makes an even stronger case for being aggressive w draws.

Not a surprise that Belgo, a master of the agg game, would catch this!

#9 4th January 2010, 2:25 AM

It doesn't seem to matter what hand they have anymore if the got any pair or anything that remotely resembles a draw they go with it. The disgusting thing is they make every dang one. I'm starting to feel like it's better to have the worse hand going allin lately.

#10 4th January 2010, 3:35 AM

Super post sly! Good pot equity + fold equity = gold , plus, this helps you get paid off with your premium hands, because observant villains now know you can bet with draws, hence your range is wider, and will get called down lighter.

#11 4th January 2010, 3:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjatud2012

Super post sly! Good pot equity + fold equity = gold , plus, this helps you get paid off with your premium hands, because observant villains now know you can bet with draws, hence your range is wider, and will get called down lighter.

Another excellent point, there's alot of value to image here!

#12 4th January 2010, 3:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steves22

It doesn't seem to matter what hand they have anymore if the got any pair or anything that remotely resembles a draw they go with it. The disgusting thing is they make every dang one. I'm starting to feel like it's better to have the worse hand going allin lately.

If you read the thread and the points Belgo and cjatud make, you'll get a sense of why it makes sense to be agg here.

Note that I'm a cash game player, not an MTT player, so it may not be as applicable if you're an MTT player (I'm making the assumption based on the "worse hand going allin" comment that you may be an MTT player).

gl

#13 4th January 2010, 4:08 AM

Sly, Thats just gold.. I could never word it like that.. Alot of other posters could take alot from how you worded this and put across your thinking.. The logic is 100% there and is spot on.. Noone needs to be learning poker or be a noob to the forum to appreciate this..

Really well done and thanks for taking the time to put it together.. May I say again.. Pure Gold

#14 7th January 2010, 9:09 AM

Can someone archive this? It took me 3 months to learn this through experience at 25NL, maybe it will save someone else some time...

#15 7th January 2010, 10:30 AM

How do you calculate FE with the hand 8c7c flop 9c,6d,2c?

#16 7th January 2010, 11:40 AM

Great post sly, love the title as well, very catchy! (no pun intended).

But yea, I never used to understand FE (fold equity) up until about a year ago. I believe it was something that either Belgo or FP wrote but it helped me understand it quite easily.

This part of the game of poker is very 'in depth' & requires either a lot of studying/reading &/or experience to be able to master. In chess, I call it the 'in-game'. You can be very good @ starting moves (pre-flop when referring to poker) & finishing moves (river play when referring to poker) but when it comes to the 'in-game' (flop & turn play when referring to poker), it gets a little more complicated.

I have played my share of PLO both online & live. I first learned the game when I was 16. My friends aunt was/is a dealer @ 1 of our local casinos (Ameristar) & taught us the game one time. The examples you gave are pretty damn close to the ones she showed us when she was teaching us. No joke, as I was reading your post & when I came across that example I had a memory of her dealing the cards out on the table lol.

Along w/ using the implied odds, understanding this kind of strategy can surely make you a winning player.

#17 7th January 2010, 2:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hit_it&enjoy

How do you calculate FE with the hand 8c7c flop 9c,6d,2c?

For the play to be profitable he'll have to fold x% of the time, based on the amount we're putting at risk (betting) relative to the amount that's already in the pot - and then you add in the likelihood you'll hit your draw outs and any implied odds you think you may be getting to justify the action.

I'm also thinking about playing style (does the player fold to aggression, is he a calling station, etc.) and likely hand ranges to estimate how often I think he can continue (or, more specifically, if he calls, I'm trying to figure out what he has - if I hit my draw against a flopped set, he's going to call all-in very frequently - hello, implied odds).

tbh, though, I usually figure all of this out during a hand review the day after I played the hand, if I figure it out at all - it's kind of instinctive now, the only reason I would run the math at all is if I lost a big pot and thought I might be spewing.

#18 7th January 2010, 2:43 PM

Great post! I love it when they call you a donk after a play like this is NLHE, it's like icing on the cake! They are so clueless because it's way above their heads, and just feels good when it works out! I think in cash games this works much better, cuz in a MTT the blinds go up so quik compared to your stack size, so u end up playing less draws. At the beggining of MTT's tho I have had success with suited connectors and drawing hands in pos and seeing the flop cheaply of course. Also about the not raising preflop in the omaha hand, I read somewhere that so much can happen by the turn that its not always necessary to raise preflop, it's the postflop play that counts I guess. But I don't play much PLO, but I did win a small MTT that was HA the other day, just for fun tho.
Again thanks for this very informative great post!!

#19 7th January 2010, 3:36 PM

good post recently started being more aggressive after i read doyle's book actually worked out for me since, notice im winning 42% more hands without seeing showdown.

#20 7th January 2010, 3:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYRebirth

good post recently started being more aggressive after i read doyle's book actually worked out for me since, notice im winning 42% more hands without seeing showdown.

If you never see a showdown, you never lose .

#21 8th January 2010, 3:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLieve

Can someone archive this? It took me 3 months to learn this through experience at 25NL, maybe it will save someone else some time...

Golden Archive nominations go here:

http://www.cardschat.com/f6/archive-nominations-82262/ (http://www.cardschat.com/f6/archive-nominations-82262/)

One of the criteria is a 30-day posting moratorium (ie: no current posts within the past month) --> once a thread is archived it's view only so the criterion is to ensure any current discussion/posts will also be included.

#22 8th January 2010, 11:25 AM

Thanks, i just got to the point, to were i could see the power in draws..
I've been doing this in STT's more..

#23 8th January 2010, 1:43 PM

Thanks.. every body..now I also got the point.. as I m new to this game, hence have many confusions in my mind..but slowly all confusions are getting cleared..

#24 8th January 2010, 2:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slycbnew

Note that I'm a cash game player, not an MTT player, so it may not be as applicable if you're an MTT player (I'm making the assumption based on the "worse hand going allin" comment that you may be an MTT player).

I find that playing draws very strongly in MTTs is even more important than in cash games.

If you think of the situation (given that in tournaments you don't have as much time to wait for the best possible scenarios), a situation were you are likely to be 50-50 with tons of fold equity is awesome. Keep in mind that fold equity tends to be greater in tournaments as survival is important.

If you understand this and apply it to tournaments, your results will skyrocket.

#25 8th January 2010, 4:51 PM

thats interesting info, ill try it and see what happens

thanks for this thread its a pretty good apport to the forum

#26 8th January 2010, 10:54 PM

another way that i learn .....small ball it... learn the why of small ball

#27 8th February 2010, 9:28 PM

Sorry I missed this thread before Sly. Very Nicely done! You are a poker writer in the making!

#28 8th February 2010, 9:39 PM

great topic had me click thread in seconds lol..

Also i always bet draws because sometimes u can confuse the other play into thinki gn you are betting them off of a draw

#29 8th February 2010, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slycbnew

This is written for newer players who either play all draws passively or are frustrated by agg players who play draws aggressively. The general thinking is, I think, that we don't have a made hand, so why would we put money in the pot/be aggressive?

The below example is from PLO - but it illustrates an idea that I thought'd be useful for newer NLHE players. Villain (BTN) flops the nut straight with no redraws - in other words, Villain has the best possible hand on the flop, but cannot improve to a better hand. Hero flops a 17 card wrap straight draw (i.e., any 6, 7, T, J, or Q makes Hero a straight) and a backdoor flush draw (i.e., runner/runner clubs) making Hero, on the flop without a made hand, a 62/38 favorite over Villain. Villain raises Hero's flop bet, and Hero happilly pushes to get all in. Of course, 38% of the time that Hero does this, he's going to lose $23.65, but 62% of the time Hero's going to win the pot against the flopped nuts - pretty nice, right?

The key ideas here are that we're getting it in without a made hand purely based on the possibility of hitting one of our outs, and that we're actually a heavy favorite to win the pot against a hand that is the nuts on the flop.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/452693
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $59.40
Hero (MP): $26.90
CO: $18.00
BTN: $23.65
SB: $14.65
BB: $31.35

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP with Jd Qc 7c Td
UTG calls $0.25, Hero calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, BTN calls $0.25, SB calls $0.15, BB checks

Flop: ($1.50) 5c 8h 9d (6 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $0.90, CO folds, BTN raises to $4.15, SB folds, BB folds, UTG folds, Hero raises to $13.90, BTN raises to $23.40 all in, Hero calls $9.50

Turn: ($48.30) Ts (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($48.30) 8c (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $48.30
Hero shows Jd Qc 7c Td (a straight, Eight to Queen)
BTN mucks 7s 4s 6s 2c
Hero wins $45.90
(Rake: $2.40)

It's rare in NLHE, though, to get those massive combo draws. Here's a big combo draw - we've got 8c7c on a 9c6c2d flop, giving us a straight flush draw. We're 54.44% favorites over AA on this flop, 51% favorites against two pair hands, and only a 42% dog to 99 and a 43% dog to AcKc, the two worst hands for us to be up against. Change the flop to 9c6d2c, giving us a combo draw (a flush draw and a straight draw, but not a straight flush draw). We're now a 53.9% favorite over AA and a 48% dog to two pair hands, and now are a 40% dog to a set and a 35% dog to AcKc. The edges are slimmer, and we're up against hands where we can be a serious dog in the combo draw scenario.

In NLHE, though, we've also got fold equity - FE isn't as much of a factor in PLO, but it's a huge potential factor in NLHE. By betting, you're giving Villain the opportunity to fold his weaker made hands (say, second pair or TPMK) because of the threat that you'll continue betting on the next street (this is called leverage). And if you hit your draw by the river, you can go to showdown having "sucked out" on the guy who called down w second pair.

Then there's the pot equity - this is the chance your hand will be good at showdown against Villain's range of hands relative to the amount of money you have to keep putting into the pot to get to showdown (i.e., above, the % chance your hand has of winning relative to the amount of money in the pot). This is why playing suited and/or connected cards in position is so important - you can continue being aggressive when the turn adds outs to your hand.

As an example, let's say you 3bet from the button w Ac3c and the cutoff calls you. Flop is Tc6d2h, which misses you, but you cbet anyhow cuz it probably missed the cutoff, and he calls. Turn is a 4c - our hand wasn't worth anything other than a cbet a minute ago, but now we've got 12 outs to a probable nut hand - 9 for the flush and the other 3 fives - and the three remaining A's may make our hand. We can continue being aggressive and represent a big hand here - if he folds cuz of the heat, we're happy, and if he calls, we've got a decent number of outs, so we're still happy. He'll be a little ticked off when a 5 hits the river and yell at us in chat "You donk!", but we'll be happy taking his money.

Adding your fold equity and pot equity, and using leverage to increase fold equity, allows you to be more aggressive and to take more frequent pots.

If you haven't already, try plugging in various drawing hands into Pokerstove and checking how they do against various made hands (i.e., top pair, sets, two pair, etc.) - you may be surprised by the amount of equity you can have, and the amount of overall equity you have when you add fold equity and pot equity together.

Remember, aggression is good!

gl and see you on the felt.

i dont know where to start this was alot of information at one time, i get the idea of the post but so many times for me online i dont make the flush or the strait betting on draws couses me nothing but pain, is there certain times you play this move or do you play it based appon character of the table, however this move works alot for me at house game i play at weekly and recently i have cashed there last four times good post you made me think about plays i make than you

#30 8th February 2010, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dead spade

i dont know where to start this was alot of information at one time, i get the idea of the post but so many times for me online i dont make the flush or the strait betting on draws couses me nothing but pain, is there certain times you play this move or do you play it based appon character of the table, however this move works alot for me at house game i play at weekly and recently i have cashed there last four times good post you made me think about plays i make than you

It doesn't matter if you make the draw.
Forget about that part.

At the time of making the bet do you have enough pot odds (say 36% for FD on the flop), fold equity (is always a guesstimate but you usally have a lot), and implied odds to make playing the hand more proffitable than either calling to your draw and having very little implied odds and 0 fold equity or just cutting your losses and folding.

It doesn't matter if you make the draw, don't even think about that.

The short answer to drawing is to bet, you've almost always got enough fold equity and implied odds to make it proffitable and equally likely is that betting in whatever situation you're in is going to be more +EV than calling.
The only real exceptions that I'm aware of are:
You're likely up against the nuts and have 0 fold equity but huge implied odds, then just call.
Your opponent has a high cbet %, in which case I think just calling and semi-bluffing the turn after they check is best (and calling if they fire a 2nd barrel).
Other than that, bet your draws relentlessly.

#31 8th February 2010, 11:16 PM

Very good post, Sly.

I've always been a fan of betting draws - especially disguised draws - and I'd never really known why.

Sure, you got FE, sure, you disguise the strength of your hand instead of check/calling until you're made -

In one of Harrington's books on cash games he discusses you should play small pots with small hands, and big pots with big hands - ideally this will save you money on hands like TpTk vs Sets, 2pr, and draws that have connected (with the concept of implied odds and deep stack poker even pot-sized bets won't shake some villains, and ussually a pot-size bet tends to be too much, almost screaming for a call, even with hands like 2nd pr -

But what I'm getting at is if you make a str8 or a flush, you want the pot to be big, because it's a big hand. Now if you come into a 2-bet pot (let's say 3 way, @4BBs pre) there's 12 BBs in the pot. You're in position post-flop. Other two players check, and you are OESFD, and you check behind. When you do get made (which happens what, some 30% of the time per street), and you start betting), you have much more FE because you checked. Had you fired say . . . an 8 BB bet on the flop, Villain 1 called with an overpair and villain 2 called with TpTk, then you get made, now there's 36 BBs in the pot and continued betting could be disguised as barrelling.

This concept has worked for me a lot in live games (especially when I'm running good), and with that kind of money out there another bet and the pot's existing size - players tend to wanna stay in and take down a monster - as opposed to a smaller hand where "meh, I'm only in it for 4 BBs, and he could have the str8" -

Just have to be careful about barrelling when you miss.

Another thing to point out is when you bet in position on the flop, you're still in position on the turn, so if it's checked to you and you've missed, you can check for free and get another 30% to win the hand as an added bonus to your flop bet.

Or you can bet the turn, using your "leverage" and the threat of a big river bet, to add to FE.

Overall, very nice post Sly.

You put a very important part of poker into very easy to read and understand words.

#32 9th February 2010, 2:14 AM

Great stuff and thanks for taking the time and effort to enlighten me. This is why I love this site.

#33 15th February 2010, 3:02 PM

just curious what does OESFD mean?

#34 15th February 2010, 3:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYRebirth

just curious what does OESFD mean?

Open-ended straight-flush draw.

#35 20th February 2010, 8:41 PM

not sure how the hell i missed this thread as you made it in the very beginning of January. Very very well written and as pc said...pure gold. thanks for taking the time to write it out and a make the thread. much appreciated from another fellow cash game player.

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