Raise on a flush draw?

Raise on a flush draw?

I was wondering if anyone knows the general wisdom of what to do when you have a flush draw on the flop and get raised, is this an auto fold?

I had this in an sng tonight where I flat called hoping to see my suit come in , it didn't, then my opponent raised again.

I had very good cause to think he was bluffing. so I flat called again.
I didn't get my flush, we both checked, he paired a 5 on the board and won the hand, so he was bluffing, maybe semi-bluffing I suppose.

Was my mistake not re-raising him straight away, since I thought he was prob bluffing? If I did I am sure he would of folded and if he didn't I would of folded.

As he called first each time I couldn't check. I had been playing vtight till then and had seen him bluff before.

I suspect it would be a bad play to always raise a flush draw unless the conditions were correct. My general idea is to try to get the flush on the cheap then if I do get the flush make it look like I am scared of the 3 suits by checking then if called/raised big raising,usually works well.

Its very possible you could have reraised him and got away with it. If he was making a play, and it sounds like he had been making many plays, a reraise might very well put the fear of god in him.

A hand history, and some reads would be helpful.

At some point we all need to improve our raising talents. This generally means more raises from less experienced players. Newbies tend to play fairly tight, or limp a lot. Many new players will call anything and you should understand that. So properly sized raises come into play. There is no hard and fast rule about what the proper bet/raise size is, but generally you will see a lot of raises in the 3x (3 x big blind) range. These seem to go unnoticed in cheap games, and it might take 5x raises to get anyones attention.

As for the auto fold part of your question, I'll suggest it would matter just which flush cards you hold. If you have the nut flush draw, it will play different than if you hold 78 of the suit.

stack sizes and the stage of the S&G will also affect your decision as how to proceed as well.

Hi DJ & Steveg

Thanks for your replies.

I don't have a hand history sorry.
On Mansion you need to get it at the time of the game or just after in a sng. I should take these more seriously I know. I wish they would do same
as party poker and e-mail you hand history after each game if you want it.

Rindhoops

dj11 said:

Its very possible you could have reraised him and got away with it. If he was making a play, and it sounds like he had been making many plays, a reraise might very well put the fear of god in him.

A hand history, and some reads would be helpful.

At some point we all need to improve our raising talents. This generally means more raises from less experienced players. Newbies tend to play fairly tight, or limp a lot. Many new players will call anything and you should understand that. So properly sized raises come into play. There is no hard and fast rule about what the proper bet/raise size is, but generally you will see a lot of raises in the 3x (3 x big blind) range. These seem to go unnoticed in cheap games, and it might take 5x raises to get anyones attention.

As for the auto fold part of your question, I'll suggest it would matter just which flush cards you hold. If you have the nut flush draw, it will play different than if you hold 78 of the suit.

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I'm figuring you're talking No Limit... in Limit, there may be enough players to draw to a flush anyway, but in No Limit it's far easier to make the price of drawing wrong.
If you check-raise someone, then unless they have a very strong hand then they are likely to worry that you've got a monster and are playing them for chips. If they have a weak hand, they will generally fold. If they have a moderate hand, then you may scare them into folding, or into just calling down rather than raising you, making it at worst no more expensive to see it through than if you'd just called their raise. If they have a strong hand, then they may raise you (and you can then fold if the raise is big enough that you don't have pot odds, or call if it's a small raise), or call and then raise on the next street.
If they've made a strong hand, then you have outs to improve (so long as he doesn't price you out of the pot), and you have a better shot at taking down the pot against medium or weak hands than just calling.

And just to make this even more difficult, the size of the raise is important. A min-raise will give you odds to call, provided you think your flush will be good if it hits. A larger raise may not, unless you have deep stacks, and you think there's a good chance of getting paid off it you hit your flush.

If you're out of position, betting on a flush draw presents the possibility of getting raised and a tough decision. Whereas, if you check/call, you can often draw for much cheaper, but you may alert your opponent that you're on the draw. Calling with suited cards out of position makes it much harder to play these hands.

This is why you see so many novice players simply shove on a nut flush draw. They are afraid of turn and river play, and don't trust their own abilities. I think a good NL player should spend some serious time playing limit poker for these kind of situations. Get used to playing all the streets, so when you get in a no limit game, you are more comfortable playing them out.

jodaddy said:

Also it matters in online poker weather a flush came up the last hand or not

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no

no it doesn't, this is so wrong.

jodaddy said:

Also it matters in online poker weather a flush came up the last hand or not

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As much as it matters whether you carry your car keys in your left pocket or you right pocket.

Steveg1976 said:

As much as it matters whether you carry your car keys in your left pocket or you right pocket.

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I knew it, that's why I keep losing!

There's also something to be said for pot management.

You knew your opponent was gonna bet/raise. Under those conditions, a check/call could have saved you some money. And, if you had hit, the equine wudda felt pot committed, and called anything.

I think the check, against a constant betting equine, worked in your favor.

Jus Sayin.


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Ok I have a hand history from a few minutes ago that is similar to my original question.

This time I really did make a hash of it I think.

I was dealt AK suited diamonds on the button
There was a small raise on the first round so I flat called not wanting to give away my (percieved) strength
Was this my first mistake?

I flopped 2 diamonds 2 & Q for a flush draw.
On the turn there was only me and Prezes1978, I had no read on him as we had only played 4 or 5 hands, but he had done a few plays and had raised healthily, but had lost.

before the turn he raises to 225, I flat called, no flush.
before the river he raised to 300, I flat called, again no flush.

As there were 2 Queens on the board I had to put him on trips but of course maybe he was relying on that.
As this play had severely dented my small stack I just wanted out, I was pretty sure he would call an all in so I folded and lost.

























TEXAS_HOLDEM, NO_LIMIT, T4-70368658-7 played at "Burlington" for USD TC from 2008-06-20 14:25 until 2008-06-20 14:27 Seat 2: michaelmunk. ($360 in chips) Seat 4: Prezes1987 ($1,610 in chips) Seat 5: thefire3 ($3,010 in chips) Seat 6: rindhoops ($1,435 in chips) Seat 7: joNso ($1,350 in chips) Seat 8: x sepp13 ($1,460 in chips) Seat 9: King Size XL ($1,480 in chips) Seat 10: dzicdzic1 ($4,295 in chips) ANTES/BLINDS
joNso posts blind ($15), x sepp13 posts blind ($30).

PRE-FLOP
King Size XL folds, dzicdzic1 folds, michaelmunk. calls $30, Prezes1987 bets $70, thefire3 folds, rindhoops calls $70, joNso folds, x sepp13 folds, michaelmunk. calls $40.

FLOP [board cards: QS,2D,QD ]
michaelmunk. checks, Prezes1987 bets $100, rindhoops calls $100, michaelmunk. folds.

TURN [board cards: QS,2D,QD,5H ]
Prezes1987 bets $225, rindhoops calls $225.

RIVER [board cards: QS,2D,QD,5H,6H ]
Prezes1987 bets $300, rindhoops folds.

SHOWDOWN
Prezes1987 wins $1,205. SUMMARY
Dealer: rindhoops
Pot: $1,205
michaelmunk., loses $70
Prezes1987, bets $695, collects $1,205, net $510
thefire3, loses $0
rindhoops, loses $395
joNso, loses $15
x sepp13, loses $30
King Size XL, loses $0
dzicdzic1, loses $0

Yes, your first mistake was with the pre-flop play. While AK suited is not a monster, it's ahead of most hands and not far behind almost all of the rest. You don't get into a re-raising war with it, but the initial raise was just over a min-raise, so feeling him out a bit would have made some sense, especially given the blinds compared to the stacks. If you'd figured him liable to raise with a weak hand, raising would also serve to help isolate him, rather than giving better players a chance to hit the flop.
On the flop, he's most likely either made trips or is bluffing. More often than not he'd be bluffing, and a raise would see him off. However, at this point your odds are questionable to just call to draw to the flush, since it's $100 to try to win a total pot of $410, and you know you'll face a bet on the turn, so you really need to look at that 4-1 ratio against the odds of hitting your flush on the next card, and you don't get the odds there. However, you may try to justify it on the implied odds if you're sure he'd bet even if a flush card hit, but you're on shaky ground then.
Again, on the turn you're getting poor odds for drawing (4-1 ratio of pot size to bet size vs a worse than 1-5 chance of making the flush).
Also, remember that if he has trips there would be 1 Heart card that makes him a full house, and the Queen of Hearts would have made the trips into Quads, so instead of 9 outs you actually had 7 if you thought he had trips.

You should probably have raised pre-flop, and either folded on the flop or raised if you thought a bluff reasonably possible, but didn't have the odds to flat call on either the turn or the river IMO.

He was betting very small on both the flop and the turn. Honestly, I don't mind your line after the flop.

Starfall is right about the pot odds not being enough to draw to the flush unless you factor in some implied odds, which I definitely would on the flop. However, I think a call on the turn is correct as well. Why? Because it's likely that an A and or K would also give you the best hand. Why should we put the villain on a Q here? He wouldn't play JJ-66 like this? I think many players would. Even against KK, we have 3 more outs than just the flush. And never rule out the possibility of it being a total bluff or a weird way of value betting AK (which I've seen a lot recently). A full 15 outs makes it a win on the river about 30% of the time, which would be enough to call the turn even if you knew for certain that you wouldn't get payed off on the river.

A flop raise is also an option, but I wouldn't really count on him folding a better hand. Any pair looks good on that flop. IMO, the best justification for a flop raise would be to cause him to fold AK and avoid a chopped pot. I prefer flop raise semi-bluffs on more coordinated flops for their ability to fold out better hands.

A more sophisticated play would be to call the flop and then raise the turn. That kind of play really looks like you have a queen. However, that only works well if your opponent is a little bit of a thinking player. Many players wet themselves when they look down at a pocket pair and don't even think about what their opponent has.

Hi Starfall

I Much appreciate your reply.
I aggree I should have re-raised him pre-flop to find out where we stood.

The problem is If he had re-raised again or went all-in to my pre-flop re-raise I would of followed him (all-in on either count).

If he just called my re-raise I think I would of been just as in the dark as to his holdings.

starfall said:

Yes, your first mistake was with the pre-flop play. While AK suited is not a monster, it's ahead of most hands and not far behind almost all of the rest. You don't get into a re-raising war with it, but the initial raise was just over a min-raise, so feeling him out a bit would have made some sense, especially given the blinds compared to the stacks. If you'd figured him liable to raise with a weak hand, raising would also serve to help isolate him, rather than giving better players a chance to hit the flop.
On the flop, he's most likely either made trips or is bluffing. More often than not he'd be bluffing, and a raise would see him off. However, at this point your odds are questionable to just call to draw to the flush, since it's $100 to try to win a total pot of $410, and you know you'll face a bet on the turn, so you really need to look at that 4-1 ratio against the odds of hitting your flush on the next card, and you don't get the odds there. However, you may try to justify it on the implied odds if you're sure he'd bet even if a flush card hit, but you're on shaky ground then.
Again, on the turn you're getting poor odds for drawing (4-1 ratio of pot size to bet size vs a worse than 1-5 chance of making the flush).
Also, remember that if he has trips there would be 1 Heart card that makes him a full house, and the Queen of Hearts would have made the trips into Quads, so instead of 9 outs you actually had 7 if you thought he had trips.

You should probably have raised pre-flop, and either folded on the flop or raised if you thought a bluff reasonably possible, but didn't have the odds to flat call on either the turn or the river IMO.

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Hi Viking

Thanks for your detailed reply.

As you say, the problem was I had no history on this player, it was a cheapo $5 sng (by the way the hand history says $, it's not it was just chips) so the player could be anything from total donk upwards.

As starfall says, a preflop re-raise may have given more info.
My only excuse is I wanted to suck out on him if I hit the flop big.

Well I think I learnt a few things here, thanks guys.

viking999 said:

He was betting very small on both the flop and the turn. Honestly, I don't mind your line after the flop.

Starfall is right about the pot odds not being enough to draw to the flush unless you factor in some implied odds, which I definitely would on the flop. However, I think a call on the turn is correct as well. Why? Because it's likely that an A and or K would also give you the best hand. Why should we put the villain on a Q here? He wouldn't play JJ-66 like this? I think many players would. Even against KK, we have 3 more outs than just the flush. And never rule out the possibility of it being a total bluff or a weird way of value betting AK (which I've seen a lot recently). A full 15 outs makes it a win on the river about 30% of the time, which would be enough to call the turn even if you knew for certain that you wouldn't get payed off on the river.

A flop raise is also an option, but I wouldn't really count on him folding a better hand. Any pair looks good on that flop. IMO, the best justification for a flop raise would be to cause him to fold AK and avoid a chopped pot. I prefer flop raise semi-bluffs on more coordinated flops for their ability to fold out better hands.

A more sophisticated play would be to call the flop and then raise the turn. That kind of play really looks like you have a queen. However, that only works well if your opponent is a little bit of a thinking player. Many players wet themselves when they look down at a pocket pair and don't even think about what their opponent has.

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raise if you can fold to a re raise
if not check and call or fold

Planification

I believe that in such a situation, you can handle them this way smooth call him at the flop, and re-raise him 2/3 of the pot at the turn, no matter if you catch something or not.
I feel like when you decide to call his raise, you might have show some weakness and he felt it.
I believe that the solution is to prepare before the flop what you will do if..., when you decide to play a hand.

After the flop...

When in doubt...re-raise. After that...you either won the pot (fold), he calls (he is after the draw same as you)...or he re-re-raises which by then you know you're done.

hojediade said:

I feel like when you decide to call his raise, you might have show some weakness and he felt it.

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That would explain a lot, makes sense, thanks Hoj