A Request for LHE Folded Flops

[F Paulsson]

Hi!

As an exercise in analysing flops and how good or bad they are for you, I'm now looking for specific types of hands that I want you to dig up and post.

The criterias are these:

1. The pot is big (6 or more people seeing the flop for one bet, 4 or more people seeing the flop for two bets, or it's been 3-bet or capped preflop).
2. You do not think you currently have the best hand.

Post hands here, feel free to post more than one at a time. Use the converter, though (or I will put a spell on you) and stop the action on the flop when the decision is on you. I don't want to know what happened after you called/raised/folded, because we should focus on the decision not how things turned out.

As always, include any reads you happen to have.

Thanks!

/FP

 

[ChuckTs]

easy: hit a play money table!

 

[shwingzilla]

Do you mean that you know you don't have the best hand because you saw it after the hand, or that due to betting/the board/reads you believe you don't have the best hand.

 

[ChuckTs]

i think he means during the hand, so based on reads etc

 

[F Paulsson]

Do you mean that you know you don't have the best hand because you saw it after the hand, or that due to betting/the board/reads you believe you don't have the best hand.

No, I mean a situation like this:

You have [Kh][Qh] on a [Jh][10h][4c] flop.

It's highly unlikely that you have the best hand at the time being, but you're hardly going to fold an open-ended straight flush draw with overcards. This situation is clear.

I'm looking for situations that are not so clear, as an exercise to learn how to count our outs as well as play well on the flop.

 

[F Paulsson]

Here's an example from just now:

SB is the second tightest player at the table (me be number uno) and the rest are fish, fish, fish...

Find the outs, count 'em, and comment on my call. I haven't done the math myself yet, but I have a feeling this was a too loose. Keep in mind that this is 6-max, too.

full tilt poker
Limit Holdem Ring game
Limit: $2/$4
6 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is BB with [7s] [Ah]
2 folds, CO calls, Button calls, SB calls, Hero checks.

Flop: [3h] [8s] [9h] (4SB, 4 players)
SB bets, Hero...

 

[ChuckTs]

well if he's got an 8 or 9 then you've only got 3 actual outs, your aces
but if a 6 or 10 comes on the turn, you'll pick up a str8 draw - 8 outs
and on top of that, if a heart pops up on the turn, you'll pick up the nut flush draw - 9 outs
and if you're reaaallly lucky maybe a 6 of hearts or 10 of hearts will pop up on the turn, giving you flush + straight draw - 15 outs i think 8 + 9 - 2 (6h and 10h)

 

[F Paulsson]

well if he's got an 8 or 9 then you've only got 3 actual outs, your aces

This is precisely what I want to bring up! (Sorry for taking some time to get back to this subject, I've been extremely busy at work) Your use of the word "actual" is very suspect. Here is the core of what I have to say:

Don't think of hands as "made hands" or "drawing hands." Learn to estimate how likely your hand is to be best at showdown and adjust your pot odds accordingly.

This means that a hand shouldn't be judged only by its current value, but how likely it is to improve: A hand should be judged by its equity. If its equity is higher than the price you have to pay to see a showdown, you should continue. So, for the example hand I posted, let's make some educated guess as to what my opponent holds. Let's, specifically, say that he has K9, giving him top pair and a good kicker. What's my equity against K9? Well, I could chicken out and use the odds calculator, but let's try it out in a way that I could do at the table:

3 aces will give me top pair.
Running hearts will give me the nut flush.
I also have runner-runner straight possibilities.

I know how to translate the 3 aces into making pot odds decisions; they are 47-to-3, and so I need the pot to lay me ~12-to-1 in order to continue (if you don't know how to calculate this, we need to take some steps back, but that's alright - let me know). But what about the runner-runner possibilities? Do they even count? Do they happen so rarely that it's not even worth thinking about?

They count. They do happen rarely, but so do hitting inside straights, and we already know that we should chase those if the pot is big enough - the same goes for runner-runner hands. They don't happen often, but they may very well be happening often enough to tip our decision from fold to call. Let's see:

The likelyhood of drawing running hearts is (9/47)*(8/46) = 3.3%.
The likelyhood of drawing a runner-runner straight is roughly the same.

So together, these backdoor draws add up to about 7% - meaning that 7% of the time, I will end up with the best hand on the river. Getting an ace on the turn or the river happens about 7% of the time, as it were. So these draws are actually as strong as my overcard outs! Okay, so my equity is 14%, or about 7-to-1. The pot is laying me 4-1. Calling here, therefore, is absolutely awful. The bad odds are somewhat offset by

a) this is a loose and aggressive game. If I hit my outs, I will get action
b) my backdoor draws will either materialize on the turn, or I will miss them completely. I will not have to pay a big bet on the turn for my redraw, if its not there.

This is not enough to warrant a call in this small pot, however - and the pot is still small; 4 bets is nothing.

Mnemonic tricks: A backdoor flushdraw is worth 1.5 outs. A backdoor straight draw* (e.g. 7-8-9) is worth about 1.5 outs as well. You can usually figure overcards to be worth about 1.5 outs each, as they may be tainted.

* Note that a 6-8-9 backdoor straight draw is much worse than a 7-8-9; the former can only make two straights, and the latter can make three.

Anyone have any hands we can look at for comparisons?

 

[ChuckTs]

Mnemonic tricks: A backdoor flushdraw is worth 1.5 outs. A backdoor straight draw* (e.g. 7-8-9) is worth about 1.5 outs as well. You can usually figure overcards to be worth about 1.5 outs each, as they may be tainted.

I never knew you could do this - put them as specific outs; you bloody genious you, paulsson
anyways great post bud

 

[Osmann]

So together, these backdoor draws add up to about 7% - meaning that 7% of the time, I will end up with the best hand on the river. Getting an ace on the turn or the river happens about 7% of the time, as it were. So these draws are actually as strong as my overcard outs! Okay, so my equity is 14%, or about 7-to-1. The pot is laying me 4-1. Calling here, therefore, is absolutely awful. The bad odds are somewhat offset by

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have 6-7% chance of hitting an ace both on the turn AND the river? So you have about 14% chance of hitting the overpair and 7% chance of hitting one of your backdoor draws. So you have an equity of 21% instead of 14%. I still think it's a bad call, but it's not a terrible, when you take into consideration the implied odds wich are good because of the loose aggresive game.

 

[F Paulsson]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have 6-7% chance of hitting an ace both on the turn AND the river? So you have about 14% chance of hitting the overpair and 7% chance of hitting one of your backdoor draws. So you have an equity of 21% instead of 14%. I still think it's a bad call, but it's not a terrible, when you take into consideration the implied odds wich are good because of the loose aggresive game.

You're absolutely right. I made the mistake because I was already thinking of the overcard as tainted (and only assigning it 1.5 outs worth of value), but that wasn't the premise for the reasoning. Good catch.

(As a sidenote, what may additionally tip this from a fold is not primarily that it's a loose/aggressive game, but rather the fact that ace-high may still be the best hand. If I would play this hand, I would probably raise here, and take the free card on the turn if I didn't spike an ace.)