What would you do - Online Satellite.
Online 30 player MTT - first place pays one ticket to a bigger game.
Down to 20 ppl. Avg Stack 2250. I have 2210.
7 players @ my table.
3 players limp and I am on the button - I check, SB folds and BB checks - I have [Kd Td]
(I think I should have raised here, but, I didn't, and that is not the focus of this post)
Flop comes [6c 8d 7d]
so now I have a gut shot and a flushdraw and I am last to act...this is ok....
first to act the BB goes all in and has me covered.
I figure there is no way he flopped a straight - no value with that bet. I don't think he has trips either. Maybe 2 pr - but I figure him on an open ender.
If you as I, put this guy on an open ender - what would you do? Call the All in or Fold?
So I think he has a 9 or a 5 - so he could have 8 outs - but if he has the 5 and a 9 comes up - we would split (we'd have the same straight).
Thoughts???
Down to 20 ppl. Avg Stack 2250. I have 2210.
7 players @ my table.
3 players limp and I am on the button - I check, SB folds and BB checks - I have [Kd Td]
(I think I should have raised here, but, I didn't, and that is not the focus of this post)
Flop comes [6c 8d 7d]
so now I have a gut shot and a flushdraw and I am last to act...this is ok....
first to act the BB goes all in and has me covered.
I figure there is no way he flopped a straight - no value with that bet. I don't think he has trips either. Maybe 2 pr - but I figure him on an open ender.
If you as I, put this guy on an open ender - what would you do? Call the All in or Fold?
So I think he has a 9 or a 5 - so he could have 8 outs - but if he has the 5 and a 9 comes up - we would split (we'd have the same straight).
Thoughts???
Comments
2. You win the whole pot if a 9 (and no T) comes. (Barring your opponent also having a T, or making a hand better than the T-high straight.)
ScottyZ
You checked? On the button? Huh?
Actually, it's a big deal. A preflop raise by you will force 67o to fold, so you can narrow your opponents hand.. As the hand is now, you can't, and thus, you have a much tougher decision.
I would probably fold that, you haven't invested too much.
Blinds are 50 -100
and you are right, if 9 comes, I have the higher straight...
Yes, I know I should have raised, that was stupid - he would have been (most likely) out of the pot then...
I knew I did not have proper pot odds to call (9 cards to come that would give me my flush) I dont think - to call I would have been getting like
2:1 on my $ but my odds of hitting the flush are like 4:1 (is that right?)- but then I had one of those moments
where I just said - if I hit my diamond, I double up and am in good position, if I don't hit - its late and I can go to bed.
So I call and he shows [8s 5s] and goes runner runner 6's for a boat.
Even if I did hit a diamond (which I did not) I would have been screwed.
Next time I raise before the flop !
And if I didn't raise before the flop I still think it was stupid to have called his all in. It was a bad move by me.
Usually I never call that, and now, I remember why !
But I guess what I want to know out there from you guys is: If you figure the other guy has about a 50/50 shot at the pot (which is kind of what I thought) and so do you...do you risk
your entire tourney on a "coin flip"? or do you tend to fold and wait for a better spot? I struggle with this.
You are slightly better than 2 to 1 (not 4 to 1) to make a flush by the river. Depending on what exactly your opponent holds, your actual win odds might be better or worse than this. You probably have 12 good outs including the other three 9's. Your overcards may be full or partial outs too.
On seeing your opponent's actual cards, you actually have 18 outs, facing a possible 0- to 10-out lock/redraw from your opponent. If you knew your opponent's actual hole cards, calling is EV-correct here.
Without knowing your opponent's hole cards in advance, I favour folding. You turn out to be in bad shape against two-pair or better since your overcards could only provide a backdoor win. Even in this case, your win odds (against) are probably still pretty close to the required 1.25 to 1 to make the call EV-correct. But a very close EV decision should, of course, defer to the lowest variance play.
On the other hand, if you were actually getting around 2 to1 on your money (let's say, if the blinds were 150-300 and the pre-flop action was the same), I would lean towards a call. If, in real-time, you actually did judge your money odds to be 2 to 1, you perhaps did not make a poker strategy error, but an arithmetical one.
Don't get too bogged down with the "never take a coin flip" idea. Getting 2 to 1 on your money and feeling pretty confident that your win odds are 1 to 1 is rarely a +EV play which is worth passing up. Would you pass on the mathematically equivalent (in terms of EV) proposition of getting 1 to 1 on your money going in as a 75%-25% (or 3 to 1) favorite?
Finally, I don't see anything wrong with limping in pre-flop in this spot in general. However, if you have trouble getting away from a speculative hand when facing a lot of heat and only a decent, but probably marginal, flop, it may not be a good idea to be playing these kinds of purely speculative hands in the first place.
There is no way I would raise with the KTs (with the blind & stacks as they are) behind multiple limpers, unless I felt I could win the pot immediately (which I don't see a very good chance of here).
ScottyZ
Thanks for your feedback Scotty, I appreciate it.
After running a simulation on the hand, after the flop, I was a 60/40 favorite to win - so I don't feel too dumb about my call looking back on it - but during the play I could not be sure what he was holding...and I was lucky to have had the outs I did after I called.
Clearly, I need some work on figuring out pot odds
But, I am curious why K-10 suted on the button is a "speculative hand". I still have the feeling that I should have raised some amount pre-flop with that hand - why is that flawed thinking?
A 3x BB raise would have eliminated the BB I am sure (Well that is what I think) and I might have taken it right there....hmmm Id like to know more about this.
With 3 limpers in ahead of you, your chances of currently having the best hand are slim. More importantly, your chances of being a really big favorite against even a limited field are also remote.
Raising to 3 big blinds may have gotten rid of the BB. For only 2 more big blinds and with 4 players already in the pot, the BB may even be tempted to stay in with a hand like 85s. A raise to around 6-8 big blinds would be required here to make an effective aggressive move at the pot. If your standard opening raise is to 3*BB, you should rarely be raising to 3*BB when there already been action (including calling) in front of you.
The reason I call KTs speculative is that you're not really going to know where you're at in terms of its high card strength, whether or not you had made a standard raise pre-flop. Are you really going to feel very comfortable flopping top pair with this hand? In fact, even the fact that your flush draw is not to the nuts may sometimes give you trouble. The advantage to the suited Ace is that it wins on the majority of 3-flush and 4-flush boards that it connects with. Making a K-high flush in big bet poker can get you in trouble.
The more I think about it, the more I like folding the KTs over calling (or raising) in this spot.
ScottyZ
Couple of amplifying points...
(1) If I limp in this spot (which is what I am likely to do) then I am telling myself "don't go broke, don't go broke." And, short of flopping a huge hand I am likely to play very carefully post flop. When he moves in, fold. It was, as it turns out, a good call, but you didn't know that at the time.
(2) When figuring my out I would have given myself "twelve outs *probably*" In my mind I always mention the *probably* because it is possible that he has hands that will counterfeit some of my outs. In this case, add some caution. With twelve outs it is a close call. The *probably* tilts it in favour of folding.