Played $1/3 NLHE at Rivers post-Pirates game Wednesday. Pocketed $107 in a bit over an hour for my fourth winning session in a row. Only one hand of note, as it resulted in a little verbal sparring between myself and another player at the table.
Limped pot with five players. I had completed from the small blind with K♠-7♠. Flop: A♠-Q♠-8♠. Well, hello, nut flush. I led out for $10 into the $15 pot. I got one caller -- a 50-ish woman with a healthy stack who appeared to be a solid, aggressive player. Turn: 10♠. Well, I hated the spade, as it likely killed my action. I bet $15, trying to keep her interested. She called. River: 3♦. I bet $25, hoping she'd find it in her to call one more time. Instead, she raised to $50.
Huh, that's interesting.
I re-checked the board, considered my options and smooth-called her raise.
"Straight flush?" I asked, tabling my hand and wondering if she was going to roll over J♠-9♠.
"Nah," she said, flipping up her lowly single spade and giving me the "good hand" head nod.
As I collected my pot, I heard two players at the far end of the table discussing the hand. "Man, how does he not re-raise there?" one of them said.
I butted in: "Because she wasn't going to put another dime into the pot anyway."
"Yeah, but you might as well try," he said, increasingly exasperated by my smooth-call. "It can't hurt you."
"It can only hurt me!" I said, now a little annoyed. "If she has anything less than a straight flush, she folds. If she has a straight flush, she drops the hammer. So how does it make sense to raise?"
I turned to the woman. "If I'd have raised you back, is there any way you would have called?" She shook her head "no."
"Doesn't matter," the guy said. "She's not going to have a straight flush."
"You're so sure," I shot back. "I guess you've never seen a straight flush before."
"I have," he said. "But come on, man -- there are no monsters under your bed."
Now, that, I admit, made me laugh out loud and served to diffuse the whole situation. It's a great line. I think I'll appropriate it and use it myself someday.
Thinking back now, I'm still convinced I did the right thing. It's true that straight flushes are rare, and if she did happen to have one here, it would have meant she played it super wonky and passively. But, again, if I determine there's a .005 percent chance she has a straight flush and a zero percent chance she'll call any size raise with less than that, then it must be EV- to re-raise her.
5 comments:
Level 1 thinker. "I have the best hand, therefore I raise", not considering what value there is in the raise.
I don't know which spade the lady flipped over, but I have to figure based on her river raise it was a J or 9. I would disagree that you won't get called with anything less than a straight flush and you'll only get raised.(there's only 1 hand possibility in this case, Js-9s) I would think that anything she would value-min-raise with at this point would still be able to call at least a river-min-3bet. Any Js-x combination or possibly 9s-x combination, otherwise, why not just smooth-call you? I didn't work it out, but I think you lose more money in the long run by smooth-calling than re-raising in this spot. My .02
Hey, Fred, your two cents is always welcome!
You know, it wasn't an accident that I left out exactly what card she had. I'm pretty sure it was indeed the Js or 9s, but when writing this post up, I couldn't recall which one. (That's what I get for waiting two days before I posted.)
Whichever it was, I honestly don't understand her raise at the end at all. I don't think it works as a value raise. Am I really going to call with the 8s or something worse? Conversely, it doesn't make much sense that she'd expect me to fold a better hand to a min-raise. Unless maybe she has the 9s and thinks I'm holding the Js. But even that seems super iffy. And if that's really her read and her plan, then why not a bigger raise?
So I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe she was assuming I was playing a deeper level of poker than I was. Maybe she was thinking we were playing a game of a chicken with shitty way-less-than-nut flushes.
I still don't think she puts any more money into that pot. But I've been known to be wrong before.
NEVER underestimate the capacity of people to call, even when you are SCREAMING to them that you have the nuts (or in this hand, close to it).
You haven't included in your post any details of stack sizes, so I won't make detailed comments about whether or not a further raise was in order, but I would hesitate to assume that your opponent will automatically fold any nonstraightflush to a further raise.
Stacks = I started the hand with ~$350. She had me covered.
For the record, my decision was partly made based on my read of the player to this point, which was that she was better than solid. Had it been some terrible player who would easily overvalue any flush, things would have been different.
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