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Written by Marty
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Saturday, 24 January 2009 23:44 |
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You've probably run up against a lot of players in particularly online, who will play any two suited cards. The lure of playing flush draws, especially with a new player is almost uncontrollable and is also a key indicator of a players experience and judgment.
However, if you take into account limit games do simple math of the situation is that you're almost always getting sufficient odds to play this hand out to the river - especially when there are multiple opponents. In tournaments however, such draws can be expensive, stack crippling and can cause a player to make even bigger subsequent blunders if the flush draw doesn't work out.
We all know that flush draws have approximately 2:1 odds to improve by the river, if you're two suited hole cards are complemented by two cards of the same suit on the flop. That doesn't take into account, if your hand also has a straight draw or a pair as well - which is why it's always better to play some sort of connected suited cards, rather than a hand like Jh3h - but let's just stick with the basic flush draw mentality here.
The biggest errors when playing from flush draws are not factoring in the pot size, ignoring the potential of one of your opponents having a higher flush draw, and drawing dead to a full house. The thing is some players get so into their own hole cards and the potential of making that flush keeps them from making realistic judgments as to the table action.
For example, let's say you have the 2d, 3d in the big blind, and you are playing shorthanded in a tournament when the small blind limps in, and the two of you see a flop of 9h, Td, Jd. As an added bonus the small blind checks a free card to you and you see the Qd on the turn - so you have hit your flush, without it costing you anything! Great you think, so you bet the pot, and an instant read raise from your opponent surprises you, but since it was only a minimum raise, you are getting the odds to make this call - so you do. The river card pairs the board with the Tc and your opponent to his first act bets out one third of the pot. It's not that I take you out of the tournament to call, however. It is going to cripple you and put you in the red Mzone. It's a GCI hand into getting four to one odds to call this bet - so all the math is there, and this would be an incredibly tough fold.
It was too tough to fold for me, is this is an exact hand I played in the late stages of a multi-table tournament, and I called. A lot of players however would've shoved all in, and a few, very few would have folded. Those people would've been Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey. Since we have those players, the point here is to keep the pot as small as possible. I think I did that in his hand, but my opponent turned over Kd7d and took a massive pot in a tournament. A hand or two later, I was a fourth-place.
This was one of those flush draws, where my opponents actions kept me from losing my whole stack based on some logical analysis of my opponents betting. It was simply just a tough luck hand. By the way this hand can be seen in the MTT5PAK poker tournament video series. |
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