The Protected Bet

Last issue, under the title "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend," I discussed a seeming paradox: how the presence of more than one opponent in a pot could create winning chances that you could never obtain in a one-on-one situation.

It's a paradox because it's clear that in a pure card math sense, if you're trying to beat only one foe, you don't need as strong a hand as when you're trying to beat several, and yet in the situation I'm describing, your weak hand can win only against multiple opponents.

The protected bet situation, which I'm defining here as "bets that have a chance to win because players who would call you heads up won't call you when they are worried about players yet to act after you," is a very special and not-too-common situation, so don't start firing away every time you have a weak hand and multiple opponents, or you won't have a bankroll for very long.

Most of the time, when you are in a hand to the river against three or four opponents, you are not going to be able to buy the pot with a bet or even a raise on the end. Usually by this time the pot has grown large enough so that even a player who is pretty sure he is beaten is going to call for one bet.

So, when you find yourself in at the finish with a medium-strength hand, a last-moment show of strength probably won't buy the pot for you, especially if you are up against opponents who are good enough to retrace the hand in their minds and recall that you weren't pushing like you had a monster all along. Most of the time, if everyone folds when you bet your medium-strength hand in these spots, you have not bluffed your way to victory. No one else had anything, and you were "bluffing with the best hand."

Your bet, in other words, accomplished nothing. You weren't going to get called unless you were beaten, and no one saw that you were betting with a medium-strength hand.

If you show your cards, you might later get a call out of someone when you have a real hand, and you might also later get a fold out of someone who figures you're dumb enough to bet with a medium-strength hand (bets on the end usually come from very strong hands or very weak hands, so sometimes players make very surprising calls, figuring they can beat a pure bluff), but I think the value gained from this is outweighed by the free information you're providing about your game. Make your opponents pay to see your cards!

If, however, you are first to act on the end, and the pot isn't so huge that anyone with anything is going to call you, your garbage hand can sometimes win with your bet, not because your hand looks scary but because the order in which your remaining opponents are sitting looks scary!

Let's suppose you have three remaining opponents. For this desperation move to have the best possible chance to work, you need the person sitting in last position to appear to have the strongest hand. For that reason, the move works better in stud games than in flop games, because apparent strength is more obvious in stud. Let's make the example more concrete by giving you an open pair of threes, the only open pair on the board but the sum total of your strength.

You do not want the person with the apparent strength (a board, let's say, of 8 K A J) acting immediately after you. The problem isn't that he might have a good hand: he either has it or he doesn't, and where he's sitting doesn't change that. But if he folds, the later players don't have to worry about him, and they can call you with more marginal hands (although, notice even here, they will have to pause and think that you weren't afraid, apparently, of a possible flush or at least of aces up).

If, on the other hand, the scary board will be acting last, when you fire away, the second and third players must be worried not just about the strength you are showing by betting out into three players, at least one of whom looks strong, but about the hands that will be acting after them.

Assuming you lose the second and third players, you're now very live for the pot. If the final player has a hand, you're sunk, but this was a long shot anyway. If it turns out he merely had started with something like (10 10) 8, and never catches the flush, he's not going to call your open pair of threes when he has only tens, and meanwhile, your bet may well have chased away someone with two small pair, who figures that if you bet into that 8 K A J board, you've probably got (at a minimum) a third 3 to go with the pair in sight.

Remember, I'm not telling you to fire away on the river every time you're first to act. The situation and sequence has to be correct, and even then, your chances of success aren't great. But if you don't try it too often with the same group of opponents, you'll probably find yourself a few pots to which your cards don't entitle you.

Andrew N.S. Glazer is the weekly gambling columnist for the Detroit Free Press and the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way. He is also the online poker guide for www.poker.casino.com, and welcomes your questions there.