'Suckout' or Favorite

One major tactical difference between hold'em and Omaha is that in Omaha, I often find myself making or even calling a big bet after the flop with a big drawing hand. In no-limit or pot-limit hold'em, I usually avoid putting up big money with a drawing hand because the drawing odds in hold'em are seldom adequate enough to warrant the probable big loss of chips. In Omaha, with as many as four holecards working with the flop, it is quite possible to have a big drawing hand that is a favorite, even over an opponent who has flopped a set or trips.



In a recent $340 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, I was one of five players at the final table. Four of us all had roughly the same amount of chips. Deal negotiations had broken down when the runt of the litter (with less than one-third of our chip amounts) insisted on getting substantially more than what the four of us considered his fair share.



We played a couple of rounds in which very little happened, and the status quo remained unchanged. My perception of the prevailing attitude at the table was to get the runt out so that the rest of us could divvy up the prize pool.



In my $8,000 big blind, one of the three other big stacks made it $16,000 to go. Since this kid had previously been raising very aggressively and frequently, I decided to defend my big blind with the K 8. I was instantly rewarded with a very interesting flop, 9 7 6, which gave me a flush draw and an open-end straight draw. Thus, I had 15 cards (nine clubs, three tens, and three fives) to make a big hand, as well as three kings, which could win. What would you do with my hand here?

Normally in a no-limit hold'em final-table situation such as this, where longevity equates to money, my first tendencies are conservative; I don't invest a lot of money until I actually have something. But here, playing against an aggressive kid who often raised with any two high cards, including Q-J offsuit, and who undoubtedly would bet if I checked (and I certainly would call), I decided to grab the bull by the horns and make a pot-limit Omaha type of bet.



So, I led at this flop with $25,000, hoping to scare him off two high cards and thereby avoid the vagaries of luck. Wrong! He raised all in, about a $90,000 raise. If he really had a hand, he probably had pocket aces or kings, or perhaps even a set. As mentioned above, I strongly prefer not calling a big raise with a draw. But here, I knew that I figured to hit more than 50 percent of the time, and I already had $41,000 invested in this pot. So, I decided to go for it and called all in with my remaining $80,000.



I tabled my K 8 and he proudly showed his pocket jacks. The first card off the deck was a king and the last card was not a jack, so I won the huge pot. The kid accused me of "sucking out" on him, but I pointed out that I was actually the favorite. I later ran the hand on the Card Player Odds calculator, which indicated that I was indeed about a 62 percent favorite to win this encounter after the flop.



Although I was probably correct to call the big bet with my draw in this situation, note that there are many situations in no-limit hold'em in which a good player avoids calling what might be an even-money or slightly better bet, simply because getting approximately even odds when facing possible elimination compares unfavorably with the overall expectations of his current position.