Cruisin’ With a Draw

During our European vacation in July, my wife and I and our two teenage kids went on a four-night Baltic cruise on a huge Royal Caribbean cruise ship called the Vision of the Seas. In between stops in Stockholm; Tallinn, Estonia; and St. Petersburg, Russia (I had always wanted to see the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; it is amazing), there was a lot of activity aboard ship, including $75 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournaments. They had several satellite-type tournaments each day, usually with several tables in play, in which the winner at each table also qualified for the grand-final tournament that was held on the last night of the cruise.

At the final table with five players remaining (all in the money), I chose to call a small raise of 800 (to 1,600) and defend my big blind, which was 800, with the K J. In three-way action, the flop came Q 9 6. There was 5,200 in the pot; I now had about 35,000 in chips remaining, and both of the other players involved had about the same amount. What would you do here?

Of course, one possibility would be to move all in or make a very big lead-bet. If you estimate that both opponents would fold about half of the time, and if you were called, you would hit one of your 12 outs (nine to the flush, three to the straight), or perhaps a high pair that would win, about half of the remaining time, this “come-bluff” wins roughly 75 percent of the time. But why would you lead-bet here with a very good hand when you could check and then raise the highly likely continuation-bet by the preflop raiser?

How much would you expect to win if you made an all-in lead-bet? Using the estimates above, if you played the hand four times, you would win the current pot two times (5,200 + 5,200) when both opponents fold; when called by one opponent in the other two hands, you would win once (5,200 + 35,000) and lose once (-35,000). Thus, your average result for those four hands would be the total of the four hands divided by 4 (15,600 ÷ 4), which is 3,900. So, for that relatively small expected win, you lose all of your chips one-fourth of the time.

A better possibility here would be to check, planning to make a large come-bluff check-raise. If you check, with 5,200 in the pot, the preflop raiser will most typically make a 2,400-3,000 bet. Thus, if you check-raise all in here, your average win will be 2,400-3,000 higher than before. And since check-raising is what you would normally do with a big hand, the bettor might be less curious and fold somewhat more often. So, the check-raise approach usually is superior to lead-betting all in.

Now, what is likely to happen if you avoid the dramatics and simply “cruise” with the hand? If you check-call and then hit, you usually will be in big-win territory. You might check again, planning to check-raise, or wait until the river. If you check-call and miss, you probably will face another bet, which hopefully is not too large. And if you then hit on the river, again, you might score a big win, since your opponent might “have to” call. And when you miss hitting on both the turn and the river, you go quietly and have not lost excessively. Perhaps the biggest danger in check-calling after the flop is that when you miss on the turn, you might well face a big bet that no longer will make it cost effective to call and see the river card.

All in all, especially at this stage in a tournament when each higher finishing place is worth a significant amount of money, I often lean toward the cowardly “bird-in-hand” approach rather than high-wire bravado. By the way, in the actual hand, I chose to check and call a bet of 2,000, and hit a low heart on the turn. Admittedly, I was lucky to hit it right away — and even luckier to get paid off when he called my big check-raise. He had only A-9, so he might well have folded if I had made an all-in bet on the flop.

One principle that all tournament players should know and heed is that the more frequently you go all in, the more frequently you can get unlucky and be knocked out. So, by safely “cruising,” cautiously waiting until I actually had the goods, I not only avoided a possible unlucky exit, but also ended up winning more chips. On the other hand, if you always play too cautiously, your opponents will usually catch on and you may find yourself without a customer when you have a good hand.

Formerly a career lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, Mike Cappelletti has written numerous books on poker and bridge, and is considered to be one of the leading authorities on Omaha. Mike has also represented the U.S. in international bridge competition, and he and his wife were featured in a four-page Couples Section in People magazine. His books include Cappelletti on Omaha, Poker at the Millennium (with Mike Caro), and Omaha High Low Poker.