Big Hand Versus Big Draw

You’re heads up in a no-limit hold’em game. You hold pocket aces and you’re pretty sure that your opponent is on a flush draw. How can you manipulate the situation to maximize your return if he misses and minimize your loss if he hits?

First, let’s wind the betting back to before the flop, so that we’ll know how you got here and how much money’s in the pot. For the sake of conversation, we’ll set the blinds at $2-$5, give you two black aces in middle position, and have you open an unraised pot for $20, which is not a bad raise with pocket aces, since you want to thin the field, ideally to just one player, and a bet of four times the big blind will drive out most of the shoe clerks.

You get just the one caller, in the cutoff seat, who’s someone you know to be a kosher player; that is, he’s of average skills and has a normal approach to the game. You can count on him to be smart enough to calculate pot odds, but not necessarily disciplined enough to follow through on what the odds dictate.

Now, here comes the flop: J-6-2 with two hearts. There’s $47 in the pot (less the rake). How much should you bet?

You likely have the best hand, of course, but this is not merely a case of betting the best hand. What do you want your bet to accomplish? It could do one of three things:

• It could win the pot right here.
• It could extract extra value.
• It could reveal new information.

For the sake of taking a shot at doing all three jobs (the outcome being dependent on what my foe actually holds), I generally like a bet of about two-thirds the size of the pot here. If my foe missed completely, it’s a big enough bet to drive him off. If he hit some of the flop, but not much of it, it’s a small enough bet to keep him in. And if he calls without raising, he reveals something important about his hand.

In the case of the two-suited board, he may be revealing that he’s on a flush draw. He probably shouldn’t call here — “draws are death in no-limit” — but again, this is a foe I can count on to be aware of the right thing to do, but not necessarily to do it. For the sake of the implied odds (the greedy villain thinks he’s going to capture my whole stack), he’ll probably take a card off.

Have I given him the right price to do so? Maybe. Let’s do the numbers.

If you flop a flush draw, you’re about 2-1 against completing your hand by the river. Should the pot be offering you more than a 2-1 return on your investment, you’re correct to call. If the pot’s offering less than 2-1, you should fold. This, I’m sure, you know, but we’re reviewing for the daydreamers in the back of the class.

With $47 in the pot, my bet of roughly two-thirds of the pot — say, $35 — will put $82 in the pot. My opponent has to call $35 to win $82. Certainly, that’s better than 2-1, but only if he gets to see the river for free. He can’t figure me not to bet again if the turn is a blank (for if I put him on a flush draw, not betting again would be a huge mistake, and I try not to make that kind of mistake). If he’ll fold the turn when he misses, he really needs about a 4-1 ROI (return on investment) on his flop bet — which he currently doesn’t have — because he’s about 4-1 against completing his flush on the turn alone.

But many players aren’t that smart. They routinely confuse the overall odds of making a hand with the odds of completing it on the next card, and make their calling decisions accordingly. Sometimes you have to spell it out for them: You don’t have odds to call here, shoe clerk! You should fold. The way to do this is to slightly overbet the pot on the flop. Bet more than the size of the pot — about one-third more — and you’ll make it abundantly clear that it will cost your foe plenty — and plenty again on the turn — to see the river.

Is this the most profitable way to play the hand? Not if you can count on your opponent calling again on the turn. Then, you should suck him in with a smaller bet on the flop, and bet again if the turn is an offsuit card (which it will be most of the time). However, it is a safe way to play the hand, to guarantee that you will get at least something from your pocket aces. In games in which volatility is an issue, and especially in tournaments, where the fall of a third heart could spell disaster for you, I think it’s better to push your opponents off small pots than to let them into big pots that could very easily not go your way.

One thing you don’t want to do is price your opponent into this pot with a Hoover bet, a tiny bet designed to suck him in. Suppose that instead of betting $35 on the flop, you bet only $10. “He’ll have to call that,” you chortle. “More money for me.” Yes, he’ll have to call. You’re giving him better than a 5-1 return on a 4-1 shot for just the turn card alone. If you give him a cheap look at his flush draw and he gets there, you have no one to blame but yourself.

And remember, there are times when you’ll play this hand perfectly, your opponent will play it incorrectly, and you’ll get unlucky and lose. It happens. It’s not a disaster. However, do not for a second hold on to the toxic feeling of entitlement — I deserved to win! — that often comes with pocket aces. If you do, you’ll play the next hands badly, and then true disaster could ensue.

Best advice in a nutshell? When you get the goods, bet the goods. Good things almost always flow from that.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the poker novel Under the Gun. He resides in cyberspace at radarenterprizes.com. Photo: Gerard Brewer.