What to Think About When You See a Flop — Part II

In my last column, we started looking at things to consider when seeing a flop. As a rule, the process should be roughly the same every time. Use it to formulate a plan for each flop that you see.

The questions to ask and answer are:

1. What are the best possible hands?
2. What are the chances that someone has one?
3. How do these hands compare to mine?
4. What am I trying to make?
5. If I make it, what are my chances of winning?
6. How many bets will it cost me to try for it?
7. What are the pot odds?

In my last column, I discussed the first three questions. Let’s begin here with question No. 4.

What am I trying to make? Compared to questions No. 2 and No. 3, this one should be easy. If you have what may be the best hand, your job is to ensure as much as possible that it holds up, and that you extract the maximum profit if you’re way ahead; or, you must assess whether or not it really is the best hand by judging your opponents’ responses to your bets and raises.

The rest of the time, you understand that you’re behind, and therefore are trying to draw out. This is the essence of poker: Someone is ahead, and the other players hope to catch cards to beat him to the finish line.

But first, you need to understand what you are trying to make. If you have the 6♦ 5♦ and the flop is A♠ K♦ 4♦, you are trying to make a diamond flush (although you also have backdoor chances for a straight). If you have the 3♠ 3♣ with the same A♠ K♦ 4♦ flop, you are trying to make a set of threes, although a backdoor-straight chance exists.

If you have the 8♥ 7♣ and the flop is K♠ 9♥ 5♦, you hope for a 6 to make a gutshot straight. With 8-7, if you see a flop of K-9-6, you have an open-end straight draw. If the flop is J-9-6, you still have an open-end straight draw, but a 10 makes higher straights possible.

If I make it, what are my chances of winning? This can be a much more difficult and often overlooked question. It is easy to figure out what you’re trying to make, but it’s much more difficult to assess its probability of winning.

For example, the 6♦ 5♦ may make a flush on the turn, and lose if a fourth diamond hits on the river. Or, it might make a flush and lose to a bigger flush, or even a full house. Optimism is nice, but realistic assessments may keep you from chasing marginal draws in small pots.

Straight draws go down in value on flush-draw boards. Non-nut draws are always at risk. Even bottom full-house draws can be risky. I’m not suggesting that you give up if your draw is not for the nuts, but you need to consider the risks.

The number of opponents is always critical. A draw when playing heads up may be more likely to win, but you then need to assess (as I shall discuss) the likely size of the pot. The more opponents you have, the bigger the pots; however, this also means that there are higher risks with non-nut draws.

The point here is that just because you know what hand you can make, it does not mean that you should try to make it. Before you start calling bets and raises on the flop, you must determine what your winning chances are.

How many bets will it cost me to try for it? This is another question that many players forget to ask themselves. Let’s say that you have a gutshot draw (11-1 on the next card), and the player on your right bets into you in a five-way pot. If the pot now contains 11 bets, it looks like a good call, but if any of the other players raises, you will now be paying a second bet (or worse) for your draw. There are few things sadder than seeing a player sucked in “on the installment plan” — calling a series of raises with a weak draw. If there are few callers, you will be taking way the worst of it, but you can anticipate this and simply fold to avoid the risk.

What are the pot odds? Poker is a risk/reward activity. Once you have assessed the risks and costs, you need to compare them to what you can win.

For example, when playing a small pair after the flop, you are 23.5-1 (roughly) to make your hand on the next card. If the pot contains fewer than 19 or so bets, it is not worth it. Even if it is, you need to decide whether or not you’re likely to see the turn for one bet. Being forced to put in extra bets will kill your mathematical chances, even if you appear to win a “big pot” once in a while.

Counting the pot on the flop is very simple. The number of players times the final bet size is very close (plus maybe a blind or two). While it is hard to forecast future bets, if you conservatively assume that very few players will remain in the pot, you can get an idea of what you are playing for.

Then, you can make the following rough approximation: the amount you can win times the likelihood that you will make your draw times the chance you will win if you do.

Compare that to the amount you will have to pay to see the next card (or the next two, if you can figure that). That will tell you whether or not you should play on.

One of the biggest errors I see is players charging on with decent draws while playing tiny starting pots. Unraised pots with few players are not good candidates for most draws. Nut-flush draws probably are pretty much it, especially if there are extra chances of winning (like having the ace in your hand).

Winning pots is always nice, but if you get the wrong price to win them, you will lose a lot of money in the long run. Start doing the structured work, making the best estimates that you can. You will get better quickly, and will save a lot of money.

Conclusion: Here is a quick story from long ago. I was playing $6-$12 limit hold’em when a regular $20-$40 player joined the game because he was short on money after a losing streak. I won a pot, and he told me that I was lucky that he held the straight draw, because it got there, and had anyone else in the game held it, I would have lost. Why didn’t he play it? There was a two-suited board, and he believed (correctly) that there was a flush draw, so he had only six outs instead of eight. The price was wrong for a six-out draw, so he folded. Not surprisingly, he was back playing $20-$40 in a couple of weeks. ♠

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].