Chances Are: Part IX: Big Laydowns

This series of columns has emphasized the importance of knowing the odds in a variety of situations. A lot of my coverage has dealt with using mathematics to analyze your chances of winning, and making the correct play. As I mentioned in the last column, math is a very good servant, but a very poor master. When you use math correctly, it will frequently guide you to making the correct play. Do not, however, become a slave to math. Poker is very situational, and there are many situations in which you must throw the math out the window and focus on what is actually happening at the table. This leads to the topic of making big laydowns. When you fold a hand that will beat almost every hand your opponent can hold, you are making a big laydown.

There are times when you should bet or raise with nothing as a bluff. There are also times when you should fold a very strong hand, because you think your opponent must have the nuts. These are often crucial situations. An incorrect call will cost your stack. An incorrect fold will mean abandoning a pot in which you would have won a lot of chips. Unlike many other games and sports, live poker is played without a timer. (If you take long enough, they will call for a clock, but this whole procedure takes quite a while. Even online, there is usually some time bank or reserve. Don’t be afraid to spend the maximum time allowed.) When you reach one of these decision points, make sure you don’t rush your decision.

The following hand occurred several years ago in the Bellagio $25,000 no-limit hold’em tournament. In one of the early levels, all the players had at least 150 big blinds (BB). Phil Ivey raised to 3 BB in early position. Phil is normally a very active player and could have a wide range of hands. Since we were nine-handed and he was in early position, he was unlikely to have complete air. A middle position player, who had been relatively tight, reraised to 10 BB. He may have been trying to make a play against Ivey, but he probably had at least a reasonable hand. When it got to me on the button, I looked down to see a pair of kings. Obviously either Phil or the three-better could have had aces. There are also a number of other strong hands they could have held, and occasionally they would be making a play with some sort of semi-bluffing hands. I made a normal four-bet to 25 BB. Phil folded and the other player gave the hand a little thought. He finally reraised all-in. Now it was my turn to go into the tank. It is very hard to accept that a great hand, one for which you have high hopes, has gone sour. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that my opponent had to have aces. I folded. While I never saw his hand, he later told me that he had had the aces.

This was a situation in which the math told me that my hand was a 200-to-1 favorite over a random hand. And I would be getting nearly 3-to-2 pot odds by calling. Mathematically it might seem automatic to call, but the reality of the situation was that my opponent was almost certain to have aces. It was clearly correct to fold.

Whenever you have a pair, you are always hoping to flop a set. When you flop a set on a board with no possible straight or flush, you hope to get all your chips into the pot. You are usually hoping your opponent does not draw out on you. We have all seen set over set flops. Usually the player with the lower set ends up losing all his chips, and complaining that he was cold decked. Can it ever be right to fold a flopped middle or bottom set? Certainly not very often. In the next column, I will look at some hands were it might be right to make one of these super-big laydowns. ♠

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 35 years. With 2 WSOP bracelets and few million in tournament cashes, he is easing into retirement. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at some major tournaments and playing in cash games in Vegas. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A in New York City -The Library near Houston and Doc Holliday’s on 9th St. are his favorites.