05-10-05, LearnTexasHoldem:
Opponents Chasing Flush Draws
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First hand, I had around $95 (having slowly and steadily won about $45 so far). I was just to the right of the dealer button. I get pocket 6's. There was a smallish raise by one person, another one calls and I bump it up a bit more just to get a little more money in the pot, just in case my 6s hit. They both call. The flop: 4-5-6, two spades. The first guy checks, the next guy raises $5. The pre flop bets (though not huge) were enough that I'm not really worried about a 7-8, so I raise it to $12. The first guy calls and the second guy bumps it up again to $20.
I end up calling as does the first guy. I'm more than a little worried at this point, although at the time I put him on a high pocket pair. Unfortunately for me, the turn is a 7 (diamonds I believe). Now I AM worried about somebody sneaking in there with A-8. Another fairly big bet by the second guy. Well I still put him on a pocket pair (was hoping it wasn't 7s), so I bump it up again. The first guy is pot commited and didn't have much money so he puts his last few dollars in. The second guy just calls me and we see the river. At this point I have about $45 out there and I still believed I had the best hand. Turned out I did at that time, but not for long. The river was an 8 of spades, a straight on the board.
At this point I'm not sure what to do. I know my 6's are no good anymore. I make a bet anyways, the 2nd guy goes all in and I fold. Luckily the 1st guy was already all in so I got to see the 2nd guy's cards. He had two spades, king and jack I believe. He was chasing the entire way and it paid off big time (at least at those stakes) for him with a flush.
The very next hand will be much simpler to tell because it was a short hand. If I remember right there wasn't a raise on the blinds, so I limped in on the button with a queen-jack offsuit. 4 or 5 people were in the hand. Well, lucky for me (or unlucky considering how it turned out) the flop was Q, J and some smaller card, 2 diamonds. A decent sized bet is made by someone in the middle. I AM worried a bit about pocket pairs, but not too much as he probably would've been pocket queens or jacks preflop. But I felt I had to raise it by a decent margin just to isolate this other guy.
Well to my surprise he goes all in. I have him covered with my $50, but not by more than a few bucks. At this point, I'm not sure WHAT to do. I just lost a big pot by someone chasing and unfortunately I'm probably not at my best to make a decision at this point. Probably the best thing to do at this point would be to fold; he could have pocket pairs of that smaller card. But I talk myself into calling, take a deep breath, and wait out the results. The turn and river weren't scary cards to me so I was thinking I might have a chance. Unfortunately again, one of them was a diamond, and then I find out this guy had just went all-in against me on another flush draw. It's not like he paired the board on the flop and thought he had a chance to beat me that way; he just saw the 4 diamonds post flop and thought it was good enough to put his $45 in on the chance another would come up. Of course I didn't get another jack or queen so in two hands I go from $95 down to $5.
I'm sure I went wrong in many places here, but if you could isolate them and tell me what they are I'd be grateful. Even if I KNEW he was going for a flush draw, would it have been wise to call his all in with my top two pair? I notice that the odds of hitting a flush on the turn or river are around 39%. I've just seen this happen so often online that at times I get tempted to try it myself. But the odds tell me that 61% of the time I'd lose. How can you fight people that do this? Should I kick myself for not betting my Q-J offsuit preflop to get him out of there (his diamonds were small ones)?
Should I have assumed that in the first hand somebody already had a straight over my 6's and in the second hand that he hit a set on the flop? To me that seems like I would be playing scared, but I may be confusing playing scared with making good decisions even if I feel like I have the top hand at the moment. All I know is that at this point I don't feel like I'll ever again call somebody's all-in (a substantial amount) if there are two suited cards on the flop, unless I happen to flop a full house or 4 of a kind.
Answer: Holdem is a game of small edges. When you have a made hand against someone else's flush draw, he will lose 2/3's of the time. Notice that if we do the same thing 100 times, 35 times of him winning is a lot of wins. Over the course of a few hands in a night, it can feel as though every draw gets there. The worse thing you can do is feel so beat up that you don't play your A game -- losing the max on your losing hands and winning the minimum on your winning hands.
Staying positive and optimistic is key for winning in cards. You want to be a cautious optimist, a humble aggressor. Remember, in both hands, you were the favorite. Could you have played the hands better? Maybe. Could you have played them in a way that would have resulted in a win instead of of a loss? No. Another key part of winning in poker for the long haul is to have a realistic perspective of the game. You are going to lose hands everytime you play.
Everyone loses sets. I just lost a couple sets yesterday, and the day before. Both days I killed them though by the end of the night. Losing those sets alone wasn't enough to keep me from winning, but if I were to get passive and not make as much money on my following hands, it would be enough.
One thing that helps me to keep perspective after I've taken a few nasty beats is to remember that a win in a hand is a win, winning with a set or AA isn't any different than winning with 26 from the big blind when no one raised. Your bankroll doesn't care if you lost all your AA's that day, just that you won. By not getting married to a hand, you don't feel the sting of losing it so much and it helps you stay positive -- it is just another loss, and you can easily move on.
In no limit holdem, sets are hard to lay down but sometimes you have to. When you have put in so much money already and defined your hand, it should be a clear message that the person either already has you beat with a straight or that they are drawing to a flush. If you can keep a cool head and think objectively, it will help to save some bets. As for defending against flush draws, I'm not sure if you really want to play like that.
The point in no limit holdem isn't always to shut out all hands since you won't make much money from them then. Just make good size bets relative to the pot and see how the hand develops. If the texture of the flop is such that many hands could be out there that could overtake you (if you aren't already beat), then instead of going all-in, you can even backoff some. Now I'm not saying backoff when you a set versus a flush draw, but if you have a flop that is very coordinated like 789 with two opponents, that spells danger; there are very few cards to come that will look good.
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