FLOPPING DRAWS
Often the flop will fit your hand by giving you a draw rather than a made hand.
By a draw,I mean a hand that probably isn’t best right now but has the potential to develop into the best hand.
Do you have the best draw? If so, you probably need to get odds from the other players and you don’t want to do anything that might cause some of them to fold, so that if you do complete your hand you’ll win a large pot.
Flopping a Flush Draw
Suited cards are hands that very much depend on hitting a flop. They are drawing hands, and the best flop you can hit with them will usually be a draw.
If you flop a good draw, and a flush draw is almost always a good draw, then you often will want to play it aggressively.
Once you’ve made your flush and three flush cards are on the board, the other players will tend to back off, and it’s unlikely that you will get the betting to go over two bets.
If the players are particularly passive, they’ll often just check and call once the third flush card hits.
The time to get the bets on the flop when you’ve flopped a draw.
One of the odds you need to know are the odds for a flush draw (see Chapter 11 for more odds information). At the flop, you’re a 2-1 dog to make the hand.
At the turn, you’re a 4-1 dog to make the hand. So, if you’re getting three or more callers on the flop, you should usually bet or raise with a flush draw.
With only two callers a bet or raise is probably okay; with only one caller, betting a flush draw is not a bet for value, it’s a bluff. To call for a draw, you need to take pot odds into consideration.
When you’re considering pot odds, you also need to consider how many bets you’re going to call.
With a flush draw on the flop, in a loose game you don’t need pot odds to draw.
You are getting good enough odds just on the current betting round as long as you’ve got three callers. That’s 3-1 odds on a 2-1 proposition. That’s 3-1 on the bet-not pot odds. That’s 3-1 ignoring what’s in the pot.
You don’t have to worry about counting the cost of the call on the turn, because that call will be getting good enough pot odds on its own.
With the better draws, such as flush draws, you almost always are getting the right odds to call on the flop.
You’ll be getting the right odds both on the flop and turn, but you need to make the pot-odds determinations one call at a time.
To take off a single card you need about 4-1.The only time you won’t be getting that for calling one bet on the flop is when the two blinds are heads-up.
So, calling on the flop with one of the strong draws is pretty much automatic. You’ll getting the right odds.
Once there has been a bet and call on the flop,you’ll also be getting the right odds to call on the turn.
If you know you’re going to call, you should often think about raising.
A flush draw (when the flop is unpaired) is a situation where you should almost always consider raising.
The 2-1 odds with two more cards to come that I mentioned earlier comes into play when you’re thinking about raising.
If you do raise and get called by two or more players, then the pot size on the turn will almost always be big enough to give you 4-1 on the turn.
If you raise, you know you’ll be calling (and getting the right price to do so) on the turn.
In that case you raise if you are getting 2-1 or better on the flop from callers of your raise-not the pot odds. You should think about pot odds when you think about a call.
For a call you compare the pot odds to the odds of making the hand in one card.
You should think about odds on the bet itself (not pot odds) when you think about a raise.
For a raise you compare the number of callers you expect (the odds you are getting) with the chances of making the hand in the next two cards.
You can do that because you know the raise will make the pot big enough so that you’ll be getting pot odds to call on the turn. One consideration to making your flush is when someone else makes a bigger flush.
It’s a consideration-but it’s not as an important is that it’s not likely anyone is drawing to the same flush you are.
Of the thirteen Hearts, you have two of them, and two are on the board. That only leaves nine unaccounted for.
Contrast this to the situation where there are two Hearts on the board, and you don’t have a Heart.
Then eleven Hearts are unaccounted for, a substantial difference.
Because of the combinational features of the mathematics involved, this difference is much larger than the 20 percent it might seem.
The other reason it’s not as important as it might seem is that if two of you do actually have the same draw, it’s now much less likely that you’ll make the draw. Among you, the board, and the other players, you’ve accounted for six of the flush cards.
Entering a Public Cardroom / The Play of the Game / The First Betting Round
