Drew Pruitt's turn raise article

[thedorf]

This was a great article first of all. Second, in the JT of hearts hand, would you say that raising the flop is a better alternative to calling. I know your intention was to write a turn raise article and that just calling flop is correct against certain opponents or for varying play but if you were up against relatively unknown opponents wouldn't you say that raising the flop is better? By the way, I'd like to know Drew's 2p2 username so that I recognize his posts as giving well-thought-out advice but only if he doesn't object.

[Your Mom]

Drew Pruitt ('The Dude' on 2+2) graduated from college with a business degree in Marketing, but has been playing poker as his sole source of income since he was in college.

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
The Big Blind could have any of a couple straight draws, a club flush draw, a very strong hand like a set or two pair, or a one-pair hand which is probably, but certainly not always, a Jack.

[/ QUOTE ]

As the flop is QT8 I assume this should be Queen.

[MrWookie]

I actually have a little bit of beef w/ this article. On the whole, it's well thought out, but I don't think he gave proper lip service to the merits of calling down. In the QQ22 example, why would we raise and possibly fold AK when we could induce another bet from that hand if we just call on the turn?

[Brocktoon]

[ QUOTE ]
In the QQ22 example, why would we raise and possibly fold AK when we could induce another bet from that hand if we just call on the turn?



[/ QUOTE ]

You would prefer he get a chance to hit his 6 outter?

If he folds AK to a raise there he's making an FTOP mistake getting > 9:1 on a 7:1 shot.

[Absolution]

He also would give up with AK a lot here on the river if you just called, but may call the raise on the turn now that the pot is so big, hoping to hit.

I have some questions about the first hand though. I think raising that flop is a viable option as well, but I'm wondering about the contradiction in this to "You can safely fold if you get re-raised." It surely doesn't meet this criterion. You can't fold to a 3-bet with this strong draw. He's arguing though that getting 3-bet isn't so bad here because you're draw will come in quite a lot. However, you just paid 3 partial bets now to see the river. Getting 3-bet here isn't that bad because of the extra player padding the pot. You may also get extra money out him and the aggressive opponent when you hit. I guess the point is that, given the situation, even though getting 3-bet makes this a -EV play, it doesn't happen that often and the extra money lessons the blow. These factors make the play overall more +EV than just calling. How would the circumstances change if it were heads up though? I don't think you can raise there in that situation.

[MrWookie]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In the QQ22 example, why would we raise and possibly fold AK when we could induce another bet from that hand if we just call on the turn?



[/ QUOTE ]

You would prefer he get a chance to hit his 6 outter?

If he folds AK to a raise there he's making an FTOP mistake getting > 9:1 on a 7:1 shot.

[/ QUOTE ]

I miscounted the pot. However, this is still something that needs to be addressed. Many aggressive players won't stop betting until you give them a reason to. If he's willing to keep betting with the worst hand, you should frequently let him.

[SlantNGo]

[ QUOTE ]
I have some questions about the first hand though. I think raising that flop is a viable option as well, but I'm wondering about the contradiction in this to "You can safely fold if you get re-raised." It surely doesn't meet this criterion. You can't fold to a 3-bet with this strong draw. He's arguing though that getting 3-bet isn't so bad here because you're draw will come in quite a lot. However, you just paid 3 partial bets now to see the river. Getting 3-bet here isn't that bad because of the extra player padding the pot. You may also get extra money out him and the aggressive opponent when you hit. I guess the point is that, given the situation, even though getting 3-bet makes this a -EV play, it doesn't happen that often and the extra money lessons the blow. These factors make the play overall more +EV than just calling. How would the circumstances change if it were heads up though? I don't think you can raise there in that situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

That isn't a necessary condition for raising the turn to be a good play. Most of the free showdown raise examples from S&M that I found were of the type where you have a strong draw as well and would win an extra bet if you hit your draw.

The type where you have a weak made and can fold to a 3-bet is something I picked up from the SSSH forums. It's great if you suspect villain is betting with a draw and will give up on the river because you extract 2 bets from him, and you check behind on the river cause a missed draw won't call anyways.

[The Dude]

[ QUOTE ]

As the flop is QT8 I assume this should be Queen.

[/ QUOTE ]
You are correct, that is a typo. It should read 'Queen.'

[The Dude]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm wondering about the contradiction in this to "You can safely fold if you get re-raised." It surely doesn't meet this criterion. You can't fold to a 3-bet with this strong draw.

[/ QUOTE ]
In my article, the following is from my explanation of the "you must fold if you get re-raised" criteria:

[ QUOTE ]
If you get 3-bet on the turn, you must either fold now or, if your hand includes a strong draw, on the river for one bet after not improving.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously you can't fold the turn, but if you feel like you have to call down a 3-bet, then you've just paid 4 bets to see a showdown w/ second pair, and it surely would have been better to just call on both streets.

[The Dude]

[ QUOTE ]
Many aggressive players won't stop betting until you give them a reason to. If he's willing to keep betting with the worst hand, you should frequently let him.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, but if a large percentage of the hands villain is betting are drawing very live to us, we should be quite interested in protecting our hand.

Is there merit in just calling down? Absolutely. And we should as long as there isn't that great a chance we'll get drawn out on. In the example I gave, although villain is getting the correct odds to call our raise w/ AK if he saw our hand, he isn't getting correct odds against the range of hands he has to put us on. Sure, sometimes he'll have only two or three outs instead of six, so we need to use our best judgement to determine when it's best to let him keep betting and when it's best to kick him out of the pot.

The free showdown raises are fairly rarely the "obviously correct" play. They can usually be argued against quite well. But if you never use them, you are surely missing out, and the point of the examples I gave was to illustrate the type of situation where you can consider this play. I think they worked well in that capacity. The bulleted criteria that I listed, however, is more valuable to truly understanding the play than the examples.

[jogsxyz]

I can identify tight from loose. Can identify aggressive from passive. But among aggressive types just don't know who's willing to go 3 bets on draws and bluffs. With no more than a few hundred hands on each player(online) it's pretty hard to fine tune each player's type. Just don't know who I can safely fold a 3bets for. Calling down is the more non-committal line.

[cgrohman]

Also, a raise might get another ace to drop.