Would you bet the flop here?

[Theodore Donald Kiravatsos]

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...On top of that, you have the A of trump....
b

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I agree that this is a consideration that should not be overlooked. If you lead with TPTK and the nut 3-flush, you will give yourself a lot more options on the turn.

Suppose the spade hits after you bet the flop and are called...

1) Heads-up. If the play is heads-up with you and the original preflop raiser, you will often feel confident that you still have the best hand. Your bet bought you a couple folds, so dealing with the spade isn't so tricky. You will usually keep your foot on the gas here.

2) All call. Your turn play will now be a lot more dependent on the type of opponents you have on your hands. If you are dealing with a bunch of tricky basserds who will checkraise you with their crappy sooooted random crap spades, (because they are the "any two soooted" type), well you MAY want to go ahead and take a free card if they check to the man who's had his foot on the gas. It's not ABC, but there certainly are times where TPTK on the turn with the nut flush draw working is a time to take a free card if you could get it. Perhaps this was one of them. If you turn the nut flush draw and are facing a bet and a raise on the turn, you would really wish you could take a free card off that a flop bet might have bought you.

Of course, there would also be a lot of turn cards that fall that would reinforce your read of yourself with the best hand, and you would want to keep your foot on the gas. I'm just saying that given some common considerations I make on the flop about how things MIGHT go on the turn, the combination of holding A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] AND having position points to leading this flop.