[Nick C]

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It's only 21-1 because you spewed on the turn. If you didn't cap the flop, and didn't raise the turn, it wouldn't be 21-1. Just because you added 3BB of your own money doesn't make it a better river call.

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If the odds weren't so high, SB's hand wouldn't be as well defined, either. We do agree about what he has, though. We both think he has a set.

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This is like capping the flop with a gutshot so you can call "profitably" on the turn.

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Yeah, I know it's not good to do this.


Anyway, the hand is complicated. SB's flop check/3-bet is alarming and most likely means one of these things: (1) a set, (2) a big draw, (3) a made hand like top pair or an overpair that he's trying desperately to protect.

To me, capping it now seems like an okay idea. (Note we did get rid of one player by doing so, although I'll admit he may have just had runner-runner outs against our hand, as unlikely as that may seem given his preflop and flop raises; I don't really know what he had at all.) The cap is possibly for value and could give us some protection as well if someone decides to ditch, say, Ax now instead of getting trapped. One drawback, though, is that is does potentially set up another checkraise by SB on the turn.

But, all right, he leads instead. I think that's a good time to start calling down. He could still be betting a draw; he could have AhQh; he could be firing one last time with A9 or JJ before beginning to call down himself. We don't know. Quite likely he has a set, though.

If he has a set, raising the turn does hardly anything for us. We'd be better off spending those two BBs calling twice and letting the player behind us give us a little better odds on our very weak draw.

If he's got something we're beating, well, now a raise is for value and could also protect us against whatever 0-5 outer the player behind us might be willing to fold for two more. (He's not folding any draw that's better than that.) But putting pressure on the second player is really only good if we're ahead (we really can't realistically expect to buy any outs here very often), and frequently (over half of the time, I'm thinking), we won't be ahead. Hand protection is great, especially in a big pot, but it does lose much of its value if we're very frequently drawing ourselves and can't expect to improve our chances of winning with a raise if we are behind.

With your plan of waiting and popping the turn, most likely 4 people go to the big streets. Probably we'll still get better protection this way (than with a flop cap), but it's hard to say for certain, and the turn card could of course affect those protection opportunities.

All right, in any case, the pot is now 1 BB smaller than it was after Hero actually capped the flop, and SB leads the turn. We pop it. Let's assume the other players go away now. SB 3-bets. We're getting 17:1, and we just paid 2 BBs to discover we're even more likely to be beat and should think about folding what is probably just a 2-outer.

Partly what's happened is that we've paid for information, and, if we make the fold, we've given up our chances of sucking out on the river for the same potential cost as calling down would have given us. If we needed a set all along, this is an inferior plan to beginning to call down on the turn. And neither plan is ideal, versus the actual set we were up against. Versus a set, what we should have done on the turn is fold to SB's initial bet.

Which would be silly, but I'm trying to illustrate that the hand is complicated. And, like I said before, I do see the merit in your plan. It's probably not what I would have done, and part of the reason I like my plan better is that I'm not very good at raise-folding overpairs in big pots on the turn. But, having admitted that, I'm also not convinced beginning to call down on the turn isn't a better idea anyway.

By the way, we don't actually disagree on this hand as much as I think we're making it sound like we do. And I don't really have a strong opinion on PBob's river fold. I just wouldn't have made it myself, if I had suddenly been dropped into the hand at that point and had taken over for Hero.