Chasing

Playing a good starting hand and hitting the flop is bread and butter for the tight players. Many times, they will either win a small pot, charge someone drawing incorrecty, or win a good pot against someone with a lesser hand who thought his hand was good - most often, a pair with a lower kicker, or top pair against an overpair.

However, having the best hand on the flop does not anywhere near guarantee to book a win. As we have seen in the previous section, the turn can cause radical turnabouts in the situation, and failing to adapt to the new conditions can be extremely costly to the player who was ahead the round before.

The experienced player has one main thing in mind: his opponent’s future mistake. He’s ready to call as an underdog on the flop if the price is good, or he can even make a slight mistake there, in anticipation of a great opportunity later on. Some frequent situations are: the straight and flush draws, the pocket pair, or the flopped pair that tries to hit his kicker or trips.

The Five-Outer

The flopped pair has five outs or less, so paying a high price with this holding on a regular basis is not recommended if we know that we are currently behind. However, taking another card if we estimate to have tremendous implied odds is certainly to be considered.

Example:

A $1-$2 No Limit game, seven-handed, pretty solid, aggresive game, not that tough though, $400 stacks. Someone opens to $9, you call on the button with . Two players.
The flop is . Your opponent bets $20, you call.
The turn is . Your opponent bets $60, you raise to $160, he calls.
The river is . Your opponent checks, you bet $150 again, he calls reluctantly, guessing what happened. You show your hand, he flashes aces, and throw his hand in the muck.

In the preceding example, you risked $20 on the flop, a bet that you will lose most of the time, but when you hit you can reap big profits if your opponent believes you are still behind on some kind of draw. The math is not difficult: a pot bet on the turn is about 3 times your call on the flop, if you make a minimum raise and get called, there will be at least 6 times your flop call from your opponent’s stack on the turn betting round. Add what was in the pot when you called on the flop, and that makes 8 times your call. A five outer is a 8.4:1 underdog, so any further betting will give more implied odds than the odds to improve. In the example, we raised more than the minimum amount, so even without the river bets, we had more implied odds.

Note that we didn’t say that the play was profitable yet, because 8.4:1 are only the odds of improving, not winning. There is a big difference. Here, the pair of aces had three kings, three deuces and two aces to make a better two pairs: that’s 8 outs, and a 4.75:1 chance. That’s why you generally must not slowplay your two pairs: it is far from unbeatable. On the positive side, the better two pairs would be conspicuous, and he would have almost no implied odds (unless you are out of your mind, or in the rare cases you suspect he has been bluffing all along). In our example, we raised on the turn, laying him 2.8:1 pot odds, so his call was welcome.

If he had folded, and made an habit of it, that would effectively “kill” the chasing play, so we should stop making these calls at least momentarily. However, he is then easily bluffable, and you should take advantage of it. Eventually, he will start calling these raises to stop getting pushed over, and the five-outer becomes an option again.

The Pocket Pair

If you have a middle or small pocket pair that didn’t hit, you know you have 2 main outs - generally not enough to justify calling a decent raise. But there are some rare cases when it can be defendable, when the money is very deep and you feel that very good hands are out there, announcing fierce future betting. There must be at least: a full bet on the turn, a full raise, a call, and another bet the same size of the previous raise. This is heavy action, and your stacks often won’t let you bet that much. The pocket pair is thus a poor hand to chase, as a rule.

The Straight and Flush Draws

The straight and flush draws are the hands with the most outs to improve, but they don’t always have great implied odds.

The flush draw can hit a powerful hand, but it is generally fairly obvious when it does. However, this fortunately doesn’t mean that you will never be paid off. As we saw, the inexperienced player hates it when the value of his hand experiences a sudden drop. He will therefore do whatever he can to prevent it from happening, and he is going to bet strongly his made hand against a drawing board, so as to protect his hand. If the flush draw calls, and doesn’t complete on the turn, it will face another big bet, and will probably have to fold.

Yet, if it completes on the turn, the inexperienced player with the made hand on the flop has some room to make a bad mistake. This mistake can be much more costly than that of the flush draw when it called on the flop (without pot odds to do so). If a beginner has a hand that looks strong to him, in absolute value, like top pair top kicker, two pairs, or a set, he often won’t be able to fold it, even in face of a possible flush. Part of the reason is that beginners often oversimplify situations and use “recipes” and standards, like, “you need at least this hand to go all-in”, failing to evaluate the situation as a whole. Putting yourself in position to exploit this flaw, along with any other flaw, is part of the good poker player job. Once you completed your hand, a single full pot bet is generally enough to make the play profitable, since a pair is drawing dead, and two pairs is drawing very thin (10.5:1). Only the set still has some chances with ten outs and 3.6:1 odds.

Several hands vs flush draw

Of course, a solid player is not going to pay you off on an obvious flush. If you always take cards to your draws, whoever your opponents, you lose money. Yet, even good players can get stubborn with their hand when they are steaming or are on tilt. This is a situational play, with no guarantee to work, but when someone is splashing around, you should try to get your share of his chips.

When the board has some flush draw possibilities, the more players have seen the flop, the more it will be clear that someone must be on the draw. With only one opponent, this is much less clear though; odds are against him having the flush, while he may well bluff it. In heads-up play, you cannot fold every time there is a better possible hand, otherwise you are going to fold way too much. Taking a card off with an overcard (eg. with a suited ace) can be perfectly justified. In fact, the hand is often strong enough to be worth a raise. The raise helps to somewhat disguise your hand, and you can win the pot right on the flop, even though you didn’t even have a pair.

The straight draws are comparable, even though some of them can be more concealed than flush draws, thus giving you better implied odds. One-gappers (hands like 79 or 75) often hit flops that don’t seem as much connected as those with no gap: eg. 75 hits a straight draw on a 46K flop, while 89 does on a TJ6 flop. The latter generally looks more menacing, especially if the draw is completed with the Q. The former completes with a 8 or a 3, and this doesn’t put a three-card run-in on the board.

With one-gappers, people think it is much less likely that you will have the two very cards required to make the straight. The configuration will smack of gutshot draw to them, and they know this is a longshot. Yet, if you have J9 on a A8T board, there is no gutshot here: plain ol’ open-ended draw.

The most concealed, but hardest to flop, straight draws are those like 78 on a 69K flop. Again, you would need two precise cards (not counting suits) to have the straight draw, and this often seems like a remote possibility to some opponents.

Virtual Outs

Many of the “chasing opportunities” are pretty longshots, so getting extra ways to win the pot is quite desirable. Even if your hand gives you that many outs, your opponent does not know it, and this gives you the opportunity to use dangerous cards to threaten your opponent.

The most frequent scare card is probably the ace. If your opponent had top pair on the previous betting round, either he made two pairs with the ace, or he now fears having been outdrawn. Depending on your opponent and the preceding action, you can estimate the probability of him having the Ax that makes the two pairs. You can never be sure, but if you have a decent read on your opponent, you can make educated guesses.

A middle card pairing the boad also sets off alarm bells for your opponent. A solid player is probably not betting on a middle pair, so he does not rate to have made trips.

Cards completing a flush or a straight are naturallly scare cards too. The problem is that if you are heads-up, your opponent may not believe you unless you bet very big (thus increasing your risks), and if there are several players in the hand, it is all too possible that the cards actually completed someone’s hand. Some players relish giving zero implied odds to the draws; identify these players, since they are your best bet for this type of bluffs.

What makes a “virtual out” a profitable opportunity is the amount you have to invest compared to the chances of success. If your opponent is on the suspicious side and is likely to call you, or if he will only fold to the biggest bets, bluffing is not the best thing you can do against him. A player who does not respect your bets and raises should be showed good hands that he is going to pay off.

Anothe pitfalls concern the consistency of your play. Many novice bluffers don’t stint on the money they throw into the pot on scare cards, without considering whether they would made the same play if they really had the hand they represent. This is generally a fatal flaw against experienced opponents. You must be sure that every thing you did, from your first action up to now, is consistent with the hand you are effectively saying you have.

Example:

$1-$2 NLHE, $300 stacks, six-handed, you have a solid image. You open from early position to $8 with , the button calls. Two players.
The flop is . You bet $16, he calls.
The turn is . You bet $35, he calls.
The river is . You check, and he bets $70. What can he have? You know your opponent, he is not afraid to bluff. Would he have called with a 6? Nothing is impossible, but even if we call the river bet, he will have made an unprofitable play. He may have QJ, but again we know this opponent and he probably would have raised at some point. He probably interpreted our last check as weakness, and perhaps saw the bluff as his only way to win this pot, probably with a busted straight or flush draw. In fact, that’s partly why we checked. On the other hand, he may have QT, and we took the risk that he didn’t make that last bet.
We call the $70, and he mucks his hand.

As for every example, the same play against another opponent could be desastrous; always consider who you are playing against and his tendencies.

Bottom Line

The value of a hand changes throughout the hand, and it is really a case of adapt-or-die. Preflop, the action can turn a promising hand into a probable big dog, and the preflop best hand can become a big dog on the flop. Denial, the winning player’s best friend, will again be merciless.

Experienced players will try and bite you when you don’t expect it. It is therefore critical to know what they’re about, and avoid paying them off when the hand values have just switched. This is what will turn their play into an incorrect one, and will force them to stop - or bleed.

Likewise, making wrong assumptions, given the preceding action, can be a good recipe for disaster. Your weaknesses are effictively your opponent’s justification, and your berating him for calling $x preflop with junk, his congratulations. Be unpredictable, don’t push your hands too far, and always re-evaluate the new situation.

Reciprocally, once you are comfortable with the whole process, identify the players who have trouble adapting to new situations, and put yourself in position to exploit their weakness.

And don’t forget to have fun!

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