Poker – Folding A-a For Two Bets On The End
July 26th, 2009
When John bets out into |3-|5]-H"IS"I3 on the end and Frank raises to two bets, then it's a good time to dump your A-A even though the pot is huge! When they bet and raise at this point in the hand, what can you beat? It seems likely that one of your opponents has made a flush or a straight (he needs to have only a seven in his hand for a straight) or at least two pair. I'm assuming in this example that you played your A-A very aggressively and put in a lot of bets, which would have discouraged them from thinking that they could bluff you on the river.
When the Last Card Is Bad for Your Hand
Let's assume that you have put in a lot of bets with your Q-Q (pocket queens), that two opponents have called, and that the board has developed |5|-[S"B"[3 on the turn. Let's consider two scenarios.
In the first scenario, both opponents have just called you on fourth street and now the last card is (0, for a final board of^~ 0"0"[2'"f3- Your nrst opponent then bets out into you, and now it's your turn to act, with your other opponent waiting behind you. Wow, what an awful card Q was for your hand! You can't beat anyone who is holding either a nine (he now has trips, or three of a kind) or two clubs (he now has a flush), and either of those is a hand pretty likely to have withstood your heavy raising on the flop. A nine would have given him top pair on the flop, and the flop presented a flush draw.
I might lean toward folding here for the first bet (I would fold to a mouse, but not to a jackal), but let's assume that you call and now the opponent behind you raises and the other opponent calls. In this situation you can be almost certain you are beat. Judging from the fact that they have bet into you, raised you, and then called the raise, you can suppose they pretty much know your hand! (By the way, my guess here is that they both have your Q-Q beat.) Yikes, you had better fold, even though the pot odds are huge. The point is that you need to be very concerned when someone raises on the river! Ironically, the great size of the pot (which so powerfully entices you to call) demonstrates that they almost certainly have you beat, because they will have assumed you would call them with such a large pot staring you in the face. In very-high-stakes games, this isn't always going to be true, but when you're starting out, you aren't going to be seeing very many bluff raises on the river.
Let's assume now that 0 comes off on the river, for a final board of and that the first opponent bets out
into you. The second opponent is sitting behind you, waiting for you to act. This card is bad for you, because it completes the flush draws, but not nearly as bad as the [V] we looked at in the preceding example, because it doesn't give trips to those folks who may have started with top pair. Here, you have to call your first opponent. But if the second opponent raises, then you have to fold, regardless of whether the first opponent called the second opponent's raise or not. It's just too hard for the second opponent to bluff here. What's he going to do, raise hoping that both of you will fold?
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