What’s Your Play? Busted Draw

38 thoughts on “What’s Your Play? Busted Draw”

1. I’m not sure I love the turn check/call – any particular thought on that or getting good odds? Obviously this is kind of a terrible card to barrel, but I think I’d just pitch this on the turn, tbh.

   • Granted neither an Ace nor a heart is guaranteed to be good, but I’d feel pretty confident hitting either. Mix in a little implied odds and I can’t see folding getting better than 3:1 with potentially a 12-out draw. I could see barreling the turn or folding to a larger bet, but against a bet of this size, I can’t see folding.

2. I will give this a shot even though I play very little 6 max and zero online poker! From a couple friends who are professionals that do play a lot of 6 max an open limp seems like a weaker play as 6 handed poker is very aggressive. Thus, I would tend to think his hand range would lean towards weaker hands – smaller pairs and cards that are connected somehow. When he calls our flop bet that seems pretty consistent with the hand range he might have. His turn bet is on the smaller side and he could be taking a cheap shot at winning the pot with a draw. I think if he had a hand that had some showdown value – such as a smaller pair or 9X – he would check the turn and wait until the river to try and extract some value so as to not put himself in harms way with a check raise. He shouldn’t think we have a flush draw at this point and while a 2 in either hand is unlikely it can certainly show up in our hand much easier than it could in his! Given that my hand should have some showdown value, given that the 7d on the river shouldn’t change anything and given that I think he’s calling any bet that we make with a hand that has value I am going to check the river and see what he does. I think the way that we’ve played the hand it should appear that we have something as well and will make it harder for him to bet with a busted draw. If he does bet into us I am going to think about previous hands I’ve watched him play, consider his bet size and decide what to do at that point.

   • Hi RC, great to see you commenting here! You have tons of 6-max experience: any time you are playing a full ring game and the first three players fold, you are getting 6-max experience 😉

     Don’t have much to say about your comment at this point, just wanted to say nice post and thanks for commenting.

3. Ya, not a fan of the c/c on the turn either cause it puts you in this bad spot when you miss. Granted, it’s easy for him to raise you off a continuation on the turn given the turn card, but b/f seems like a better option to me than c/c. c/r is not great either cause that would mean you would have had to lead flop with a set to believe your line. Aarg, tough spot.

   A bunch of his range would seem to be broadway card flush draws. As played I would check river and call any reasonable bet to beat KJhh once in a while.

   • Didn’t know such big celebrities read this blog!

4. I think his range is still super wide – could be as strong as trip threes. No high pairs b/c he would open raise pre. Any ace is possible, including A9, A3, A2. 99 is unlikely b/c he would like have raised pre. Can we move him off of a better ace or one pair? Probably not profitably.

   Can we get value from a weaker ace or KQ/QJ type hand? Maybe. We could have been on a loose draw call on the turn. I lean toward checking to see a showdown.

   Should we C/C or C/F? Our range is still broad and includes draws, but we won’t call with most of those. Villain could be on a draw and need to bluff here, like 45h, or an even weaker draw.

5. Sorry… to finish my thought… so I check call.

6. I think the check/call is good on turn. We are out of position. Now how do we use the info villain has given us. Turn bet is small. He doesn’t have monster, or even a strong hand. Pocket pairs lower than a 9 are a big part of his range. Maybe ace rag. Villain starts hand with 46bbs and 2nd lowest stack at table. With a stronger hand, I think he would play the flop and turn stronger in an attempt to double up. I think he’s ripe for a bluff of 60% – 75% of pot. If he’s new to large buy-ins it would be a difficult call for him to make. Another good spot andrew.

   • Are you saying calling is better out of position than in position (relative to betting, I assume)? Not sure I agree with that, but curious to hear your logic. Thanks for posting.

     • The big advantage of playing in position is acting last. I feel that the check/call on the flop and turn when out of position allows you to keep the pot smaller and gain information against your opponent. These are the same advantages when in position. The disadvantage of playing out of position shows up on the river. In this hand, I feel that vilain had shown some weakness on the turn with bet sizing and I would try a bluff. If he’s slowplaying, he fooled me.

7. Given the paucity of information on the opponent, I would probably assume 1) he’s limping with some sort of middling-strength hand here and 2) he’s going to play it in a weak-passive manner postflop. In an online 6m MTT, even with a $2k buyin, when you don’t recognize the guy’s screen-name _and_ he open-limps the hijack, he’s going to be a fish way more often than he’s going to be some super sicko who’s gone through the trouble of constructing a well-balanced 46 bb open-limping range that he’ll also play well postflop. Thus, if the BB isn’t too likely to play back at you, I think raising pre has to be better. You can rep a stronger range and get folds more easily if he continues (if you raise pre you can threaten his tournament life by the river), or he might fold pre for whatever reason and you win a cool 3 BBs without having to play OOP against two people.

   I’ll try to post more thorough thoughts on the flop/turn/river when I’m not on the verge of sleep. My first instinct was to barrel turn because I’d be doing it with all my value hands and we generally have oodles of equity against his calling range (especially because he could call with worse draws) but I’m not so sure it’s right. The 2s is a terrible card to fire twice at in raised pots, but maybe not so much in this spot; as the sb limper it’s not as impossible for you to have turned trip 2s. Meh.

   • Very interesting, thanks for posting. I have a love/hate relationship with good players who make me look like an idiot on my own blog! 🙂

     • Haha, doubt it’s possible for me to make you to look like an idiot. It takes me so long to phrase poker comments/posts that I’ve gotta be the biggest time-adjusted idiot :). Anyway, it’s not like completing the SB is bad or anything; I’m kinda surprised I was the first to suggest raising pre. Maybe I’m missing some reasons why completing is better? Or maybe I’m being results oriented and/or optimistic about how many runouts will present us with good opportunities to win chips OOP? I still like raising against someone who’s probably not going to put us in difficult spots and, because his range is so weak already, will let us win the pot without showdown fairly often.

       On the flop, my first instinct was just to lead. It seems like the default thing to do here with both our value hands and our semi-bluffs. But perhaps check-deciding on the flop would work better. Maybe BB leads (because he’s stabby), the limper calls with his wideish, weakish range, and you have a potentially profitable squeeze. Maybe BB leads (because he has A9o or 2p or a worse FD here and isn’t going to fold) and the limper calls and you have a profitable call (because they’re probably betting small). Sometimes it checks through, but that’s not really a disaster for us; we can still get heaps of money in if we cooler someone and we’ve only slightly hurt our chances of winning the pot without showdown. I’m also probably overestimating our ability to guess right if potentially hairy situations arise (eg what to do on the turn if they continue and we miss, what we’re going to do vs. a 3bet from either opponent, etc).

8. I would just bet the turn given the assumption that this player is likely to be poor and generally loose and passive. That sort of flop prompts floats from this type of player with lots of better Aces or other random overs that he will then fold to a second barrel.
   Plus I think if you take the check-call turn; check river line then if he does have a pair you are allowing him to value bet the river thinner than if you had bet the turn and check river. Hence you are making bluff catching river against worse flush/straight/floats less viable.

9. I am split as to whether or not we should have led out on the Turn … both have a mixture of positive/negative image/information that you should be mixing up your play in this spot to keep all on toes against you. Normally I don’t switch gears here and check, but with the potential of flush and FH hands out there, I do want to mix up my play here and do ‘both’ enough to keep folks guessing.

   We did find out that he is not ‘afraid’ of a paired board or a check-raise, which should tell us he has something going on here. So is he making us pay against his made hand Ax, 9x or other pair or is he building a small pot for his flush draw? Don’t think he is putting us on Ax since we limped pre-Flop so that may be an advantage to us.

   I think we can safely lead out for 7000 here and fold to a raise (2x trips), see a muck or possibly win a pot 40% of the time at showdown. The number of times we get a muck/win showdown should out-number raise/lose hands in his range … and we get to set the bet size. I think an Ax hand would have raised pre-Flop in position, but quite a few Kx hands would limp here.

   I do agree also that with him being the short stack that his Turn bet probably would have been a little bit bigger if he was tryingto protect against draws … so that will lead us to believe he is also on a draw.

   • Nice post. Why do you say a short stack would be more likely to want to protect against draws?

     • I think anyone with a made hand (not just in this hand, any hand) wants to make people pay a premium for their draws … not price them into the draw. Although mathmatically we want the calls if we are ahead, we dont want to give them a break even price to do so. 4800 seemed to be setting a price for his own draw (and/or a ‘value stab’) rather than protecting a made hand … especially if the made hand is less than a set as too many cards can create a messy River decision. Nothing worse than someone hitting their card and then rubbing it in with the ‘you priced me in/gave me a free card speech’ even though you were way ahead in the math department.

       • To answer more specifically. He is looking at a 10% increase to his stack if he takes the pot down right now … not bad. So as a short stack, I’ll take what I can get or make sure that any drawing hands are ‘really’ paying a price to draw against my made hand … unless I have a monster, then I will make the price more ‘right’ to call. Short stacks in general need to bet bigger … if not to ‘send a message’ that they are serious about the hand by showing that they are willing to risk a higher percentage of their chips to stay in it. This opens them up to getting snapped off, but as a short stack the risk/reward battle gets a little looser.

10. I think villains range is going to be suited hearts or possible PP’s below 9’s.

    If we assume villain would raise with 99+ I think range for villain would be: 22-99, 45hh, 56hh, J10hh, JQhh.

    It seems so strange for villain to open limp. Our check call on the turn makes it look like we have a medium strength hand or draw. Every draw missed so unless we can convince him we called with either a 2, 3, 7, 9 or 44-66, 66 out of the SB vs an unknown I think this is a check fold.

    We’re not beating a whole lot if we check/call. Even an AK that goes for sick thin value on the end has us beat.

11. The only option here I think is check folding. I feel like with how the action went throughout the hand it’s very unlikely he has nothing. Also any bet he makes will be a big % of his stack and with this player being an unknown it’s very dangerous to think he might be risking his tournament chances with a big bluff.
    I think any bluff we make would have to be pretty big (+80% pot) otherwise we’re giving him pretty good odds to look us up with his middle pairs. He may even have rivered top two pair or a full house. Problem is to find out we either have to show our weakness and check or bet into him after he had bet the turn.
    With all draws missing and us not raising preflop I think our range is polarised if we bluff at it which also doesn’t help our bluffing chances.
    Really I think the river is a mess and we should just get away from it.

12. Given the way the hand played out, it seems to me that either villain has some sort of hearts draw, small / medium suited connectors or Kxh maybe even Qxh type hands, or a small to medium pocket pair that didn’t hit a set (yet, could be 7s). Throw in A9 and some suited, non-heart 89 / 9T and you pretty much have the range I see villain take this line with.

    Since you only have A high, you are obviously behind against this range. However, it is weak enough that I think it will be very hard for villain to call a sizeable bet here, especially given villain’s stack size. I would therefore suggest betting about 80% of the pot here. It will almost guaranteed induce either a fold or, a lot less likely, a shove, and in the latter case you really have a very easy decision.

    • Given the range that Niels and other have layed out (which I generally agree with) then is crazy to check-raise the river? He might check back some weaker hands than us if he gives up on his own draw, which is obviously fine. Sometimes he’ll check a better hand behind (small pairs/weak 9’s) and we lose the pot, sure, but I think that’s ok. But unless he has a full house, he can’t really call off here for his stack unless he makes a sick read. And even if we lose we’re still in decent shape for this stage of the tourney, plus we have some meta-game benefits from the move as well. Of course it’s dependent on the size of his raise, but it seems very plausible to me that he could raise 8-10k and leave himself enough chips behind to fold to a 2-3x check-raise unless he has a huge hand.

      Leading out on the river screams to me to be the exact hand we have, i.e. a busted draw. If I’m in his position with 7s, 8s, and 9x I’m calling someone leading out on the river the majority of the time. I’m also putting a value bet on the river with my 9x hands (maybe the others), but I’m probably not calling off.

      But then, I play a fairly high-variance game.

      • I see your point there. However, what I don’t agree with is “Sometimes he’ll check a better hand behind…”, specifically the ‘sometimes’ part. I think villain will check behind most of his range here, realizing that more likely than not only a stronger hand would call / raise any bet. Villain’s turn bet looks very much like a weak attempt to pick up the pot after hero seemingly shows weakness by checking the turn. I doubt a short stack would make one more such attempt after his first one got flat called.

        Since a large part of villain’s range still beats us, check / check is a losing situation for hero and should be avoided. Making a large bet that is likely to pick up the pot is therefore a superior play in my opinion.

13. To me, the check/call on the turn makes it look like we are on a draw. Could we take this line with a really strong hand? Or more importantly would villain think that we could? It doesn’t seem to me like betting the river will be very effective. I think he will call too high a % of time (and we are always beat when called). I think the options are check-give up or check-reevaluate based on bet sizing. We could induce him to bet again with worse wiff and make a sick call or check-raise him off a 55/66/88. I’m inclined though to just give up as I think there is a good chance (say 33 to 50%) he has a pretty strong hand and I don’t want to lose any more chips.

    • Define “pretty strong hand.”

      • full house or trips – I don’t feel confident check raising him off trips. I think he either has that, 44/55/66/88, or a flush draw/some other wiff. I’m not sure what the %’s would be based on his line. Maybe here has a better idea based on his river sizing as to whether a check-raise, check-call, or check-fold are better.

        • You think there’s a 33% chance he has trips or better? That seems crazy to me considering all he’s done is call a flop bet and then bet when checked to.

          • yeah, probably not 33%. I think it’s 25 to 30 % based on his pre-flop limp (as small and medium pocket pairs are major part of his range), but that obviously changes based on his further action. He’s unknown, so he don’t know whether or not he could play those hands that way. I guess the better question is if hero checks and he bets, what % are those hands are in his range? To me, that could be 33%. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I would be thinking with his pre-flop limp and this board.

14. I think the range that Niels spelled out is about right and the fact that he just called the flop really caps his range big time. I’m thinking the strongest hand he’s got after calling the flop is T9. I guess A9/23 is also possible but unlikely.

    In trying a bluff you have to look at it from his POV:

    Your preflop range is wide, and if the big blind is aggressive you could conceivably be limping even AA trying to induce a squeeze and help him get it in light before the flop. You could be betting 100% of this range on the flop as a c-bet and with a really strong hand he would probably raise you attempting to get it in against some of the draws that make up a good portion of your calling range. Therefore I don’t think he could have A9+.

    When the board pairs on the turn, you can have a full house but he really can’t. And because there are draws to second best hands (straights and flushes), but not really too many made second best hands in his range, you could certainly be slowplaying a boat. Even if it went check-check you could win a big pot if his draws come in.

    You could also be check-calling a draw or a pair nine or lower because you want to get to the river in a small pot. So your turn call doesn’t say much other than that you have at least some equity in the pot, with a range weighted towards draws and pairs nine and below because there aren’t that many monsters out there.

    Given this range you would be betting out the river with a bluff or T9+ give or take. Against that range he should call pretty wide because there are a lot of bluffs you could have. If you think he is a fit-or-fold player I guess you could try a smallish bluff of like half the pot and hope he folds some of the random pairs in his range. More likely, this bluff isn’t going to show a profit.

    If we check raise, he pretty much has to fold his entire range because we can have a boat, and he pretty much can’t. Given that he’s playing in a 2k, I’d wager that he is at least good enough to realize his hand can never be good against your value range and he’s going to fold almost 100% of the time. If he’s better or worse than I take him for, he might be calling with a 9 or a random 2 that will rarely show up, but even so your bluff should show a profit. Even better, he might try to bluff his busted draws when you check the river so you collect value from his bluffs too. Sometimes when you check, he will check back something like a pair of threes through eights and you’ll lose the pot, but those hands might not have folded to a lead-out anyway so you’re actually saving money there.

    So all in all, I think it’s a pretty clear check raise.

    • Well… he should fold 100% of his range except for pocket sevens which is three combos. Didn’t mean to overlook the virtual nuts, but I don’t think that three combos makes too much of a difference.

      • Why can’t Villain have 22, 33 or 99? It would just mean he slow played a set on the flop and turn, despite a flush draw on board. If he wants to get more money in from your overcards or other weak hand, why not? Am I overcomplicating this, thinking that Villain could be slow-playing? Basically, I just don’t see how Villain’s range is narrowed in any way beyond saying no big pairs.

        • There are only 3 combos of 99 available and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he probably would have raised either preflop or on the flop with them. So given that it’s unlikely that he holds them by card removal and also unlikely that he would take two uncommon actions when he does hold them, I feel pretty confident that he will rarely show up with nines full on this river. I would maybe give him credit for one combo of 99 and that might be generous.

          22 is also one combo and he would probably have raised flop with it as well. But give him the full one combo.

          It seems more likely that he could have limped a pair of threes preflop, but I think that he would raise at least half the time on the flop. Give him two combos of 33.

          Give him three combos of 77 and we have seven combos of nutted hands (not counting 32,72 and 92 which I think can be safely excluded). If he bets half pot on the river the pot will be 32,000 and a standard raise would cost something like 30,000 chips.

          Therefore you need to come up with seven hand combos he will bet/fold this river. If you give him credit for the full 8 combos of A2, then he needs to fold a total of 15 combos. There are 24 total combos of A9 and T9 for starters, all of which should be folding. Even if you give him credit for half of those combos we only need to come up with three more that will be betting the river for whatever reason. There are a many more than three middling hands he could show up with and busted draws that he could bluff. All of them would fold to a raise.

          There are a maximum of 24 nutted combos if you count all combos of 22,33,77,99,A2 and including 32. That’s the worst case. I would tend to give him credit for no more than ten of them given his actions. Therefore I think a check raise bluff would be the best way to profit from this spot, and I think that it isn’t really that close to any other option. Your only consideration would be whether or not you can stomach the variance the few times you are wrong.

          • Thanks Brian. Great analysis. I need to think more about number of combos, or more simply, as you said, what percent of the time would he bet/raise with those hands. In other words, in this case, slow playing is unlikely, so reduce it’s likelihood in the range you put villain on.

15. I would tend to doubt he flopped or turned a monster hand. With his stack size vs. yours I would think his goal with a huge hand would be to start building a pot to hopefully double up somehow. His call on the flop and small bet on the turn tells me big hands are in his range on the river a very small % of the time. So small as to not give that possibility a lot of consideration. But then again this is poker and it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong!

    • One thing that players who limp tend to do a very bad job at is build a pot for their monster hands so I wouldn’t be so confident capping his range with certainty. I’m not saying he is very strong here, I’m just saying it won’t be unheard of for a weak player to turn up with a river monster here from time to time.

16. My initial instinct was to raise preflop.

    As played, I wouldn’t bet the flop without intending to bet the turn most of the time – I expect to get floated by weak hands that disbelieve my flop bet but will respect a turn barrel (and I bet big on the flop). I find that what seem like terrible cards to barrel like this are often actually good cards to barrel on flops like this where he is likely to be weak and calling the flop because he expects us to be weak.

    That said if you bet the turn, what is folding that you aren’t ahead of anyway? Worse hands that call/better hands that fold is only a heuristic, but it’s a pretty decent one. I guess we might get him off 44, say. Betting also prevents villain from bluffing you with JTs or something, although I’m not sure that that is much of concern here.

    I think that c/c on the turn feels close, EV wise. We can still be ahead, and if we aren’t we have ok equity. Thinking it through, I hate it less than I thought I would. I expected to argue that bet > c/f > c/c on the turn, but now I’m more happy with c/c where he bets smallish.

    On the river, I feel as though his range is mostly a weak 1p or maybe overcards. But our line is weird, so I think a bet is likely to get looked up fairly often by a pair. And I doubt he bluffs his junk very often. So I think that c/f is the right river line.

17. I’d like to rep the deuce and check-raise. Here are some quick arguments for it… I don’t really think our turn check-call represents a draw very well. We would lead twice a decent amount with our draws. From villain’s perspective, we might not check-call with some draws on the turn, given pot odds. Also, I feel villain might think that we think he is on a draw and the best way to get value from his hands is by taking a check-call line on turn and river with showdown hands. Therefore, I think he checks behind missed draws sometimes and value bets a stronger range. When we raise, I think we rep the deuce pretty well b/c he might think we can call with a lot of our showdown value hands (putting him on a missed draw). Also, our line is consistent with 2x hands. So, rep the deuce.

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