How NOT To Play Top Pair On The Flop

This hand was sent in using the boom player on PokerStars and in this spot there is a min-raise from player 7. Hero just decides to call and one quick thing that I’m going to say here, somebody who min-raises from here probably isn’t the greatest player in the entire world. Because of that I am much more likely to three bet here, take control of pot, I have position, if they four bet me I’ll make some decisions. Obviously I don’t expect to be four bet to often from people like this.

And one of the other things to think about is if you flat here you give player9 and player 1 a great price, plus position on you. And chances are they’re going to continue a little more often than you want them to.  So I’d much rather three bet and go from there. Especially if I have position over a weaker player there that’s going to be my normal go to.

As played we get called by player 1 we end up going three way to it, flop top pair, there’s a bet and hero decides to min-raise. So at this point in the right up Mouze Warior says:

“I raised the flop with the intention to fold a raise, but I still wanted to raise because the c bet looked weak and I didn’t want to allow my opponents to draw so cheaply.”

I mean I understand that, and you’re far from the first person to use that logic when making a raise here. The thing you have to understand though is because you just min-raised you’re still giving player 7 the opportunity to draw very, very cheaply. You’re not punishing the draw, you’re not maximizing that value of the draw, you’re still letting him do exactly what you didn’t want him to do in the first place.

So if you’re going to raise here you are going to have to make a legitimate raise. It can’t just be a min-raise because that doesn’t really accomplish what you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to raise from value to max values from draws or sticky Tx or Jx or whatever it is make this a legitimate raise and then go from there.

As played we end up being called by player 1, player 7 goes away, go heads up to the turn, turn is a brick 6. We decide to fire again and if we’re going to fire which by the way I’m totally cool with, I would prefer that we bet a little bit larger, maybe like four, four and a quarter. I think if player one is going to continue with a draw for $3.50 he’ll probably continue at $4.00 or $4.25 at roughly the same frequency so let’s make it a little bit larger to maximize times value that he is going to continue with that draw.

On the river hero decides to check and we end up facing a over bet. Now in this situation hero decided to check in the river a large chunk of time thinking that if you bet not a lot of second best hand are going to continue so check the draws and let the wiff-draws fire. In this situation I really like the fact that hero decided to call because let’s think of what player 1 has. If player 1 has something like two pairs, say it’s Jack 10 or say something like a set like pocket threes, does he really call the flop and call the turn? Or, does he raise the turn once the turn then presents another draw.

I think a lot of players are very, very likely to then raise that turn. Whether they had two pair with that, the set, whatever it is I think they’re going to raise there a large chuck of the time. Which means that when they just call they’re probably looking at things like just one pair or a draw type open ended and on the river we’d obviously beat all of that except for like exactly Ace Jack which I don’t think they’d over bet either. I think he would bet for eight or nine bucks a large chunk of the time. At least the average person would at this limit. So, because of that I really like that we’re looking this up and we’re going to be looking at things like buster draws a large chuck of the time.

As played that’s actually exactly what happens and I’m really, really happy that we’re reviewing a hand that we won, you know, it’s important like I say all the time to not just look at our losing hands but to also explore our winning hands!Make sure our lines are appropriate, make sure are reads and assumptions were appropriate so as played Mouze Warrior, I really, really liked this. I think you played it very, very well on the river. However I think leading up to the river there were some things you could have done a little better like some extra preflop aggression with a three bet and as played really making sure we’re hammering out that flop size when we’re going to raise the flop. Good luck out there and happy grinding.

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