Overpairs When Flush Draws Complete

Today’s question comes from Tom, and Tom just wants me to review this hand played with KK in a live game. In this hand the blinds are $2/$4 and hero raises to $16 from early position. There are a bunch of callers and now it’s starting to feel a lot like a live game.

On the flop actions goes check, check. Hero decides to bet. So, in this kind of situation I heavily ask myself, “If I check, would seat 7 or 8 decide to say, bet for me? Where I can bet, maybe induce one or two calls behind, and then I can go for the check raise.” Definitely make sure you’re at least considering going for check raises on boards like this. I think far too many people just default Cbet. But you really have to think about how the bet is going to play out, both if you were to bet and if you were to check the flop yourself.

As played we end up getting called by the main villain, which is seat 7. Go to the turn and hero decides to bet for 80. Okay, totally on board with that, definitely not going to panic just because a flush draw filled, but when seat 7 decides to punch it, Tom decides to find the fold button and I think we need to talk about this for a minute.

So the major crux of this hand is going to boil back to the fact that we are getting a sick price once seat 7 decides to shove. Once they shove we are getting 4-to-1 on a call which means we only need to be good 20% of the time, and in this situation I think that’s going to be the case.

Now, if we think about it and just say we were solely drawing to spades. Let’s just say seat 7 never had enough flush for whatever reason. If we were only drawing to spades we’re in a situation where we have nine outs times it by 2 based on the 4-2 rule and that’s 18. So that’s pretty darn close to 20 and that’s not factoring in the fact that we could simply just be crushing him right now with Kings. Because this could be a situation where seat 7 has like, Jack X. Or maybe he has the Jack of spades with nothing else really going on. Or maybe he Ace, Jack with the Ace of spades, right? And now we’re in a situation where we’re doing super, super well.

In fact, we can prove this using Equilab. So what I like to do is, whenever I’m analyzing a hand like this, I first say, “Okay, what would my initial thought process be, based on range, my estimated equity go from there.” And then when I’m studying it I also say, “Okay, well go proof of mathematically,” just to double check that we were 100% right the whole way through.

So in that situation, let’s just give kind of a worst case scenario. So we’re, say, 10s, 8s, let’s say Jack, 10 for whatever reason, they slow play that on the flop. And let’s say that they could have some, not flushes, right, so we’re going to say like, Ace Queen, Ace Jack. Ace Queen, oh no, we can’t have that. What do we got? Ace 10? No, 10 of spades is on board. Let’s just say, like, Ace 3, just for rounding it out. Give those in spades. Okay, evaluate it.

And again, you’ll notice that we’re doing just fine. Yeah, we’re not crushing in equity by any stretch, but we’re doing just, just fine. And all these hands are reasonable. Now, if you think, JT simply can’t be in there, 10s and 8s won’t be in there because you think they would have raised that on the flop, and again, that’s a pretty reasonable assumption.

But if we think about some other flushes that could possibly be in here, let’s say 6-7 of spades, let’s say things like that. Do another suit selection, or do 6-7, can’t do 5-6, can’t do that. So let’s do that. Let’s do Jack X of it, right. Jack 10, let’s do that, let’s do that. And give those in spades. And again, this is just kinda evaluating pretty pretty worst-case scenario. Yes, we’re not good. But the second we can factor in things like, Ace Jack. Right? Ace Jack is a big one. Lets just say that they could have all Ace Jack. Or, they could have Ace Jack, but it has to have a spade in it. Okay, let’s just through that in there and see what it does. Now you notice that we’re doing just, just fine.

So, this is a situation where, yeah, in a super super worst-case scenario you can be really behind. But, in a normal case scenario, you’re going to have at minimum 20% equity, no problems. So this is a situation where I would feel very very happy getting it in. I think folding here is just far too tight. I would never want to put in 80 bucks here only to fold to another 120 more. I think that’s just going to be a little too nitty and I’d really like to see Hero get it all-in profitably rather than folding and concede the pot to someone who probably doesn’t deserve having respect for having solely the nuts when they go for that raise.