Denying drawing odds
This is something I'm struggling a bit with. Let's take a hypothetical heads up flop situation where Hero has TPTK and Villain has just a flush draw (no pair or overcard to the board). If we don't take anything else into consideration (i.e. Hero's opportunity to improve in further streets), Villain has roughly 2 to 1 odds to hit his flush by the river and win the hand. If the flop pot is $20, how much does Hero need to bet to deny Villain the pot odds? If Hero bets $12 on the flop and the same on the turn Villain will have paid $24 to capture $44, i.e. he will have been denied the odds to see the river. Is that right or am I missing something? Alternatively, is it better for Hero to bet $24 on the flop which would deny Villain his odds right away and being threatened to face further betting down the line? Or is somewhere in the middle?
Comments
Roughly 2 to 1 is for all in. Turn odds are 4 to 1. River odds are 4 to 1. Lay odds with your bet size which make villan continue improperly. Do this on each street. Villan may hit and be happy but he did so without being properly compensated for the risk taken. Winner now but long term losing decision.
Implied odds are questionable with flushes as Hero can plainly see the flush has come in.
I wouldn't favor $24 bet as you want villan to continue. After all in this scenario he has nothing. ( correction u are 4/1 fav)
So pick a bet size that allows villan to continue for the wrong price.
Finally. Avoid tilt when villan gets there. You can't avoid it. Its a mathematical certainty. 20 % he's gonna get there (19.1%). 4 of 5 times you barrel, barrel win. He call call folds. HTH
@dhirigoy
So in this example would you recommend betting $9 on the flop and $15 on the turn (or something like that), i.e. progressively rather than equal bets on those two streets?
Yes. Expressed as a % of pot. I go 60% flop and 60% turn.
To me this is a fun part of poker.
There is no optimal answer. The answer is only bet the highest amount villan will call.)
I play live so one gets to identify the " peel 1" players and the " call down with 3rd pair" players. So give the first a comfortable amount say 50%. Then bump the 2nd for 75% because he's not folding.
Or you can be a 1 size fits all c-bet player. Just c-bet 65% which has merit because there is no Bet Size Tell.
Develop your own strat only requirement is lay the wrong odds for the call. @dhirigoy
Thank you, that's very helpful. I see so many people trying to push guys out of a draw by making massive bets without success. Of course if they get called then it's a major mistake from their opponent but if he hits with such a big pot it may take them quite a while to recover. Because bankroll management has to come into play too, right? If they lose a big stack against a completed draw and win a smaller one against a missed draw, that's got to hurt (even though one might think that over the long run the pot sizes that one wins or loses may average out).
Glad to help. A big bet MAY cause a fold and pot win but loses value that could have been extracted. Btw villan could call a big bet or jam and win anyway. Its not as if all players are pot odds experts. )
Example you hold QsQd
Flop Ts 7h3h
I hold AhKh
You bet pot to" push me off " draw.
I jam. I am the fav.
How can you fold here?
You can't make people fold. You can only lay a bad price.
@dhirigoy
And a player can't play fearing the monster under the bed. He's there and coming out 20% of the time. Lol
@dhirigoy , you are getting sound advice here. Looking at it from more of a 30,000ft view, poker is a game of margins (edges). If a villain is willing to pay 33% of pot for a <20% draw, you profit every time he makes that decision. Getting your money in to the good is part of being successful. Managing variance is another part. Long term success is a grind. Never place too much significance in the results of 1 hand or 1 session. So long as you stick to the basic recipe, you give yourself an excellent chance of being a long-term winner.
You also need to remember that just because the board is two-tone or might have an OESD doesn't mean he's drawing to it. He might be sticky with some kind of second-best pair. With TPTK you should be more concerned about keeping him in with you and getting two or even three streets of value (depending on runout.) Don't push your customers out of pots. If you have a calling station who stays with you even when not priced in, that's a bonus, not a requirement.
All those points are really valid but something that highfive said earlier "There is no optimal answer. The answer is only bet the highest amount villain will call" has struck me. Technically this is absolutely true. However, I think this needs to be looked at in the light of bankroll management (by now you guys might think I'm obsessed with that concept...) and the fact that probabilities are only "reliable" on very large samples. Let me illustrate this idea with a hand that I witnessed a while ago at my local casino. 1/2 NL cash game. A decent TAG player with a very large stack opens $15 from UTG. She gets 3 callers, including the CO who's also sitting with a large amount in front of him. The pot is $60. The flop is quite innocuous, except for two spades. UTG bets $40. Everyone folds except the CO who calls. The pot is now $140. At that point UTG sits in front of about $450 and CO has around $350. The turn card is Kc. UTG thinks for a few seconds and goes all in. At that point, considering what I know of her I believe she's got a really strong hand. CO takes a good 2 minutes to think. I hear him say that it's pretty tempting and I wonder why he hesitates so much. I'm thinking: "Could he really consider calling if he has just a flush draw and only one card to come??" Anyway, after an inordinate amount of time, he calls and turns over QsTs and she turns overs KK for a set. The river card comes and is, you guessed it, a spade! UTG looks at it incredulously and with disgust. Needless to say that that hand had two effects on her: it ruined her poker night and left her financially crippled for the rest of the evening (she never recovered as long as I sat at that table after that). Which leads me to a simple idea: shouldn't one bet the highest amount villain will call as long as it's also a bet that one is comfortable losing (as long as it denies the villain he right odds of course)? So as an example, may be one could consider putting another player all in if that player's stack is only 1/4 or a 1/3 or one's own stack and just bet the appropriate amount to deny odds if the other player's stack is too deep for us to handle if we were to lose the hand?
If you ever play against CO again, make a point of playing for stacks with him whenever you get a big hand. Don't worry about folding him out of your value.