Today we are going to look at a hand from ‘Live at the Bike’ where the pot gets bloated on the turn card with a juicy check raise

The hand starts off with blinds at $25/$50 with a $100 straddle and a 100 big blind ante, meaning there is $275 in the pot before any action, play is 7 handed and here is how the preflop action unfolds:

UTG: Q♣ 3♣ Raise 300
HJ: J♠ J♣ 3-Bet to 1300
CO: 7♦ 6♦ Calls 1300
BTN: Folds
SB: Folds
BB: Folds
UTG: Folds

So there is an under the gun open of $300 and Martin 3-Bets to $1300 and gets called in the seat behind him from Andy with his suited connector, the original raiser folds and it’s off to the flop with $3,175 in the middle.

Board: J♦ 5♠ 5♦

The flop brings something for everyone with Martin flopping the world here with Jacks full of fives and Andy flopping a flush draw. Interestingly Martin decides to continue on this flop for $1300. This is a good play as he might do this with his pair hands like 66-TT or even his strongest hands like JJ-AA, but he could also just be doing this with all his bluffs and high card hands looking to win the pot right here on this dry board.

Although it can be tough to get action on this board, our opponent has to either have flopped trip fives or a flush draw to continue comfortably, however, if we are ever against opponents that will call flop bets just as a float in position then betting our monsters is going to be a good move.

Andy does decide to call with his flush draw and we move on to see what the turn brings…

The ultimate action card!

If this was an online hand, some players would be calling the site rigged. The turn brings the perfect action card with the 8♦ hitting, completing Andy’s flush and also giving him a redraw in the shape of an open-ended straight flush draw in case he is beat he has two clean outs to the nuts.

Board: J♦ 5♠ 5♦ 8♦
Pot: $5,775
Martin: Checks
Andy: Bets $4,600
Martin: Raises to $11,000
Andy: ?

So what does this action tell us, well Martin goes from leading out on the flop to making a 2.5x check raise on the turn card leaving himself just $17,225 after a raise of $11,000. Whilst he may be balancing here with some Ace of diamond type semi bluffs that he doesn’t want to just check call the turn with these would make better turn leads rather than check raises, it’s very hard to think of a hand that the 7 high flush is ahead of given this action with the stack sizes the way they are.

It’s sometimes easy to play a hand like this in poker and say “Oh well, it was just a cooler” but when we break this hand down what can we actually beat with the small flush here, not much right? We are beaten by many other flushes and full houses. Three of kind 5’s will not check raise us once the flush gets there on the turn, that hand is more likely to check call, so then we are left with all the high card combinations of diamonds and JJ and 88 in the Martin’s value range.

This is a tough spot and whilst I don’t think folding right here on the turn is playing optimally as we could be over folding it’s hard to see a river card where the money doesn’t go in here given stack sizes.

In spots like this you have to consider your opponents whole range of hands Vs your possible range and decide which parts of your range we will continue with and which parts we will look to get away from, I think this is the absolute bottom of our range in a hand like this, a small flush on a paired board is not often that strong of a hand, we will have many higher flushes and boats in our range, so we can look to fold this part of our range at least some of the time.

But Andy does decide to call with his flush and drawing live at least to the straight flush, so let’s see what happens on the River…

The River

The straight flush draw misses with the  7♥ hitting the River and Martin immediately moves all in, Andy ends up making this call and Martin drags the $62,225 pot!

A few takeaway points

We want to be thinking what the results of betting a turn card are when we are checked to in spots like this, so we will build value against a hand like three of kind and protect against draws like hands with a high diamond, so there are some merits to betting a small flush on the turn to protect our hand.

However, we are going to always be in the most awkward spot when we are raised, as our opponent will not have many bluffs and our hand is near the bottom of our range.

Can we get three streets of value with a small flush on this runout?

Possibly, if our opponent has a hand like QQ, KK, AA with one diamond, we may be able to get 3 streets of value. It’s possible too if our opponent has one of the two combinations of A5s remaining. So that’s 5 hands and a decent chunk of our opponent’s range, but how does this weigh up against the hands that want to play for stacks like all the higher combinations of diamonds and full houses, our opponent could have AKs, AQs, KQs, QTs, KTs, JJ & 88.

This makes the hand fairly tough to play, as we will want to protect against our opponents range we are beating on the turn a good percentage of the time, but we want to pot control some of the time too as we could be up against the part of their range that has us crushed.

Spots like this aren’t easy to play, but getting away from setups like this one from time to time is what makes a great poker player

Would our opponent check raise this turn card to play for stacks with a hand like AA with one diamond?
I don’t think so, they would basically be turning one of their hands from the top of their range into a bluff, so which hands is our opponent going to check-raise with???

If the answer you come to is, not many or just AK with one diamond that didn’t continue on the turn, consider this alongside all the hands they would do this for value with and try and evaluate whether continuing with a hand that could be crushed is going to be worthwhile.

Go with your gut!

You’ll be surprised how many times your first feeling in poker is correct, when you get in these cooler situations a lot of the time you will say “Damn, I had a bad feeling” try and explore this feeling and realise why.