I recently watched a NL100 Texas Hold em game where the following hand played out like this. The game was full-ring and several players had limped into the pot for the $1 and it was folded around to our hero who raised to $6.50. As it turned out he had the Js-Jc which is a reasonable play from that position. I definitely think that you can mix raises with limps here and my ratio would slightly favour the raises although it would be close.
Our hero was in the cut-off seat and the big blind and two other limpers called the raise. There was $27.50 in the pot and four players, the flop came 10s-8c-4s and it was checked around to our hero who bet $24. It should be mentioned here that all of the players apart from the big blind had stacks of between $80 and $140. The big blind was sitting with only $50.
Our hero was a regular at this level and had $111 in his stack. His bet was called by one limper so the pot now stood at $75.50 and the turn card was the Ac and the limper checked again. Our hero bet $40 and the limper called again. This put $155.50 into the pot and now our hero only had around $51 left and his opponent had slightly more. So this is a pot commitment stage and any river bet is bound to get called.
The river card was the 2h making a final board of 10s-8c-4s-Ac-2h…..the limper shoved all-in for their remaining stack and after some deliberation, our hero called and was shown the 8d-8h. I see these types of hands all the time where players give too much action to flopped sets. The pot had already been escalated pre-flop and three players calling the pre-flop raise already brought up pot commitment issues.
But when a betting sequence like this ends up with a big flop bet getting called then too many players seem to put their opponents on drawing hands and stick to that hypotheses. Its possible that someone could have called $24 on the flop with a draw and it was a multi-way pot after all. But when our hero made a $40 turn bet that was also called then the chances of his opponent having a draw were seriously diminished.
You cannot put your opponent on a made set after the flop bet was called. Draws and hands like 9-9, 10-8s and possibly Q-Q could be out there as well as the sets of course. But the turn bet eliminates the draws as few players would call down to that extent with a drawing hand. The only hands that could have realistically called the turn bet were hands that were beating our hero.
So he should have at the very least saved his final $51 despite the pot odds that he was getting. His opponents range of hands against this betting sequence screamed just one word…..set!
But you also have to remember how many players were in the hand originally. The pre-flop raise was called by three players. So this means that the chances of at least someone connecting with the board dramatically increases.
No-limit hold‘em is a treacherous game to play for many people simply because they pay off too much post flop with hands that they shouldn’t. They win a series of small uncontested pots and then hand it all back and then some in some escalated pot. All forms of poker test a player in some way, limit tests your ability to be able to take beat after beat, Omaha tests your technical capability like no other form of poker and hold ‘em……that tests your decision making ability and your level of pot control.