To be truly successful in poker, sometimes you’ll have to lay down the best hand. I can remember a hand I played not to long ago. I was on the button with black AQ off. We were playing 1/2 no limit and it was checked around to me. I made the standard raise of 8 dollars. And got two callers, the big blind and one person in middle position. The flop comes Qd-7d-8s. I’m feeling pretty confident here. The big blind checks and the online poker player in middle position bets out about half pot, making it 18 to play.
Now here’s what was going through my head. Either he has a strong Queen, in which case I have him dominated. He’s semibluffing the diamond draw, in which case I have to raise, or he’s on a straight draw and is probably open ended. Two pair isn’t really probably here, though it is possible with 78 being connected. In any event, I decided to minraise, making it 48 to play, betting the pot and his 18. The big blind folds, and the middle position player just calls.
Ok, so two pair is definitely out of the question. A call there smells like a draw for sure. The next card comes Qh. Alright, now I’m sitting on trip queens. The MP player bets out about half pot again, a standard continuation bet of about 50 dollars. At this point I’m thinking “let’s take him to value town” So I make the minimum raise of 50 on top of his 50. He immediately calls. This was my bad play. The pot is now close to 250 dollars and it’s only 50 more for him to call. So he’s getting 1:5 odds.
If he’s on an open ended straight draw he has his 1:5 odds to keep going. If he’s on the flush draw, he has his 1:4 odds to keep going. And wouldn’t you know it, he calls and the river comes Kd. This leaves the board reading Qd-7d-8s-Qh-Kd. Again, he bets out about 1/3 pot. And this is definitely a suspicious bet. It’s almost as if you know he has the flush at this point. So I tank for about five minutes wondering if I should call and look him up or just fold my trip Qs.
In the end I ended up folding because I just sensed the flush. And lo and behold I flip up my trip queens and he shows me A8 diamonds.
Looking back I don’t think I could have bet him off his draw anyway. I had him covered 3x over with my stack. And he had about 150 left after his 50 dollar bet. Sometimes you just have to make that laydown even when you have a monster when you play poker online.
