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Betting busted draws
How do you gauge when to bet with a busted draw on the river?
I played a $1/3 session at Bellagio recently where I twice found myself on the river with a busted draw and wasn’t sure if this was a “bet the bottom of my range” situation or more of a “give it up because you’ve already been called a few times and are going to lose more money” situation, haha.
I think in both cases, I was the aggressor, in position, pursuing the front-door flush draw, got called down along the way, and ended up with air on the river.
What are some of your mental checkpoints for how you handle these situations? What would you recommend for sizing if you’d bet there sometimes?
In one of them, I bet 25% pot (to look value-y) and scared them away. In the other, I checked down and lost to a slightly better nothing. Certainly these two results suggest that betting busted draws is +EV, but I don’t have a clear structure for thinking about this situation yet.
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1 Reply
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Always think about how the hand plays out and the board textures (and what your value hands would be in those spots) to help decide on when you want to go for a triple barrel bluff. Also, be very aware of bet sizing and what you are trying to tell your opponent.
For board texture, imagine there’s a flop of 9s 5s 2h and you have the QsTs. You have a lot of hands that connect with a top pair, overpair, or even a middle pair along with those flush draws. If the board runs out with 5h on the turn and Kc on the river. I’d struggle to put you on a hand that you want to go for 3 streets on value here. Making hero calls a lot easier.
Then bet sizing can be huge too. In the example above, you can bet out something like 35% pot on the river which would be much more indicative of something like TT-QQ that is a bit scared of the river K. But betting 75% removes those hands from your range and makes it more likely that you have either extreme value (A5/99/KK) or pure air (miss flush draws). If I had 98hh, I’d feel more comfortable trying to hero call a 75% bet on the river than a 35% for those reasons.
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