Raise n Chase: Part 5

We played $4-$8 hold 'em with Woody recently and learned a few new tricks. Woody plays most every day, arriving at lunchtime and staying as long as he can find a good game. He doesn't win every day-no one does-he just usually wins. We doubt that he even has losing weeks.

Anyway, during our session Woody raised in the blind with Aa-6h, Ks-Js, and 9c-9d. He won nice pots with each hand, making aces-up, a flush, and a set of nines when the dealer turned a nine. We observed that Woody raised in the blind when he held a modest hand and there were many limpers, i.e., a "family" pot, because in limit hold 'em, limpers usually always call a pre-flop raise.

By raising, Woody priced himself into seeing the turn even with little or no help from the flop. Of course his raise also enticed in the limpers. With favorable money odds due to his raise he can see the turn with only a few outs.

Suppose he raised in the small blind with 6d-5d and the flop came as shown:

Ad-7s-2c

He would have 2+ outs, one for the backdoor flush, one for the backdoor straight, plus a half-out for a backdoor two pairs or trips. (The probability of backdoor two pairs or trips equals C(6,2)/C(47,2), or 0.014, a bit more than half an out.) His 2+ outs before the turn yield about a 10 percent chance of improving to a flush, a straight, trips, or two pairs. In a family pot, his pre-flop raise would obtain pot odds as large as 18- or 19-to-1 after the rake and badbeat drop, affording him an easy lead bet to suggest a good ace, or more passively, a check-call to see the turn card. If the texture of the flop and/or the pre-turn betting indicated no chance, or the turn card disappointed, then he could easily abandon the hand.

With as few as five limpers, a pre-flop raise should produce pot odds of 10-to-1 even after the rake and badbeat drop. (For a $2-$4 game, you should figure that the rake and bad-beat drop take two small bets out of the pot.) With 10-to-1 pot odds, plus the bets you would win if you improved to a winning hand, you could see the turn with two outs, as Woody did with his pocket nines. Since the pot odds for you would be larger than the cards odds against you, then you'd happily chase for one more street.

Because the bets double on the turn in a structured limit hold 'em game, you may not have the right odds to see the river with only two outs even in a family pot. You would still need 10-to-1 or larger money odds to draw to your pocket pair. We often see the turn with a pocket underpair in a family pot and then muck it when the money odds so dictate. Only fish chase without favorable money odds.

As this whole series of columns indicate, we raise pre-flop in late position with a modest hand when there are a goodly number of limpers. Until we watched Woody raise from the blind with profitable results, we never even considered raising from the blind with modest hands. In the blind, we typically limped with modest hands and raised with premium ones.

In retrospect it seems obvious that we need to change our behavior in the blind: to throw our opponents off balance; and, to increase the size of the pot so we can profitably see the turn card and maybe even the river card.

You can see a lot just by observing. -Yogi Berra

Mr. Burke is the author of Flop: The Art of Winning at Low-Limit Hold 'Em, on sale at amazon.com & kokopellipress.com. E-mail your Hold 'Em questions to richardburke@comcast.net