Poker News

Sam Mudaro is the Omaha Guru

Flopping 4 to a flush with a pair on board Today I will venture down a new road. My previous articles have concentrated on starting hands. This will be the first in a series of articles that will address the question “What are my chances if I flop X-X-X while holding X-X-XX?” Theywill tend to answer the question should I proceed or should I fold.

I will begin with a situation that is quite common. You flop a flush draw (4 to a flush), with a flop that contains a pair. Should you continue? Should you fold fearing that if you complete your flush you may lose to a full house or some other better hand?

For each of the starting hands listed below in conjunction with the specified flop, I ran 500,000 simulations. The simulations were run with a full table of tight players in a $10/20 game. The same tight player played the same hand from every position. This was done to determine how the hand would play on average from each position. I only ran simulations where the player was drawing to the nut flush. This eliminates the possibility of losing to a higher flush. I ran 3 sets of simulations and included those scenarios where the player would have a draw to the nut low, low straight and a draw to a nut high straight. I also include two cards with no straight possibility. Keep in mind that I only set two of the player cards and allowed the second two to be totally random. The results are given in the chart below.

The first column displays the two suited cards that were forced into the player’s starting hand. The second column shows the 3-card flop with two of them suited to the player’s starting forced hand. The green columns show the percentage of times the player won the High Hand and Low Hand only as well as the percentage of time the pot was scooped. The last two columns show the percentage of time the player won with a flush and the percentage of time the player lost with a flush.

The first thing to notice is that every hand is a winner. Not just a marginal winner, a decent winner. The lowest net is $8.28.

Looking at the A-9 and concentrating on the K-K-8 flop there is roughly a 23% drop ($3.22), in the net form the Q-Q-8. A reasonable explanation may be players are more likely to play a king then a queen, as in A-K, hence more full houses. Do note that the rate of losing with a flush in this situation is more than double that of the previous hand. Another indication that players are completing king high full houses. The win percent is relatively stable, going up as the rank of the flop pair increases. The flush win percent does the complete opposite as it decreases.

Now look at the same situation with the A-2. The net drop from K-K-9 to Q-Q-9 is $4.37, over 18%. The oddity here is that you lose with the flush less often and not more as with the A-9. So what is going on? The scoop percentage rose from 7.3% with the A-9 to 13.6%, an increase of 6.3%. The flush percentage increased from 7.8% to 14.2% or an increase of 6.4%. When your playing for both halves of the pot you can be more aggressive in your betting in an attempt to drive out full house draws that may only be drawing to half the pot.

The A-K also has a strong scoop percentage when compared to the A-9. Just another indication of how a 9 is the worse card you can hold. The flush win and loss percentages are also better. Take note of the net win with the A-K hand and the 9-9-8 flop. It jumps up to $20.38 from $14.75 for the 7-7-8 and down with the T-T- 8. If you don’t play 9’s, you don’t make 9’s full.

The average net win for the A-9 is $11.70, the A-2 $24.49 and the A-K $14.65. Is there truth to the statement that if you scoop more pots you win more? Under these circumstances in this case the answer is yes. The scoop win percentages are 8.7%, 18.2% and 10.8% respectively.

So what have we learned? YES, we should continue to play our nut flush draw when a pair appears on the flop.Next time I will address a question from a reader, which ask: When can I play unsuited Aces?

Filed under: Poker News