Chasing a flush on the internet – Sometimes the numbers just don’t add up!
There’s an age old debate in poker – really should you chase a flush? 1st of all we have to define what we mean here by "chasing a flush online."
Chasing anything in Texas holdem poker could be the practice of wagering to stay in a palm in the hope that you just will make a greater palm, even though you may possibly have absolutely nothing in the time. So chasing a flush means betting that you just will get the card or card which you ought to total your flush hands on the turn or river. You can’t chase a flush prior to the flop because at that time you only have two cards so the flush is not on.
So let us say you’re playing one of the large poker internet sites on line, you have been dealt the Ace and nine of spades and you have paid to see the flop.
The flop is 2s 7 spades King of diamonds and one of your competitors comes out betting strongly with a fair sized increase, what do you do?
Initially of all ask your self what type of hands you’re up against. The possibilities are triples, one more flush draw, a pair of Kings or a total bluff, so as it stands you are only winning towards the bluff with your Ace. About the other palm should you hit a spade in the last 2 cards you’ve got the nut flush and could only lose to a full house or 4 of a kind.
On the face of it you could possibly assume that statistically you’ve got about a fifty – fifty possibility of hitting your spade, after all there is two cards to come and 4 suits so there must be about a half opportunity, appropriate?
Wrong!
You already have two of the spades in your hand and there is yet another two showing to the table, so you know 5 cards and four of them are spades. That indicates you’ve got 9 spades left obtainable out of the 47 cards you haven’t seen, which is only a forty two per-cent likelihood of catching your flush.
Should you do bet about the turn and do not produce your flush, what do you do then? You may have possibly now turn into pot-committed, you might have put so much into the pot that you simply may well as nicely bet again around the river unless there’s a massive raise or all-in towards you, except now your chances of making the flush have dropped dramatically to only twenty one per-cent.
Except what of that other factor, the mysterious internet poker syndrome? What I mean by that’s despite the fact that you statistically have a forty two % probability of generating a flush, is that what in fact occurs in reality? If you bet the identical hand in the exact same web poker table one hundred occasions would you receive a flush 42 instances? From my personal encounter I doubt it. Flushes seem to arrive around a good deal much less typically than forty two out of 100 occasions!
That is just my own opinion and I’m sure the poker websites would tell you a diverse story, except the way I see it is 42 percent is the quite Greatest you are ever going to obtain and you might nicely have a good deal much less possibility than that of hitting your flush.
Bottom line? Chasing a flush on the web is a incredibly risky strategy that sucks you in and over commits you, with out giving you sufficient of a likelihood of pulling out the winning hand.