The Poker Voice

www.bluesqpoker.co.uk – With a hand of (As,Js) you make a raise preflop from fairly late position, and the big blind calls. The flop then comes down (Ad,Jd,4d). With a board such as this, there are obvious plus points and there are obvious dangers. The first point of note is that we have made top two pair which is a fairly strong hand in this position.

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To deal with the less obvious danger to your hand firstly, if your opponent has made a set whilst holding a pocket pair at this point, then it is going to be unlikely that you can improve your hand further to beat them, but let us examine that possibility a little closer. I would say that an opponent could feasibly be holding pocket fours here due to the flat call of the raise preflop. I would also be tempted to say that pocket Aces are possible, but then wouldn’t your opponent have reraised preflop if that was the case?

Jacks are less possible in my opinion because this really is a hand you really would want to raise with to find out where you were, and hopefully pick up the pot without having to see a flop. The real danger though is from the flush or more likely, a flush draw. With your opponent first to act, I would be aggressive on my turn to act, whether the big blind raises or checks. If they put out a huge bet or move all in, then you have a real problem, and you should certainly be feeling that if they have a made flush, they would bet smaller or check. Depending on the size of your stack and potential damage, you could maybe fold here, but flat calling is ok too.

I would probably put my opponent on a big flush draw if they made a large bet in this position, and so they will have a big problem on their hands if you flat call and the most likely thing happens, i.e no diamond on the turn.
As always though, each scenario in poker holds it’s own problems, and your judgement in that moment is what you should be trusting implicitly.

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