Chasing a flush on-line – Sometimes the numbers just do not add up!
There is an age old debate in poker – should you chase a flush? Initially of all we need to define what we mean here by "chasing a flush online."
Chasing anything in Hold’em poker will be the practice of betting to stay in a hand in the hope that you will generate a better hand, even while you may possibly have absolutely nothing in the time. So chasing a flush implies betting that you simply will receive the card or card that you just need to complete your flush hand to the turn or river. You cannot chase a flush prior to the flop because at that time you only have 2 cards so the flush isn’t on.
So let’s say you happen to be wagering one of the large poker websites on-line, you have been dealt the Ace and 9 of spades and you’ve paid to see the flop.
The flop is 2s 7 spades Kd and one of your opponents comes out betting strongly with a fair sized increase, what do you do?
Initial of all ask your self what sort of hands you are up against. The possibilities are triples, another flush draw, a pair of Kings or a complete bluff, so as it stands you are only winning against the bluff with your Ace. On the other hands should you hit a spade in the last two cards you might have the nut flush and could only lose to a full house or 4 of a kind.
On the face of it you may well assume that statistically you may have about a fifty – fifty possibility of hitting your spade, after all there’s 2 cards to arrive and 4 suits so there must be about a half probability, proper?
Wrong!
You already have 2 of the spades in your hand and there’s an additional 2 showing on the table, so you know five cards and 4 of them are spades. That suggests you’ve nine spades left available out of the 47 cards you have not seen, which is only a forty two per cent likelihood of catching your flush.
Should you do wager within the turn and don’t make your flush, what do you do then? You’ve got probably now turn into pot-committed, you might have put so a lot into the pot which you may well as properly bet again about the river unless there is a major raise or all-in towards you, except now your odds of creating the flush have dropped dramatically to only twenty one per cent.
Except what of that other factor, the mysterious world wide web poker syndrome? What I mean by that is though you statistically have a forty two per-cent possibility of generating a flush, is that what in fact happens in reality? If you wagered the same hands in the same online poker table 100 occasions would you have a flush forty two times? From my personal experience I doubt it. Flushes seem to arrive around lots much less generally than forty two out of one hundred instances!
That is just my own opinion and I am certain the poker internet sites would tell you a different story, but the way I see it’s 42 % will be the really Ideal you’re ever going to get and you might properly have a whole lot less chance than that of hitting your flush.
Bottom line? Chasing a flush on the internet is really a very risky system that sucks you in and over commits you, with out giving you enough of a opportunity of pulling out the succeeding hand.