A pair with a flush draw...
lately, i have been hitting alot of flops with one of my FAVORITE draing hands, a pair with a flush draw. i feel personally, that these hands are DEADLY to weak opponents, i get alot of opponents who call or shove on my reraise with just top pair and an ace. Tonight, i lost a hand when i picked up Jc9c in the big blind and a guy utg raised to 4.5 times the BB. 4 calls behind him, got great odds to call to hit my straight or flush or even trips, already have the BB in. So i call, flop comes down Ac 5c Jd...suhweet! i set up for a big check raise on the flop...guy who originally raised bets out 3/5 of the pot. One caller behind him. i sit there and count the pot...2.80 in the pot...i make it 2.75 to go, just for ****es n giggles. utg player snap folds, guy in late position thinnks, requests time, and snap shoves for 7 dollars and change. I instacall, i figured he had a big ace, and he flipped up AhQh. I know what your thinking, thats a donkey play on my part, but lets take a look at the stats via cardplayer magazine. After the flop, the hand is still a coinflip, i'm actually ahead 50.10% to 49.90%...which i love. Now, i'm a farely aggressive cash player, im smart with my reads and my money rarely gets in dead, which i feel is the number one mainstay in any good poker players arsenal. Anyways, back to the hand...Turn 5d(down to 25% to win), river Ah...yes i lost the hand, but in the past week, i can count atleast 3 times where i got my money in with this type of situation and i came out ontop and up big at the table. I'm not ashamed to tell you about losing the hand.
One other thing if you are a tricky player, and lets say you just smooth call the post flop bet and you call on the turn, and you happen to river two pair, it's very deceiving to your opponent, because if he is a good player, you can get him to call a raise on the river and it looks like a bad bluff because technically you were chasing the flush but you also had the goods to back it up. Lastly, i personally play this type of hand the way i would a set, or flopping two pair...it goes better with ym style and it also gets my set-reraise on the flop paid off sometimes because i don't just do it with a set...give it some thought and let me know what you think.
