Well, I didn’t in anything in the PokerStars freeroll, so there is no news there.

The following hand is from my forum (thanks again for posting and replying), and it attracted a lot of attention. I promised I’d comment on it here, and will do so now. You can find it on the forum in the cash game subhead under the title “Miss a Bet here?” by WindyCityJ.

Briefly, Windy held Q-10 on the button after everyone folded and he raised. Only the big blind, a very loose, aggressive player, called. The flop came A-Q-10 and LAG bet, Windy raised (good!) and LAG called. The turn was another ace, and LAG bet out again, representing an ace, presumably. Windy called since he now had three-pair and his Q had a mediocre kicker. The river was a third ace, and the LAG bet again. Windy called, and won, but wondered on the forum whether he should have raised.

Let’s answer the question first. When considering a raise on the river, you need to ask yourself what hands your opponent will call with and what hands he will reraise with. It makes no sense to raise if he will never call with a worse hand and always three-bet with a better one. It does not matter how often you are ahead, only how often you will get called when you are ahead.

In this case, it is tough to find hands he can call with. Copoka suggested KJ, TT (which I guess means any hand with a ten), and JJ. None of these would be calls made by most players, but I do concede that KJ and TT might call out of frustration some of the time. Very few players would play either KJ or TT this way, but yes it is possible.

The case where he has KK is not really important because if he does, he would call the raise and you would lose. Really, the only relevant case is the one where he has an ace. A player with an ace might indeed play it the way he did. Bet the flop and flat call the raise on the scary board. Bet again when the second ace came, and be forced to bet the river when he made quads. There are 44 ways he can hold an ace in this situation, and he will three-bet every one of them on the river. Compared to the hands he might foolishly call, I think the check on the river has a clear edge.

So I check here, because the hands he might call with are ones he could also easily fold, but the hands he will re-raise with are very clear-cut. Perhaps I play with a better group of players than some of you do, and if you are playing with guys who will play the hand this way and then call the river with, say, 88 because they made a full house, then a raise could be in order.

A quick word about poker math. Once play starts, the chances a player has a particular hand are not the same as the chances he was dealt it. If we walk over to a player before the flop, tap him on the shoulder and say, “What are the chances he will get two kings?” the correct answer is of course one out of 221. But if we walk over during a hand and he has three-bet pre-flop, his chances of having kings are much greater, though exactly how much greater depends on the player (Howard Lederer is more likely to have them than Carlos Mortenson is).

So it is true that if a player gets dealt an ace, the chances are very much against him getting quad aces. That doe not mean that if three aces on are on the board, the odds are the same long shot that he does not have an ace. And if he is actually betting, the chances he has an ace continue to increase. Lightening is unlikely to strike you, but if it does, it does not help to discuss the fact that it was a long shot.