THE FLOP
The flop was 9 
8 
3 . The first poker player bet and two players called. What should our hero do now?
The conventional wisdom says to fold. The argument for a fold is simply that we only called based on the chances of flopping a set. We missed the flop, so give it up and wait for the next hand.
On the other hand, we have a pretty good-sized pot here. Let’s look at what kind of odds we’re getting for a call. Eight people called two bets each before the flop.
Now we have one bet and two callers, adding three bets to the pot. We’re getting at least 19-1 to call if no one raises.
What are the chances that the next card will be 4? We’ve seen five of the fifty-two cards. That leaves forty-seven cards in the deck. Two of them are 4s.
Two out of forty-seven cards will make our set, and forty-four out of the forty-seven will not help us. The odds are 22.5-1.
The pot odds aren’t quite that large, but if we do make the set of 4s on the next card, we’ll probably win a few extra bets on the betting rounds.
Usually I look for odds of about 20-1 to call a bet on the flop with a small pair in the hopes of spiking the set.
We don’t quite have that, but with at least three other player active, we can be fairly certain that we’ll gain more than just one or two extra bets on the last two betting rounds, and they are double-sized bets.
So, based purely on current pot odds, our hero should probably call. The combination of the large pot and our implied odds from future bets is big enough.
When thinking about calling on the flop to draw to a small pocket pair, we not only need to think about the pot odds we’re getting on the call, but we also need to be certain that we really will get those pot odds, that no one is going to raise.
In addition we need to consider the likelihood that our three of a kind will be the best hand should we get lucky and spike the third of our rank on the turn card.
In this situation we have one player left to act, and that player had raised before the flop. The risk of him raising now might be large.
This is a situation where tells come into play. Most poker players will frequently telegraph what they intend to do by putting on a false act.
The important thing to do is to distinguish between when they are acting and when they are behaving naturally.
A player who is not paying attention to the action and is behaving naturally probably really doesn’t care what’s happening and is going to fold, but a player who is acting in such a way that he clearly wants you to think that he’s not paying attention is probably very interested in what’s happening and is very likely to raise.
What about the likelihood that a 4 on the flop will make someone else a better hand at the same time it makes your hand? With a flop of 9 8 3 , a 4 won’t make anyone a straight, and one of our 4s is a Diamond, matching the suit of the potential flush draw.
That means that a 4 can’t make anyone a flush. This second consideration is very important.
No matter how large your pot odds, if there is a potential flush draw on the flop, it’s almost never right to take one more card off in the hopes of turning your pocket pair into a set unless you have a card in the flush suit.
That’s because making three of a kind with the same card that makes someone else a flush can be a disaster. It ’s disaster that’s best avoided.
There are some other arguments against calling. It is possible that someone else has a pocket pair of 8s or a pocket pair of 9s, meaning that you would essentially be drawing dead, but that’s very unlikely.
In general it’s not worth worrying about someone having a larger set unless there is some specific reason to think they do, and there’s no reason here to think that.
Our hero called the bet. The button called but didn’t raise.
