LAST
POSITION PLAY
Last Position Play After Your Opponent Has Checked
When you are in last position, your opponent will have either
checked or bet. First, what should you do when your opponent
checks? Some might reply that you should bet if you think you
have the best hand. But this is not at all the case. Your chances
of having the best hand might be as high as 90 percent or better,
but still you should not necessarily bet. Take the following
hand from seven-card stud.Though you are not in last position
in this example, I use it because it illustrates the principle
so succinctly.
With four jacks your chances of having the best hand are enormous,
but in either first or second position you cannot possibly bet
the hand on the end for the simple reason that your bet has absolutely
no positive expectation. Since your four jacks are exposed for
the world to see, your opponent will fold every hand he can have
except four queens or a straight flush in hearts. With either
of those hands, he will raise. So your bet has nothing to gain
and everything to lose.
This very obvious situation points toward the key distinction
between play in the final round of betting and in earlier rounds.
With one card to come, you would most certainly bet the four
jacks to avoid giving your opponent a free card to outdraw you.
Your bet forces him either to fold and thus give up any chance
to outdraw you or to call and pay for that slim chance. However,
when all the cards are out, betting to avoid giving a free card
no longer applies. So if you now still decide to bet your hand,
you no longer ask what your chances are of having the best hand
but rather what the chances are of winning the last bet when
you are called.
This distinction may seem like hair-splitting, but it is most
assuredly not. In fact, it is crucial to successful play - that
is, to winning or saving extra bets - when you are heads-up on
the end. To take a very common situation, let's say you have
three-of-a-kind in seven-card stud, and you know your opponent
is drawing to a flush and has nothing else. The odds against
that opponent's making the flush on the last card are, we'll
assume, 4to-l, which means you are an 80 percent favorite to
have the best hand. However, if your opponent checks, you certainly
should not bet because, as in the case of the four open jacks,
a bet has no positive expectation. Your opponent will fold if
he didn't make the flush, and he will call or possibly raise
if he did. So even though you are an 80 percent favorite to have
the best hand, you become an underdog if you bet and get called.
To repeat, then, the decision to bet a legitimate hand for value
on the end should be based not on your chances of having the
best hand but on your chances of winning the last bet when you
are called.
When you bet for value on the end after your opponent has checked,
you must figure your hand has better than a 50-50 chance of winning
when you are called. In fact, you have to figure it has at least
about a 55 percent chance of winning to compensate for those
times when your opponent is planning to check-raise. With three-of-a-kind
against a flush draw, you are certainly the favorite, but you
are not the favorite if your opponent calls. Yet to show a profit
on your last round bets, clearly you must be the favorite even
when your opponent calls.
At the same time, you should not carry this principle to such
an extreme that you bet only when you have a lock, because then
you will not win a lot of final bets you should win. To bet on
the end after your opponent has checked, it is only necessary
that you are the favorite when your opponent calls. Thus, if
you figure you are only a 60 percent favorite when called, you
should certainly bet even though you know there's a 40 percent
chance your opponent will beat you if he calls. Your bet still
has positive expectation. After ten such bets you will have won
six and lost four on average for a net profit of two bets. Even
if one of those four losses is a check-raise which you call,
you still win six bets while losing five for a one-bet profit.
To give a concrete example of such relatively close decisions,
let's say you are playing draw poker, and your opponent stands
pat and then checks to you when you draw one. Since your opponent
stood pat, you are quite sure you are facing a straight, a flush,
or a full house. Yet your opponent checked to you. You know he
will call with just about any of his hands. Therefore, you should
bet an ace-high straight or even a queen-high straight, because
your opponent probably would have come out betting himself with
a tiny flush or better. Chances are, then, he has a straight
smaller than yours. It's true you may lose in the showdown, but
you are enough of a favorite with a queen-high straight to warrant
a bet.
