Missing the Flop

[lwestatbus]

I struggled with keeping the title for this post brief. It really should be, "It Seems to Me that it Rarely Seems Correct to Continue if the Flop Misses Your Drawing Hand in Limit Ring Games--Do You Agree?."

This post is about hands like AK, 33, JT suited, A4 suited, etc. Let's assume (since you don't have any way to check this) that I am only seeing flops with these hands when it is correct to do so and raising preflop when it is correct to do so.

I keep finding that when I miss the flop with these hands in low fixed limit ring games that most of the time it doesn't make sense to continue against a bet. One thing that I've noticed about my play is that I am folding on the flop much, much more frequently than most other players at my tables. That is, of all players seeing flops, most seem to see the turn if they saw the flop and there was no raise in the flop round of betting. Whether players see the flop is a different story, of course.

So, for those of you that also play limit, especially low limit, do you find the same thing? That pot odds usually don't support continuing past the flop if it completely misses you?

[tame_deuces]

It's a complex issue. Which can be melted down into 'don't make a habit of folding in big pots' and 'the more bets going into the pot, the stronger a hand it will take to win it'. Usually along an axis where those two statements are at the extreme ends, the answer is floating somewhere in the middle.

Like with a missed AK, if the pot is big and contains few players, seeing a turn ain't too bad, esp. not if you got a backdoor draw or a backup draw. If the pot is medium, contains many players and you got cards on the flop that means it is likely an ace have paired his kicker, continuing can be very bad.

If the opponent is very aggressive usually and it is a head's up pot, it might not take much of a hand at all to go the river.

If the flop is drawy, it means you have lowered chances of winning even if you do spike your best card.

Iow. all kinds of things influence this and your decision should not be based on general principles of how to play a hand.