Chasing a flush on the internet – Occasionally the numbers just don’t add up!

There is an age old debate in poker – should you chase a flush? First of all we should define what we mean here by "chasing a flush on line."

Chasing anything in Texas holdem poker may be the practice of betting to stay in a palm in the hope which you will produce a far better hand, even even though you may possibly have absolutely nothing in the time. So chasing a flush suggests gambling that you just will acquire the card or card which you ought to complete your flush hand about the turn or river. You can not chase a flush before the flop because at that time you only have 2 cards so the flush isn’t on.

So let us say you happen to be playing one of the major poker sites on the net, you’ve been dealt the Ace and 9 of spades and you’ve paid to see the flop.

The flop is twos 7 spades King of diamonds and one of your competitors comes out gambling strongly with a fair sized increase, what do you do?

1st of all ask your self what sort of hand you happen to be up against. The possibilities are triples, another flush draw, a pair of Kings or a total bluff, so as it stands you happen to be only succeeding against the bluff with your Ace. On the other hand when you hit a spade in the last two cards you might have the nut flush and could only lose to a full house or 4 of a kind.

Around the face of it you could possibly assume that statistically you’ve about a 50-50 probability of hitting your spade, after all there’s 2 cards to come and 4 suits so there must be about a half probability, proper?

Wrong!

You already have two of the spades in your hand and there is another 2 showing within the table, so you know 5 cards and four of them are spades. That implies you’ve 9 spades left available out of the forty seven cards you have not seen, which is only a forty two per-cent opportunity of catching your flush.

Should you do bet around the turn and do not produce your flush, what do you do then? You’ve got probably now become pot-committed, you’ve put so significantly into the pot that you just might as effectively bet again within the river unless there’s a huge raise or all-in in opposition to you, but now your chances of making the flush have dropped dramatically to only 21 per-cent.

Except what of that other factor, the mysterious internet poker syndrome? What I mean by that’s even though you statistically have a forty two % probability of producing a flush, is that what in fact happens in reality? If you played the very same hands at the exact same web poker table 100 occasions would you acquire a flush forty two times? From my personal encounter I doubt it. Flushes seem to come around a great deal less frequently than forty two out of 100 occasions!

That is just my own opinion and I’m positive the poker sites would tell you a different story, except the way I see it is forty two per-cent will be the extremely Best you’re ever going to receive and you might effectively have a whole lot much less probability than that of hitting your flush.

Bottom line? Chasing a flush on the web is really a extremely risky method that sucks you in and over commits you, without giving you sufficient of a probability of pulling out the winning hand.