Plugging Hold’em Leaks by Phil Gordon Part 3: Overvaluing and River Betting

18 Feb 2010

Phil Gordon is a professional at Full Tilt Poker, a WPT title holder and frequent visitor to the final table at the WSOP. He has written several books on poker and altogether he is quite a giant at poker; in fact he is altogether quite a giant as he 6 feet 9 inches in height. We have been describing what he had so say recently on what he considered to be the five major Texas Hold’em poker leaks, which are errors that people tend to make habitually.

Here we will describe the final two: overvaluing hands because they are suited; and betting on hands of only medium strength on the river when you should be checking.

In terms of overvaluing suited hands because it might be possible to get a flush on the flop. The problem with this, he said, was that most people overestimated the probability of flopping a flush. He pointed out that the probability of this was 1 in 125 or in decimals, 0.84, in fact very small. Also, he said, that when it did happen it was unlikely that the pot would be big. Being suited only adds three percent to the hand’s expectation. He recommended that players should take no notice of being suited and to only judge a hand by the ranks of the cards.

The final leak could be plugged by taking the decision to always check hands of medium strength on the river and to never bet them. He said that to assess whether the hand was medium strength, one had to take account of all the pre-flop and post-flop betting that had already happened. It is necessary to consider the potential strength of the hand compared with the probable hands that your opponents are holding. Two advantages are the possibility in inducing your opponent to bluff and the possibility that they will check a losing hand.