This is from a PokerRoom SNG last night, and it illustrates something that keeps happening to me all the time at the moment (5 times over this weekend!) In this example I bet the pot both times...isn't that what you're supposed to do to get rid of draws?

$10+$1 (real money), hand #1,419,371,065
Alhambra Single Table Tournament, 31 Oct 2005 01:06 AM

Seat 1: pirates8 ($2,210 in chips)
Seat 2: FordPrefect4 ($1,540 in chips)
Seat 3: Wadoo ($1,160 in chips)
Seat 4: lynchmobxx ($1,110 in chips)
Seat 5: Mandy_P ($1,310 in chips)
Seat 6: All illusion ($1,560 in chips)
Seat 7: jiffman [ ] ($1,470 in chips)
Seat 8: 2noll9 ($1,460 in chips)
Seat 9: Jarrato ($1,780 in chips)
Seat 10: the pie ($1,400 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS
pirates8 posts blind ($15), FordPrefect4 posts blind ($30).

PRE-FLOP
Wadoo folds, lynchmobxx folds, Mandy_P folds, All illusion folds, jiffman calls $30, 2noll9 folds, Jarrato calls $30, the pie folds, pirates8 calls $15, FordPrefect4 checks.

FLOP [board cards ]
pirates8 checks, FordPrefect4 checks, jiffman bets $120, Jarrato calls $120, pirates8 calls $120, FordPrefect4 folds.

TURN [board cards ]
pirates8 checks, jiffman bets $500, Jarrato folds, pirates8 calls $500.

RIVER [board cards ]
pirates8 checks, jiffman checks.

SHOWDOWN
pirates8 shows [ ]
jiffman mucks cards [ ]
pirates8 wins $1,480.

I just KNEW he was on a flush draw....he check-called and sucked out a straight in an earlier hand he'd played - against someone with trips. As I say, this seems to be happening all the time, so often that I'm thinking I must be doing something wrong. In an earlier SNG, in almost exactly the same situation I went all-in, KNEW he had a flush draw, got called, and he hit his flush on the river...AND it wasn't even the nut flush!!

So what am I doing wrong? Not betting enough (I bet the pot both times in the hand above)? But then when I go all-in I get called anyway by some idiot with a Q high flush! Or am I overvaluing good (but not great) hands VS flush draws? Should I fear flush draws more? But I thought they are a 5 to 1 dogs! Everytime it's happened my read has been exactly right - I was winning, they needed another suited card. So in that situation, how do I get rid of the BASTARDS??!!

Please help!!

That sucks man. I know how you feel.

If you feel you had a good read on this person, I guess you could've folded after the river card. I know that would've been tough with trips...but this is an all-too-common bad beat....

Don't give up and good luck in the future!

Your play was textbook. Poker theory says you should win more playing like this in the long run, but as J. M. Keynes noted, in the long run we're all dead.

If you don't like losing so many chips on hands like this, you can cut back your pot-sized bets to 1/2-pot-sized bets. You acheive nearly the same goal from a statistical standpoint - that is forcing your opponent(s) to make an incorrect call (unless you get like 3+ callers), while cutting your own risk in half. You will win less, but your variance will decrease. Call me a "you can't lose what you don't put in the middle" kind of guy - I like to keep pots small, especially against multiple opponents. The pot-sized bet on the flop is a good play, but I'm not sure I'd put in over 1/3 of my stack on the turn with bottom set and a player left to act. At this level, you could have players playing hands like 99, JJ, and AA very poorly, and if they go all in on the turn and you don't like it, you'd be hard pressed to lay down.

Regarding your check on the river, that was pretty good play - it may seem simple now, but it shows that you A. are capable of making correct reads, and B. are capable of acting on them despite huge pots and rampant fustration.

And regarding early "gambling" in tournaments, many like this strategy, and will take big risks with hands that have a fair (but not best) chance to win in order to accumulate a big stack. These players will get to as many cheap flops as they can while the blinds are small and chase FDs and OESDs, hoping to catch a break against a player that is not capable of laying down his TPTK or overpair. Statistically, this works out if you are fairly certain you will be paid off - it is implied odds. If you know your opponent has a strong hand that he won't be able to get away from, and both of you have a decent amount of chips, then you could put more value on your draws.

Originally Posted by Jiffman

So what am I doing wrong? Not betting enough (I bet the pot both times in the hand above)? But then when I go all-in I get called anyway by some idiot with a Q high flush! Or am I overvaluing good (but not great) hands VS flush draws? Should I fear flush draws more? But I thought they are a 5 to 1 dogs! Everytime it's happened my read has been exactly right - I was winning, they needed another suited card. So in that situation, how do I get rid of the BASTARDS??!!

Please help!!

I feel your pain - I got sucked out by 2-3 suited AGAIN last night. I had about 6-7 trips and 5 got sucked out in pure unadulterated defiance of the odds.
Pirate is a very loose passive, passive (a lunatic) which Porker Traker rates as a FISH. The fish that busted me up pretty good last night had a VPIP of 82.4% and a Win When Seeing Flop of 41% and Win at SD of 50%. This isn't suppose to happen! Running several of his hands (vs mine and 1 or 2 random)thru Poker Stove, his average win rate should have been 15.8% and I should have been pounding the s.o.b. and not the other way around.

Anyway, about your quieries on flushes. There are 20 possible suited combinations that can hit the flop from 3 suit rainbow to made flush. The odds of hitting a draw (2 of suit) are 15:1 while a made flush is 19:1. A flush draw on the flop is 1.9:1 of being made in the next 2 cards and 4.1:1 for 1 draw. So the tuf part is getting the draw while once it is on the board, the odds against making come down considerably.

In order for a flush draw to make the correct decision to call he only needs 3:1 odds. 1.9 + 4.1 = 6 / 2 = 3 (implied odds are assumed). Your problem is that while you are betting to remove these odds and making it a mistake to call, the fish is too STUPID to understand! He doesn't know what odds are or why he shouldn't be calling because he is not that knowledgable and is probably or for the most part at Level One in Poker Psychology -i.e playing his hand only. He see the flush draw and chases it to the river blind to what you have or what are doing.
You're supposed to be happy about this but I fully appreciate why you are not when a 16% long shot decides to prove his win ratio at your expense! Last night I tried to bust my lunatic by playing only good hands at him and raising as best I could, only to get busted in return - it's not suppose to happen but does all the time. His win ratio was 50% playing long shot cards while I was 75-85% favoured to win for the majority of the times we got it on. At least I wasn't in NL or a tournament - small graces to soften the pain!

If his opponent even had implied odds on his mind (which I doubt), he didn't play it right to get them. Checking the river destroyed any chance of allowing his hand to get paid off. What he needed to do was make an extraction bet, hoping that our hero would raise all-in, but at least looking to get a crying call. This pot is so big that the only hand I'm betting is the nut flush (or maybe the K-high, assuming I have the read that our hero had), which his opponent holds, so if he thought our hero would bet out again, he either misread our hero, mistook him for a poor player, or is a poor player himself.

In order for a flush draw to make the correct decision to call he only needs 3:1 odds. 1.9 + 4.1 = 6 / 2 = 3 (implied odds are assumed)

If the stacks are deep and the use of implied odds is rational (that is, you know your opponent has a strong hand like two-pair or bottome set AND will prove incapable of laying it down), then you don't even need 3-to-1 odds to make the call on a flush draw. Say you each have $50, and there is $5 in the pot. He bets the pot, making it $10. You have 2-to-1 on a 4-to-1 draw; not a profitable call normally, except you know he is playing AK and hit top two pair, and he always plays this kind of hand with blind strength. If you hit your flush on the turn, you will likely bust him. This means you can take the $40 left in front of him and include that in your odds calculation, which would make it not $10-to-$5 but $50-to-$5, or 10-to-1 odds. You can see how by this reasoning, drawing even to a gutshot against an aggressive player with a strong hand could prove profitable.

I think his opponent played the hand quite well.

There's 120 in the pot on the flop. So our hero bets the pot, giving the next player 2:1 odds to call. And he does just that. It comes to villian, who is now looking at 3:1 pot odds. Well, you say, he needs 4.1:1 expressed to draw "correctly" to make his flush (method discusses implied odds above).

But against a field of limpers, I could see how he could also count his ace as an out. So he actually has 12 outs (9 clubs, 3 aces) and only needs to get 2.8:1 odds to draw, and he's gettin 3:1, so how can he fold here?

So an ace hits on the turn. He's now got top pair with the nut flush draw. He's not drawing anymore!! He probably thinks he has the best hand, and with only the straight draw to beat him the call just indicates he's not sure about his kicker or that he's slowplaying (because you're doing a good job dumping money into a pot he thinks is his).

Now on the river, he hits his nut flush. I would also have checked here some % of the time, to see if you were going to make a final effort to push me off my hand (though most likely I bet out here to get a crying call).

Both of you played the hand just fine. That's poker. Two opponents can play equally well, and one still loses.