Weak Flush on Turn

Question

What should the Hero do at this point on Turn?

How much to bet with for what purpose? Value or Protection?

How did you calculate that?

Answer 1

You want to bet your hand for value on the turn as many worse hands can call such as a slow played set, Qx, 8x, or a hand with the Ac, or Kc.

Betting roughly 3/4th the pot is good because the worse hands can still call but you are giving the hands that can still outdraw you (higher clubs mostly), bad odds to call you.

Part of the reason for betting now is a fourth club on the river will kill you action or have you beat, so it's not advantageous to slow play here against two opponents.

Answer 2

In some ways, you can mix the value bet with the protection bet here - If you bet strong enough, the only hands that can call you are the draw hands that you're losing to and you'd get folders (or bluff catchers giving you free chips), and if you bet towards a wide range, you will get more callers. The key on bet sizing for the turn here is that you've already put a pot bet on the flop: Hands that would have folded on the flop (probably) aren't alive on the turn, so the second bet of the double value would likely be a stronger bet.

Most of the below is speculation, but without further information, here is my read of the situation:

Preflop: High jack limps in, could be a mediocre hand that is not good enough to open raise to blind steal, could be a strong hand trying to get value postflop. Small blinds are out of position and can easily raise preflop with a hand to play (I have no problems raising to 4~5 times on SB) so a just call potentially tells the villains the SB doesn't have a high card or a high range set of cards. Big blinds takes the free flop so no read there. While the range is wide, this also means no aggressor is present, so if no one bets it could easily fall to the showdown with no chips thrown into the pot.

Going into the flop, with no information on hand strength and no additional money going into the pot, it's very easy for anyone to fold their hand since all they've put in is 1 big blinds' worth.

With that said, the flop comes 5♣Q♣8♥, a bet of 1500 to a pot of 1417 is made, and the hands that can call this would be, in order of equity:

Sets from pocket pairs of Qs, 8s, 5s (QQ, 88, 55)
Two pairs (Q5, Q8, 85)
Over pair on Aces and Kings (AA, KK)
Top pair on Queen hit (Qx)
Pocket pair of 9~J (JJ, TT, 99)
Middle pair on 8 hit (8x)
High kicker on bottom pair? (A5, K5...)
No hit, flush draw (xx clubs)
No hit, open ended straight draw (67, 8 outs)
No hit, two over (AK, 6 outs)
No hit, straight draw on gut shot (46, 47, 69, 79, 9T, 9J, TJ, 4 outs)
No hit, one over (Ax, Kx, 3 outs)
Backdoor draw on flush, straights (An ace of clubs might call since drawing a backdoor flush here gives nuts advantage, it's easy to net value on the river due to the surprise factor)

On the turn, you are beating every single hand above except the completed flush draw, and against flush draws the only flush you are beating is 2♣4♣. Every other flush is either higher than you (with a 8+ card) and even against the 2♣4♣ they may still call and the one out on an A♣ for a royal straight flush exists.

In short, you are beating too many hands and can't really worry about the hands that are beating you, since there are too few of them.

When considering the choice here between check and a bet,

• Being the aggressor on the previous street, it's very easy to place a bet both for value and bluff. In other words, from our villains' perspective, we may have not just one of the hands to call on the flop as listed above, but also any "nothing" hands as a pure bluff. A bet here would remove a lot of those pure bluffs from our potential hands while a check would keep them in, resulting in a higher success in getting value from the river, assuming we are seen as a player who bluffs on the flop enough. (However, it also doesn't matter in this case, because there are not many hands with showdown value here on this board to begin with)
• A club has fallen and completes our flush draw, but it also gives someone a backdoor flush draw if they have a club; Checking may give them a free card and they can get away cheaply if a club doesn't drop and beat us if it does drop: The only backdoor flush we're beating is the 2♣ and 4♣, against 8♣9♣T♣J♣K♣A♣. We'd be losing to too many flushes so betting feels better than checking.
• If the board pairs up we'd be losing to full houses too, where as currently we're beating both the sets and the two pairs, an unlucky card will mean more potential hands we're losing to. We have a very strong hand right now and it may all change; Even if it does change we are probably still winning, and if we don't bet now it's worrying whether we'd get value on the river.
• Check-Raise is also a potential option: By slow-rolling our flush, if someone has a hand worth betting on the turn we can catch them to win more than if we just get called on value bets. In this case we don't know if our opponents have a hand strong enough to compete so they might just fold to a raise, in which case our Check-Raise is only useful as a bluff but not to win chips. Opting to Check-Raise is also not recommended for beginners since lots of great opportunities will be missed.

On amount, if your opponents call a lot, you should bet more. If they don't call a lot, you should bet small, just so you do make profit as compared to none at all. If there are fewer opponents, you can bet more. We don't know, so the easiest theme would be to bet big, from double pot onwards.

A more specific guide though, would be that you value bet towards hands that want to call but are losing to you, and protection bet against hands that you are beating but have outs that beat you.

For example, assuming only two of you will see the river and the other villain folds, if you put a pot bet, making it 5670 chips to put in for a chance to win 11340 chips, it means the caller would need 33% win rate for the call to be worth it. If both players opened their hand and they, holding a 8♣, calculates to find they can only beat you by the river drawing a club (<25%), they would want to fold. They don't actually see your hand though, so if they did have 8♣ and you bet like you have the super strong hand (clubs), they could call out of doubt to catch your bluff. To them in that hypothetical situation, they already have a pair which could win AND a chance to catch an outs in case they really weren't winning.

Value bet: Bet as if you hit the Queen pair with a strong kicker and want Queen pairs with weak kickers to give in, or bet bigger for people who hit both a pair on the flop and the 3 on the turn (becoming a two pair) to feed you money. Since you have good potential value targets you can bet big and hope they did hit something. If you get raised you could even re-raise back.

Polarizing bet: If you bluff big a lot and represent a lot of strong hands, you can bet big on the value and make it so everyone thinks you have either the strongest hand (on this board it would be the flush) or nothing (the bluff, for example a slipped straight draw or only an ace high). The only hands that can call you are the even stronger hands in the strongest range (which you'd be losing to anyways) or the bluff catchers, where they just want to see your cards.

The exact amount depends on how you play. Considering the flop opened with a pot bet it would not be a surprise to see a 1.5x~2x pot bet that gets called by a Queen pair, but it really depends on how your opponents play and how they think of you (if you showdown with strong hands a lot, they might be less tempted to call you).