[Closed] Flush draw vs. Top Pair. Who's supposed to bet flop?

Hi and no drodlem;) !

I will assume that you are talkin about general situations when player has initiative.
With TP you bet in order to protect against possible combination of draws to which you dont want to give a freecard and also to extract most value since TP is always a favourite aganst a FD.But you should also know that there are never just FDs on such board.You also bet for value/protection against all possible worse hands that have outs against you.

When you have a FD you bet mostly as a semibluff. Bluff for the fact that there are better hands that might fold(some random higher cards that missed the board) and semi for the fact that you will often improve even when you get called.So you need not that much fold equity(FE) to make such semibluffs profitable.

But what you are asking is an exact situation when one player holds a FD and other one TP(and that is close to never the case in poker) and in this case it clearly wrong for TP to not bet and clearly bad for FD to bet since he has 0 FE and is not a favourite. He should play according to oddsnouts therefore call flop/call turn(if odds are correct!) and fold river when unimproved

Hi, brunnob.

In poker you can have situations where both parties have EV+ plays even with exact non-range hands because of the existing potsize.

If you somehow had a flop with no potsize, it's always gonna be EV+ for someone and EV- for another, but never both so you couldn't call with a FD.

Note this is a different situation to where one has KK on a 246 board and another person has AA. Betting and raising is obviously EV+ for the player with KK because he has an edge over his opponents range of hands.

when everbody would have a +EV situation and reasons to play aggressively, then poker would not work. according the motto:

One man's meat is another man's poison.

but as my both competent fellows have already mentioned. in 3way situations one can have a Set and the other one have a monsterdraw. they are both running +EV by raising but that means that when both, lets say, have 40% Equity, the third guy has just 20%, running -EV by calling. the third guy is probably a fish then. that's where the money comes from. ♠_cool: