You Have Quads - Call or Fold?

Ah yes, the old flop quads, “do I fold on the river?” spot. A spot that none of us will likely ever have to face, but an insanely fascinating one nonetheless. Some things to keep in mind with this hand- 1) Kym is a high stakes cash player. She’s not just some jabroni at the table, she’s grinded her way up to be playing these big NL games, so like, leave your pre-conceived sexism at the door.*** And 2) There’s no bad beat jackpot in this game.

But anyway, what a sick hand, she flops quads. Literally the dream. Turn 8d which is sort of a dream card, the flush gets there and is still miles and miles behind. And then the 10d river, which is when it gets gross as hell. So now 2 straight flushes got there, the KJdd AND the J9dd. Reg bets, she raises, he re-raises, she raises again, he piles…WHAT? So at this point there’s no way he’s bluffing, unless he thinks he can literally get her to fold quads. That’s the only way he’s bluffing. So she did the impossible and folded quads. Imagine?

From what I’ve seen, the majority of respected players think it’s a good fold. The only hand she’s beating is aces, but with the 2 straight flushes on the board, he’s not 5 bet shoving the river with aces. You see? Poker is so impossible when you have to fold quads on the river. But sometimes it’s the right thing to do.

(By the way, I love doing these types of blogs and want to continue to, breaking down hands, but I need to know if it’s too confusing. We’re going to start making videos going over hands like these with a visual aspect so that will help as well.)

….

And sometimes, it pays to lose with quads….

BOOOOOM. That’s what’s up! Sometimes you flop quads, get beat, and it paysssss. According to the Reddit post it was at a smaller card room so the BBJ was only $17k, with 50% paid to the loser whose quad aces were beat. 25% to the winner, and 25% to the rest of the table. Not too bad. So hey, sometimes getting your quads smashed is actually a good thing.

As always, if this type of thing interests you, I have a pretty cool poker podcast I do with a pro poker player. We talk strategy and answer your questions to help you get better at poker, we talk to the biggest names in poker (last week we had on Chris Moneymaker), and we talk about what’s going on in the poker world like WSOP, massive cash games, and the like. If you want an episode to get you into it, I suggest episode 31 titled “Everything You Need To Know About How To Play Live Poker Tournaments”, it’s super informative and will definitely help if you’re an amateur player trying to get better at the game.

***Sidenote: You actually see that way, wayyyy too much in poker still. If a woman is playing high stakes, people just assume she has some rich backer she’s fucking or something like that. It’s pretty gross how comfortable people are with being sexist in poker, it’s still a big problem. It’s mostly the smelly old man at the table who thinks he’s funny. A lot of times it’s directed at the dealer. Like if the dealer tells someone he’s the big blind and she goes “sir you’re big” and he makes some snide comment, it’s cringey and gross and poker rooms should crack down on that type of thing.