SSNL Common Spots #1

[FeNeF]

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Funny.. I read a post in SSNL, which linked me to a post in MSNL, which took me to an article on Tommy Angelo's site. Came back to MSNL and a post there linked me back to this post. A question in MSNL was basically "how often do you complete?" and my answer was going to be "I am quite tight from the SB." Instead of answering there, I'll answer here.

Here's what I do.

1) Complete
2) Fold
3) Fold
4) Complete
5) Raise a lot
6) Fold
7) Fold

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You complete 99 and raise 67s? Could you expand on your reasoning?

[Grunch]

It will be difficult for me to explain my reasoning. I will try...

The question "why do you complete 99 but raise 67s" is actually the wrong question. They are different hands. It's not like one hand is better than the other, and that's why I raise or complete.

The right question is actually two questions. Why complete 99? Why raise 67s?

Why complete 99
Turn the question around. Why raise 99? There are two big reasons. One, we have a good made hand. Two, everybody else seems pretty weak, and a raise now could either take down the pot now or give us enough FE to follow it up with a lot of CBs and take it down on the flop.

We have a good made hand, sure, but it's a hand with showdown value. Not a lot of big-pot value, unless we improve to a set or better. In some cases we can improve and still not be a great big-pot hand, like when we make a 1-card straight. Think about the sorts of hands that limped in to the pot. Probably high cards, naked aces, smaller pairs and connectors. If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF. If it comes rags, we bet and everyone folds, we won the minimum with our good made hand. Sure we won, and that's fine. But they were correct to fold, and that's not fine.

If we just complete PF, we put ourselves in a position to get to the showdown for the minimum if that's what we want, or start building a pot if that's what we want. But we can wait until the flop to make the choice. Raising PF starts building the pot before we really know what our equity situation will be, which means we are mostly raising for flop FE. If that's so, then 99 might as well be 72.

Why raise 76s
76 is not the hand they expect me to raise with here. That plus the FE I get on rag flops where I and they both flop nothing are the reasons I raise. Say the flop comes rags, and nobody hits anything. I bet, they fold thier naked aces. I won, but note what happened. They made a mistake by folding becasue they actually had the best hand and probably the best draw.

If we both hit the flop, the chance that I'm dominated are almost zero. It becomes pretty clear whether I want to play a big pot or no pot at all. If the flop comes something like A77 or A76, the nakes Ace is going to give me a lot of chips. Both now & in the future. After a barrage of "you raise with that crap?" they are going to try and pick me off at every opportunity, taking stands with weaker & weaker hands. Only now, while thier standards are coming down, mine are going up, and I always have the best hand.

A lot of times the flop will come Ace-high rags. In these situations its real easy to just check-fold. You know somebody hit, so there's no value in a CB. You know there's no value in a check-call becasue you didn't hit.

There's a lot more to it than this. These were all just my surface thoughts. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time top develop these thought further.

[c_strong]

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Why complete 99
Turn the question around. Why raise 99? There are two big reasons. One, we have a good made hand. Two, everybody else seems pretty weak, and a raise now could either take down the pot now or give us enough FE to follow it up with a lot of CBs and take it down on the flop.

We have a good made hand, sure, but it's a hand with showdown value. Not a lot of big-pot value, unless we improve to a set or better. In some cases we can improve and still not be a great big-pot hand, like when we make a 1-card straight. Think about the sorts of hands that limped in to the pot. Probably high cards, naked aces, smaller pairs and connectors. If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF. If it comes rags, we bet and everyone folds, we won the minimum with our good made hand. Sure we won, and that's fine. But they were correct to fold, and that's not fine.

If we just complete PF, we put ourselves in a position to get to the showdown for the minimum if that's what we want, or start building a pot if that's what we want. But we can wait until the flop to make the choice. Raising PF starts building the pot before we really know what our equity situation will be, which means we are mostly raising for flop FE. If that's so, then 99 might as well be 72.

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Grunch,

Very interesting post, but I'm raising here because I want and expect the very bad UTG+1 player to call and the TAG button to fold. I'd much rather play HU on the flop against a bad player than 3-way against a good player and a bad player, especially OOP.

Also, I don't think you give enough weight to the raise being purely for value. You say "If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF." Well, no, not really. If UTG+1 calls with KT or whatever he's a 2:1 dog to outflop me, so I'm very happy with his call even if he does outflop me.

For the record I would:

1) AJo - raise
2) A4o - fold
3) K5s - fold
4) 99 - raise
5) 76s - in this situation, probably raise, more usually complete.
6) J8o - fold
7) 73o - fold

Cheers

c

[FeNeF]

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Turn the question around. Why raise 99? There are two big reasons. One, we have a good made hand. Two, everybody else seems pretty weak, and a raise now could either take down the pot now or give us enough FE to follow it up with a lot of CBs and take it down on the flop.

We have a good made hand, sure, but it's a hand with showdown value. Not a lot of big-pot value, unless we improve to a set or better. In some cases we can improve and still not be a great big-pot hand, like when we make a 1-card straight. Think about the sorts of hands that limped in to the pot. Probably high cards, naked aces, smaller pairs and connectors. If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF. If it comes rags, we bet and everyone folds, we won the minimum with our good made hand. Sure we won, and that's fine. But they were correct to fold, and that's not fine.

If we just complete PF, we put ourselves in a position to get to the showdown for the minimum if that's what we want, or start building a pot if that's what we want. But we can wait until the flop to make the choice. Raising PF starts building the pot before we really know what our equity situation will be, which means we are mostly raising for flop FE. If that's so, then 99 might as well be 72.


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Man. I'm reluctant to disagree with such a detailed and interesting post.. but I do. The main reason to raise 99 is because it's likely to be the best hand by a fairly long way. No, we don't know what our "equity situation" on the flop will be, but that shouldn't stop us raising now, where we have a large edge. IMO this consideration trumps all others.

Also, a couple of other things you said strike me as rather odd.

"We have a good made hand, sure, but it's a hand with showdown value. Not a lot of big-pot value, unless we improve to a set or better."

99 doesn't have "big pot value"? If that's true, what does? Only the biggest pairs?

"If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF."

If you raise KK preflop and an ace flops and pairs your opponent, do you regret raising it? Maybe you do, but does that stop you the next time?

"If we just complete PF, we put ourselves in a position to get to the showdown for the minimum if that's what we want, or start building a pot if that's what we want. But we can wait until the flop to make the choice."

If we do hit our set, it's gonna be much, much easier to get stacks in the middle if we've already got a healthy raise and call(s) in the pot.

I realise this post is disjointed and probably confusing. I don't have the ability to present ideas clearly. But I think that completing 99 is a pretty serious mistake here.

[asherpuppy]

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99 doesn't have "big pot value"? If that's true, what does? Only the biggest pairs?


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I agree with you that 99 does have "big pot value" just like 76s. I raise with either of them, especially from bad position. Both are good disguised hands that will often win big or lose small post flop. I can fire out post-flop with excellent FE and if someone plays back at me, I know where I stand.

I don't think the big pairs have as much big pot value. I find with those I win small because there is no disguise to those and if the pot gets big, I know I'm beat. If I raise with 99 or 76s and hit the flop, I can possibly stack someone.

[Tito]

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99 doesn't have "big pot value"? If that's true, what does? Only the biggest pairs?

"If the flop comes and pairs one of the high cards, we'll regret having raised PF."

If you raise KK preflop and an ace flops and pairs your opponent, do you regret raising it? Maybe you do, but does that stop you the next time?


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I see both sides of the argument but I think I'll have to agree with Grunch here. IMO none of the pairs have a lot of "big pot value". I don't feel very comfortable building a big pot against anyone with one pair and I'm relatively sure most other players don't either. Doesn't matter if it's AA, KK, or 99 unless you get it all in preflop.

And no we don't regret raising with KK and an A hits on the flop. And it won't stop us from doing it next time either. The difference between doing it with KK and 99 is that KK has only 4 cards that can make an overpair and 99 has about 20. I like to raise pocket pairs in certain spots too but OOP in a multiway limped pot I think I just call looking to hit a set. Raising preflop and collecting the ~3BB that are there isn't necessarily a bad idea but in comparison to hitting your set and possibly stacking someone I think it's a no-brainer. That way you lose the minimum and possibly extract the mazimum. Good debate going here though. I'd like to hear others opinions as well.

[Grunch]

All,

Keep in mind that when I said that 99 doesn't have a lot of big-pot value, I meant if it didn't improve. That this is true should be obvious. If you are deep-stacked and all the chips get in the middle with you holding only an unimproved 99, is your hand usually good? The same is also true of 76s. In this regard, they are the same. Without improvement, they aren't going to win a big pot.

But most people advocate building a big pot with 99 preflop from OOP, whereas nobody advocates doing so with 76s. Since 99 and 76s are the same as far as big-pot equity is concerned, people must have some other reasons for PFRing with the 99.

In the case where niether hand improves on the flop, I believe there are two big differences in most peoples' minds.

First, fold equity. People like to PFR 99 in order to take the pot down either PF or on a safe flop with a CB. But it's highly unlikely that a better hand is going to fold, even if that better hand is just TPMK. Draws might even raise. Since 99 has showdown value in that it might win unimproved at a showdown, getting blown off the hand would be bad and what's more getting to a cheap showdown (again, unimproved) would be good. PFRing & CBin don't serve these purposes.

76s on the other hand has no showdown value UI. Which makes fold equity and taking the pot away when nobody improves a better plan with 76s than with 99. If we get blown off our hand, we got blown off of air. Whereas with 99, we got blown off of a hand.

Second, pot equity. It's claimed that 99 figures to be the best hand PF, and that's probably true. If somebody had a higher pair, they would probably have raised. But HE isn't a 2-card game. Our equity situation will change drastically for better or worse on the flop, as will everyone else's. The flop is the nexus of the hand. If we PFR and get callers with overcards, we are about a coinflip and in fact don't have (much of) an equity edge. If we PFR and everybody folds, well then we just forced everyone to fold a worse hand. We don't lose the pot, but we did lose in a ToP sense in that our opponents played perfectly against us.

The opposite again is true with 76s. If we PFR and get callers with overcards, we're a bit of a dog but not out of the race. What's more we don't have to improve to win here. So long as they dont improve, that's all we need. Since this is true most of the time, we will win very often.

If we PFR with 76s and everybody folds, they probably folded a better hand. So again, we win.

I will say that the biggest problem with PFRing 76s is the difficulty in playing a flopped draw. We'll be faced with difficult decisions on most streets when this happens. But you take the good with the bad & I don't think that the difficulty of a future decision is reason enough on its own to choose a line on an earlier street.