A lesson in kickers

[jay_shark]

I agree Ordinaryboy ,that being in position allows you to play hands that sum up to 17 or 16 for a profit because you get to act last . However , you can improve on this system for taking into account the added strength of a hand being connected .

98 is an example of a hand that is below the median , but it has added strength in being connected . Of course , poker is not an exact science , so it's difficult to quantify this but it at least gives you a good estimate as to the strength of various hands .

[XxPenguinxX]

On the A2 vs KQ debate - I'm sorry Paxo, but I think you've missed the point slightly. There are two factors to consider when assessing a starting hand HU - hot-and-cold strength (which you talk about) and playability (which is what Jay is talking about). Which is more important depends on the depth of the stacks - if you both have stacks of 300BB, the chances are that you're not going to end up all-in preflop with either of these hands, so hot-and-cold goes out of the window and playability is all. If you both have stacks of 10BB, you almost certainly will, and having the Ace gives you a good chance of starting a race in the lead.

The hot-and-cold challenge you issue (cap all the streets, you have A2 he has KQ) is pretty irrelevant. H & C is most important if you're ending up all in preflop - not likely to happen in limit. And if you play no limit, it is very unlikely that you would want to be all-in preflop with A2, because you're likely behind even a loose opponent's pushing range (say any pair, any Ace, any two face cards). In fact, against that range, even a suited A2 will only win 41.1% of the time.

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Jay - I agree with some of your conclusions, but I don't think your system is massively helpful in that everything it points to is fairly intuitive anyway. Anyone who has played a few thousand hands of HU will have a decent instinct about whether or not they need to worry about their kicker or not, and before that instinct is developed it is unlikely a point-count system will be helpful. In fact, in the long run it could be damaging, because it would inhibit the development of that instinct.

Second, I don't believe that kickers are as important in HU has they are in other forms of the game. For instance, in a vacuum, I would go to the wall with KT on a K84r flop - if I were to do that routinely even in a 6-max game, let alone full ring, I'd want my head examined.

[C. O. Jones]

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I never said it was a good kicker . I'm just stating the obvious . 10-9 is better than a random hand preflop , so if you have position with this hand , you should raise it up .

Btw , if you're playing in a raised pot preflop , you can't be that confident in your A 2 when an ace flops . I'm sure you already know this .

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Okay, and if an ace flops you're going to feel really secure with your KQ? This is [censored] stupid, if you can't read basic statistics, you're clearly never going to be a winning player. I'll say it one more time. A2 is a 57-43 favorite against KQ. This isn't up for discussion.

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Nor is it particularly relevant.

The question originally posed wasn't whether A2 will win the majority of the time against KQ.

The question is what hands are better to raise with against an unknown random hand.

Not only does KQ tend to make more pairs you can feel comfortable with, but even if you were simply to go ALL IN you would be better off with KQ.

(The following assumes any random hand calls the all in, but even if you choose reasonable calling ranges, KQ is still ahead. I can quote some numbers for that as well, if you make me).


equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 45.0714 % 43.09% 01.98% { random }
Hand 2: 54.9286 % 52.95% 01.98% { Ac2d }


equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 38.5442 % 37.52% 01.02% { random }
Hand 2: 61.4558 % 60.43% 01.02% { KdQh }


And it isn't even close.

[XxPenguinxX]

Thanks for clearing that up - been bugging me for days...

[K C]

I've been reading through some old posts in this forum and I may dredge up a few interesting ones (or maybe more than that we'll see [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]).

The main contention here as a couple of posters have touched on a bit is that we're dealing with a little ambiguity here. On the one hand, A2 will win more hands than KQ in the long run, at least when played properly, and we can't even assume that. This is due of course to the many times where the opponent doesn't hit his hand and you take it down with your high card.

KQ though will win more money, or at least should, due to the excellent kicker when you do hit, along with its straight potential.

Therefore we're using 2 different definitions of "better" here, and most of us would prefer the KQ since it's chips and not hand winning percentage that we're after.

Getting back to the original point of this thread, it indeed is a good idea to not make a habit of raising with below average hands, even in position. Ideally though I'd put the threshold a bit higher than what is discussed here. You need to have enough strength to take the piggy to market so to speak on the flop to back up the raise, not to mention the prospect of getting re-raised PF, and I'm not at all comfortable doing this with, say, 10 8.

[PrayingMantis]

jay,

It's a fun idea to compute this kind of "median", but in actual deep (or semi-deep) nl hu play it means very little. I'd rather have 64 over A6 when I'm raising in NL hu (edit: not to say that raising with A6 is not good). There are tons of examples like this. Also, against certain players (and they are not few) it is profitable to raise almost any two in position. Against others your range should be more dependent on your opponent's pf and post-flop tendencies and skills than anything else.

[jay_shark]

Thx Mantis for the feedback .

The only problem with this system is that I didn't quantify the extra value of a hand being connected or suited .
For instance , if you compare two hands that have the same sum in kickers , then i'd prefer the hand that is more connected .
ie 10-8 vs q-6 or k-7 .

As for prefering 6-4 to ace 6 , I suppose it is a question of preference but personally according to my stats , I make more money with ace 6 than I do with 6-4 .

I may side with you if you had taken another example such as the aforementioned example .

[PrayingMantis]

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As for prefering 6-4 to ace 6 , I suppose it is a question of preference but personally according to my stats , I make more money with ace 6 than I do with 6-4 .

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I can't really imagine making more with A6 than 64 (I'm talking both off-suit) in deep, semi deep NL. I would assume that you tend to (wrongly) apply different amounts of pressure post-flop once you don't hit with any of these two hands, and obviously 64 is more of a stack-off hand (as much as I hate this term) for when you do hit.

Perhaps you consider also stages in SNGs where you are not deep anymore, and that's where A6 is surely better than 64, but that's not what I'm speaking about here.

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I may side with you if you had taken another example such as the aforementioned example .

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Well concealment plays a great part in hu nl (nl at large), so you can think of many examples of half-connected "trash" hands worth more than, for instance, all kinds of aces kings and queens with bad kickers. And also, generally, kickers may play a relatively small part in NL, as opposed to limit.

And Of course, it all depends deeply on your particular opponents.

[PrayingMantis]

OH, it is also possible you're not winning with 64 more than with A6 simply because you always fold 64 pf and don't even win the blinds with it. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[nycballer]

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Many players tend to become overly aggressive when on the button and they raise with any two cards which I don't believe to be optimal strategy .

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you believe wrong

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Nicho , btw i'm no rookie when it comes to heads up :P

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fooled me

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I belong to the pocket fives community

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