Two Plus Two Newer Archives - A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

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Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

I usually just complete hand one, but honestly you can do either. Hand two is scary standard. I always raise in position with 4s (with a lot of limpers). Really I think it depends a lot on how well your opponents play postflop. If they are calling you down with any pair no matter the pot size, tend not to raise. If they make folds when the pot is smaller, tend to raise.

In other words, I don't think your immediate equity is so great that raising is a must, but if you gain equity later in the hand by raising (making your opponents put in lots of bets drawing very slim or dead), raising becomes much more important.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

some quick thoughts:

1)this hand is not a raise strictly for value. if you sim this against some reasonable ranges for live play limpers it will show me with something like 18-18.5% equity. since breakeven is 14% it may lead you to believe this is a raise for value, but since that simulation is figured with me going to the river and that is certainly not usually the case it must have other benefits to make it a profitable play. in this case the table was unusual for a live 10/20 game. it was pretty good, but people didn't chase much and at times action was difficult to solicit from holdings of mediocre to moderate in strength(i.e. no action except from monsters). however, this changed when the pots grew to be very large. the otherwise tight-passive players that would fold their overcard draws for one bet on the flop or turn were now going to the river, often calling multiple bets on the flop. semibluffing increased as well, which provided more opportunities to gain value. in other words, i'm giving up a fraction in expectation now to help encourage the tight-passives to peel more liberally and often incorrectly if they knew what i true holding was(referring to the cases when i flop a set and the last thing they put me on is pocket 4s). i've seen this concept discussed in a couple 2p2 books(HEPFAP jumps to mind)from the big blind, but as is this case, certain game conditions should apply. if you are going to solicit alot of action anyway, it takes away the merits of the play.

2)this is a raise that everyone should be making with quite a few suited broadway-type hands if there are several limpers to you PF. you recognize immediate profit from this play. give yourself several limpers to you(the more the better)in the small or big blind and you'll see that hands like QTs, JTs, KQs, KJs, ATs, etc. are absolute equity hogs multiway. they thrive off of multiway action as they make big hands that win big pots. dependent on game conditions and opponents, i'll do it as low as 89s or 9Ts, as well.

now that i've sort of laid out my thoughts, i'm curious as to the flaws in the thinking behind them. obviously i had reasons for the raise in hand one, but i'm not sold it's standard outside of a situation with certain conditions. any comments? merry christmas to everyone, btw.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

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In the 10/20 game I play, people calltwo cold w/ 1 overcard and a backdoor straight draw. In these games, your probably losing value by raising because it makes these calls more correct. right?

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well, it will help them play more correctly. that is for certain. but in those games, if they are chasing anyway it is better to not cut your implied odds, keep the variance lower and simply call. the reason i made the raise was to encourage them to call if i had a flop to my liking. if they're calling anyway it negates the biggest reason for the raise.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

For me it is not to raise either just call both.
Hand 1. Get in cheap and hope for set
Hand 2. Pretty good multi-way hand so I'd say get in cheap as well.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

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1)this hand is not a raise strictly for value. if you sim this against some reasonable ranges for live play limpers it will show me with something like 18-18.5% equity. since breakeven is 14% it may lead you to believe this is a raise for value, but since that simulation is figured with me going to the river and that is certainly not usually the case it must have other benefits to make it a profitable play. in this case the table was unusual for a live 10/20 game. it was pretty good, but people didn't chase much and at times action was difficult to solicit from holdings of mediocre to moderate in strength(i.e. no action except from monsters). however, this changed when the pots grew to be very large. the otherwise tight-passive players that would fold their overcard draws for one bet on the flop or turn were now going to the river, often calling multiple bets on the flop. semibluffing increased as well, which provided more opportunities to gain value. in other words, i'm giving up a fraction in expectation now to help encourage the tight-passives to peel more liberally and often incorrectly if they knew what i true holding was(referring to the cases when i flop a set and the last thing they put me on is pocket 4s). i've seen this concept discussed in a couple 2p2 books(HEPFAP jumps to mind)from the big blind, but as is this case, certain game conditions should apply. if you are going to solicit alot of action anyway, it takes away the merits of the play.

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So, it wasn't a standard raise, it was a raise based on game conditions. In that case I like it.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

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some quick thoughts:

1)this hand is not a raise strictly for value. if you sim this against some reasonable ranges for live play limpers it will show me with something like 18-18.5% equity. since breakeven is 14% it may lead you to believe this is a raise for value, but since that simulation is figured with me going to the river and that is certainly not usually the case it must have other benefits to make it a profitable play. in this case the table was unusual for a live 10/20 game. it was pretty good, but people didn't chase much and at times action was difficult to solicit from holdings of mediocre to moderate in strength(i.e. no action except from monsters). however, this changed when the pots grew to be very large. the otherwise tight-passive players that would fold their overcard draws for one bet on the flop or turn were now going to the river, often calling multiple bets on the flop. semibluffing increased as well, which provided more opportunities to gain value. in other words, i'm giving up a fraction in expectation now to help encourage the tight-passives to peel more liberally and often incorrectly if they knew what i true holding was(referring to the cases when i flop a set and the last thing they put me on is pocket 4s). i've seen this concept discussed in a couple 2p2 books(HEPFAP jumps to mind)from the big blind, but as is this case, certain game conditions should apply. if you are going to solicit alot of action anyway, it takes away the merits of the play.

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You shouldn't focus on your preflop equity with this hand. Your equity is based on 5 cards to come, but when you don't flop a set you're almost always folding the flop for a single bet. The odds of flopping a set is 8:1, but with 6-players in the pot you are obviously loosing some value by raising preflop. So you somehow have to earn this back by people chasing/semi bluffing more postflop.

I doubt that you can earn the money you spent by raising preflop can be earned back postflop. You are going to raise 8 times before you are going to flop a set and you can expect to win the hand with a set around 75% of the time. So to make the preflop raise profitable you will need to earn back something like 10SB postflop. To make that happen you need something like two/three players that would otherwise have folded the flop, but now are willing to chase to the river. I find that hard to believe, earning back 10SB in a single hand is just a lot of money.

And this is without considering that:

1. The BB can wake-up with a real hand and 3-bet.
2. Someone can limp/reraise you
3. The bb can fold while he could have flopped a nice 2nd best hand
4. The equity of the additional callers is more than zero so sometimes these loose calls will cost you the pot.
5. Sometimes you will get less action because of the preflop raise, e.g. on a Axx board.

Also, one major difference with a preflop raise like and the raises with small PP's discussed in HPFAP (?) is that those are raises from late position, so when you miss there is a better probability that you can take a freecard, and earning money is easier when you have position. And perhaps it's still better to limp in position than to raise, altough both options are +ev.

Edit; oops, made a huge mistake in my reasoning.... You don't need to earn back 10SB since the preflop raise already earned you 5sb.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

i said this:

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this hand is not a raise strictly for value. if you sim this against some reasonable ranges for live play limpers it will show me with something like 18-18.5% equity. since breakeven is 14% it may lead you to believe this is a raise for value, but since that simulation is figured with me going to the river and that is certainly not usually the case it must have other benefits to make it a profitable play.

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and you said:

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You shouldn't focus on your preflop equity with this hand. Your equity is based on 5 cards to come, but when you don't flop a set you're almost always folding the flop for a single bet. The odds of flopping a set is 8:1, but with 6-players in the pot you are obviously loosing some value by raising preflop. So you somehow have to earn this back by people chasing/semi bluffing more postflop.

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i agreed it was not a raise for the immediate realization of pure value.

i went on to explain:

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in this case the table was unusual for a live 10/20 game. it was pretty good, but people didn't chase much and at times action was difficult to solicit from holdings of mediocre to moderate in strength(i.e. no action except from monsters). however, this changed when the pots grew to be very large. the otherwise tight-passive players that would fold their overcard draws for one bet on the flop or turn were now going to the river, often calling multiple bets on the flop. semibluffing increased as well, which provided more opportunities to gain value. in other words, i'm giving up a fraction in expectation now to help encourage the tight-passives to peel more liberally and often incorrectly if they knew what i true holding was(referring to the cases when i flop a set and the last thing they put me on is pocket 4s).

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and from this you gleaned:

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I doubt that you can earn the money you spent by raising preflop can be earned back postflop. You are going to raise 8 times before you are going to flop a set and you can expect to win the hand with a set around 75% of the time. So to make the preflop raise profitable you will need to earn back something like 10SB postflop. To make that happen you need something like two/three players that would otherwise have folded the flop, but now are willing to chase to the river. I find that hard to believe, earning back 10SB in a single hand is just a lot of money.

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you admitted your reasoning was wrong in your edit. but did you not understand WHY and what BENEFITS i expected to gain from this preflop raise after the flop? i thought i explained the game conditions and opponents and how they influenced my decision. i was hoping someone would cite the parameters that would justify this as a viable play prior to this, because in a vacuum it isn't for pure value on the front end. and btw, in a pot this multiway if i flop a set i think i can expect to win as many as 20-30sb come showdown(considering there will be 14sb pf most of the time after my raise).

then i referenced:

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i've seen this concept discussed in a couple 2p2 books(HEPFAP jumps to mind)from the big blind, but as is this case, certain game conditions should apply. if you are going to solicit alot of action anyway, it takes away the merits of the play.

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and you said:

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Also, one major difference with a preflop raise like and the raises with small PP's discussed in HPFAP (?) is that those are raises from late position, so when you miss there is a better probability that you can take a freecard, and earning money is easier when you have position. And perhaps it's still better to limp in position than to raise, altough both options are +ev.

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you are wrong in respect to HEPFAP's mentioning the play from LP only. look in the front of the book when it discusses PF from various positions. page 61? or so. it's about play from the blinds. it mentions, and i agree, that it isn't as strong from the blinds because you don't have that option of allowing yourself a freecard on the flop. i did counter to say that given this games conditions it will occasionally check through after i raise b/c people will sometimes be suspicious of my raising and not continuation betting or they didn't hit and not much bluffing was going on, etc.

and now your considerations:

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1. The BB can wake-up with a real hand and 3-bet.

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true, but the good thing about small pairs vs. say a low suited connector is that they can stand a little more action preflop without killing your odds. in addition to that i'm getting 3bet by a VERY narrow range, so it isn't like it's happening that often and when it does it will possibly create some dead money from people not wanting to call two more cold PF especially since i'm a threat to cap the field when it comes back to me.

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2. Someone can limp/reraise you

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did you even read my description of the table? you went to all of this trouble to respond, which i do appreciate very much, but a couple times you have seemed to have not read or maybe just missed my reasoning behind doing this. i need analysis as to whether or not the reasoning is valid, not a tangent that has nothing to do with what i'm discussing.

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3. The bb can fold while he could have flopped a nice 2nd best hand

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or he may fold a hand that would have flopped a straight. it goes both ways and is such an isolated factor it is a waste of time to consider it.

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4. The equity of the additional callers is more than zero so sometimes these loose calls will cost you the pot.

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the point is, when i flop a set i am in a very profitable situation. if you understand that, and of course understand that hands get outdrawn as that is just the way poker goes, then it shouldn't even be a consideration. the loose calls will sometimes cost me the pot, but they will even more often allow someone to make a hand that pays me off that otherwise would not.

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5. Sometimes you will get less action because of the preflop raise, e.g. on a Axx board.

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they are chasing the bigger pot. that is the entire point behind the play. according to this reasoning i shouldn't raise AK because if an ace comes it will kill the action.

Re: A Couple (Hopefully) Standard Plays from the Blinds

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you admitted your reasoning was wrong in your edit. but did you not understand WHY and what BENEFITS i expected to gain from this preflop raise after the flop?

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I understand why you made the raise, but I didn't think that you could make back the amount lost by raising preflop, but I made an obvious error in my reasoning so you probably can indeed make the money back in these specific game conditions. So basically I agree that it's ok/good play from the SB [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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you are wrong in respect to HEPFAP's mentioning the play from LP only. look in the front of the book when it discusses PF from various positions. page 61?

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It has been some time that I read HPFAP, I thought it was recommended from LP only, my bad.

Now a few remarks about the other things you wrote, altough I guess that you probably already know what i'm going to write. But just for the record:

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in addition to that i'm getting 3bet by a VERY narrow range, so it isn't like it's happening that often and when it does it will possibly create some dead money from people not wanting to call two more cold PF especially since i'm a threat to cap the field when it comes back to me.

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You don't want people to fold since you want them in the pot when you flop the set.

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the point is, when i flop a set i am in a very profitable situation. if you understand that, and of course understand that hands get outdrawn as that is just the way poker goes, then it shouldn't even be a consideration.

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I understand that, but what I was trying to say is that when you get for example 5BB from loose calls from players that whould have folded on the flop if you didn't raise preflop, you earned less than 5BB unless the 'loose callers' are drawing dead.

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they are chasing the bigger pot. that is the entire point behind the play. according to this reasoning i shouldn't raise AK because if an ace comes it will kill the action.

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Raising preflop with AK does indeed kill your action when the A comes, but when you have AK your preflop edge is to big to pass up. When you don't have a big preflop edge, it is sometimes better to call so you have bigger postflop edge. The classic example is probably AJo from late position in a limped multiway pot.