Harrington on Hold'em v.1 questions (long)

[top2pear]

I have read Harrington on Hold'em v.1 several times now and have amassed quite a few questions that i think haven't been asked on the forums. I plan to post a couple/few questions weekly-ish with the hope of getting opinions, feedback, & answers from players of all experience levels. Without further ado, here are my questions from Ch. 2.

<font color="red">Q1</font>
Opening Requirements in Conservative Play in "Style 1: The Conservative Approach" (p.38). Early position contains 50 hands (6 ea. top 5 pairs, 16 any AK, and 4 AQs); while middle position contains 106 (all early pos hands + 6 ea. for pocket 99/88, 12 AQo, &amp; 16 ea. any AJ or KQ).

Late position says, [ QUOTE ]
Raise with all the above hands. Also raise with sevens, Ace-x, or high suited connectors like queen-jack or jack-ten. [emphasis mine]

[/ QUOTE ] This leaves me unclear on how far to extend the list for "appropriate" late position opening hands. Are we talking any two suited Broadway cards not already mentioned or simply the "true connectors" (i.e., no gappers)?

I know i shouldn't get hung up on this, but it would be nice if the book were more specific just for consistency.

<font color="red">Q2</font>
The Hammer in "The Art of Defense" (p.47).
[ QUOTE ]
Example No. 1. You're in 4th position with K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. The player first to act folds. A super-aggressive player in 2nd position opens for triple the big blind. The player in 3rd position folds. What do you do?
Answer: You come over the top with a big raise, say pot-sized or even larger....

[/ QUOTE ]
My question about this is: do your relative stack sizes and/or the tournament situation almost never factor in here? Harrington goes on to establish some fundamental assumptions about what the tournament situation is like for other chapters in the book, but not yet at this point. That's what makes me wonder if this is a situation where they don't matter.

<font color="red">Q3</font>
Super-Aggressive Game Plan in "Managing the Tournament" (p.51). [ QUOTE ]
The super-aggressive style requires a big stack of chips to work properly, so your first job is to acquire that big stack.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm assuming Harrington doesn't quantify "big stack" here because he doesn't want to have to get into the M concept that he introduces in v.2. For those of you who have read v.2, do you think he's probably talking about an M of about 40? Less? More? Again, i know there's no perfect formula for what size stack makes the super-aggressive style "possible"...but how big would your M have to be to feel comfortable playing/adopting this style (esp. interested in why)?

<font color="red">Q4</font>
Problem 2-2 (pp.67-69). Synopsis of the problem first. Very early in a 1-table online satellite; started w/1k chips; it's folded to you in 5th position w/8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]; you have 1,040 and decide to try to steal (against Harrington's advice and conventional wisdom) by making it 30 to go (sb=5 &amp; bb=10); cut-off (980), button (1820), and sb (540) all call (bb w/980 folds?!). You get a pretty good flop: 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and the sb checks it to you, Mr. Bigtime Raiser. Harrington advises that you continue w/a roughly 1/2-pot bet, but you check. CO bets min, button makes it 90 to go, sb folds, and now you fold (Harrington approves). [ QUOTE ]
By not betting after the flop, the player in your position made two mistakes in the same hand, combining a silly aggressive play before the flop with a scared play after the flop.... It's a sure recipe for losing a lot of chips.

[/ QUOTE ]
Harrington says that in the showdown, the button's TT (which made a set on the turn) beat the CO's 99 (set on flop).

Here's my quibble. "We" weren't going to win any money in this particular hand, so didn't "we" lose less money by check-folding on the flop rather than betting out? Now that i'm typing my question, this really is completely results oriented, ay? Most flops miss most hands, so if both foes had been playing Ace-bigs, for example, then a half-pot bet might've won the pot or got one of them to lay down the overcards.

Your thoughts (and patience with this long post) are much appreciated.

[Gelford]

<font color="red">Q1</font>

The thing is, that it all depends .. Dan is giving some good guidelines as to starting hands, but it all depends, is your table loose passive or tight agressive, will the others play back at you or only bet with the nuts .. and so on. Hands change value depending on not only position but also opposition.

Furhter more the discussion of handvalues if you are shortstacked is to be found in HOH2

<font color="red">Q2</font>

Of course it does, but HOH vol 1 focuses on early stage tournaments and therefore simply assumes deep stacks for all.

<font color="red">Q3</font>

You have gotten it upside down as with regards to what is important here, IMO the point is not your M, if you are to look at any M, then it is your opponents.

The point of a big stack is, that you can take a hit if you are called and beaten. You know that and the opposition knows that, so you are frightening, they know you can and WILL allow yourself to gamle without too much risk, while their tournament life is at stake.

If you are too look at M's in this context, then as Dan points out in HOH2, if is your opponents M that are interesting. You are huge and should be attacking those with medium Ms, as the really short stacks are getting desperate and to your folding equity against them goes down.

<font color="red">Q4</font>

There has been some posts in the MTT forum discussing errors in HOH problems (especially vol 2 has some advice, that can be debated, so try a search there

[top2pear]

Thanks for the reply, Gelford
Q1: you are correct, of course, that "it all depends," but what do you suppose Harrington meant by "high suited connectors" in this context? He wasn't vague anywhere else throughout the guidelines. I wondered if anybody would be willing to quibble, for instance, about how wise it is to recommend that a newcomer play something like Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].

Q3
Does your answer mean that even if you had an M of ~20 when everybody else at the table was at ~10 that you'd be completely bullying the entire table early in a tournament? You can't afford to get caught. You can and should push the M=10s off their hands in the right situations (e.g., they're obviously weak or you're strong), but you'll swap places (M=20 becomes M=10 and vice versa) if you get caught and lose even once. If you get called (&amp; exposed for a super-aggro) but still win, your M will only increase to about 30 but that will encourage more callers on future plays like this, which would seem to argue against staying in super-ag gear unless you pick up a fairly big hand.

Do you see why i wondered what M NUMBER(s) people would want to have in order to feel comfortable being super aggressive now?

[Gelford]

Q1. I agree, QTs is perhaps to weak in this situation-

Q2. I am not the right person to answer this question. I play very tight and then go bananas when my M drops. So basically I have no Idea how to bully with a big M (but on the other hand I have no problem bullying with a small M). But I doubt that your question has an answer. Playing the bully is a highrisk enterprice. So why not, if your M is 20 and the rest of the table has an M of 10 sound like an ok adventure. The thing is that you can survive dropping some chip and the others are not small enough to be desperate, so that sound ok to me.

But as I said, I really do not have much of an idea of how to play this way, so I can only guess. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[top2pear]

I continued rereading HOH v.2 last night. On p.51 he advocates opening the pot with any pair, any Ace, any hand with 2 cards Jack or higher, and all suited connectors down to 65. This is actually much less conservative than what is written in HOH vol 1, but it answers my Q1.