Stud hi: What's your plan when 3-bet on 3rd by an overpair?

[Micturition Man]

Say you're in a full game and everyone folds to a live A, which completes into you with (8s5c)8d and the 2h BI.

IMO you have a mandatory reraise here as you should be significantly ahead of the A's range, and you have a substantial amount of fold equity (specifically he should fold any non-pair, non-3-flush, non-overcards).

But say after reraising the A 3-bets you.

What is your general plan if...

1. You're sure this means he has AA.
2. You think he very likely has AA but he could have a few hands you currently beat (like A22 or AK9s).

It seems to me that if you know for sure he has AA the best play here is to call all the way down to 7th unless he visibly improves or your cards are super dead on 5th, and then fold 7th if you have not made two pair.

But if you think there's an outside chance he has a hand you beat you can't fold 7th. I wonder if it's correct to fold 5th in these cases, even though the pot is really huge, if you have not developed a somewhat favorable board.

Actually as I write this I think I have convinced myself that you should fold 5th in this latter scenario unless your board has developed somewhat well (e.g. a 3 flush).

It just feels really painful to me to fold on 5th when there are about 5 big bets in there. Stud is such a pot odds sensitive game.

[electrical]

I don't think your split Eights with a little kicker is significantly ahead of a raising Ace's range: pair not necessarily smaller than Eights w/Ace kicker, Aces, Three-flush, three overcards, trips, AKx.

I think the raise is unnecessary because the B-I is probably folding and you'll have it heads-up regardless. I actually think playing at all is bad, since the pot is small and you will not know if two small pair is ahead with any certainty.

Two small is a payoff hand anyway. Why try to make a hand that costs you money when you make it and also when you don't. Fold Third for free and move on.

[Micturition Man]

I think folding 3rd has to be wrong here. If I'm folding 3rd here the A should be completing 100% and showing a huge profit.

As it stands I think the A should be raising a very large % anyway, which is why I think the reraise is profitable.

The hands you listed, except AKx, are all the hands he will be calling my raise with. But that ignores all the hands he'll be folding (any non-hand that has a card equal to or below 8).

I think just calling is a lot more defensible than folding, but I still don't like it because it lets him catch a hand, or catch a favorable board and force me to fold FTOP incorrectly on 5th.

BTW 885 is a 60/40 favorite over a random A upcard. (Though of course the A should not necessarily be raising 100%).

[PoorLawyer]

[ QUOTE ]

I think folding 3rd has to be wrong here. If I'm folding 3rd here the A should be completing 100% and showing a huge profit.


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Do we care what the A's profit is? All he is taking from us is our ante, and we in turn will take the antes when we are in the same spot or take his chips down the line.

Certainly if you knew all he had was a random A and we were a 60/40 favorite then raise, but how can you know that? Some portion of the time we are crushed, some portion he may have a smaller pair with a bigger kicker, 3 flush with high cards, etc. It just seems like more often than not you get to the river with the 8s and make two baby pair for the crying call and set yourself back 5BB instead of just moving on to the next hand. I don't think anyone's PT stats would show them all that far in the black, if at all, with hands like this.

If it was someone I played a lot of hands with and knew their tendancies then all this might be out the window.

[Micturition Man]

The point is not that we care what the A's profit is, but that if it is abnormally high in this situation it indicates that we are playing exploitably tight.

Of all the hands you listed the only ones that are bad for us are overpairs to 88 (or roll-ups). These are just not going to be that prevalent in any solid player's distribution here.

Really your argument seems to be that this is a high variance low EV play, which I think is never an acceptable argument in poker. You should be arguing that it is -EV, and I don't see how it can be.

Put yourself in the A's spot. Everyone folds to you and there remain an 8 up and the 2 bring-in. You are getting 1.9:1 on a completion.

What % of your hands are you completing here? Do you really think the 885 should be folding behind you?

I think maybe a lot of you guys are used to playing loose ring game stud where these situations are not common so you can get away with playing them too tight. To me the idea of folding a pair of 8's to someone in that favorable of a steal position is mind-boggling.

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
The point is not that we care what the A's profit is, but that if it is abnormally high in this situation it indicates that we are playing exploitably tight.

[/ QUOTE ]
After thinking about it, I can express my thoughts a little better. You are afraid folding is a FTOP error, so you don't want to fold. You raise. Given even a very high percentage of the Ace's hands being Axx, he is being offered acceptable odds to play, and when he does choose to play, he will often have you in very bad shape. So, your raise is unlikely to induce an error in his play, and when it does it is a small error, but the raise itself can be an error on your part, and when it is, it will be a large error compounded over many streets. Folding third can only ever be a small error (relinquishing your equity in the ante pool), and that will be the case only some of the time.

The raise creates a situation where you cannot offer him unfavorable odds almost regardless of his holding. I think this is exploitable moreso than folding.

[Brad1970]

I say either raise or fold in this situation. And lean toward fold after he 3 bets.

The only argument I would make for a calldown would be if I intended to raise on a later street.

[Micturition Man]

[ QUOTE ]
I say either raise or fold in this situation. And lean toward fold after he 3 bets.

The only argument I would make for a calldown would be if I intended to raise on a later street.

[/ QUOTE ]


I don't think you can fold to a 3-bet simply because of pot odds.

Assuming his 3-bet means AA with a random kicker, you are getting close to correct pot odds to blindly call him down all the way.

Considering that you can improve your effective odds by folding on later streets depending on how the cards break, and that you have implied odds from when you happen to make a big hand, I think you have to call after his 3-bet puts almost 7 small bets in the pot.

That and folding to the 3-bet is hugely exploitable.

[SGspecial]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I think folding 3rd has to be wrong here. If I'm folding 3rd here the A should be completing 100% and showing a huge profit.


[/ QUOTE ]

Do we care what the A's profit is? All he is taking from us is our ante

[/ QUOTE ]

Problem is, it's not our ante anymore. It's part of the pot. But he is stealing from us (if it's a naked A), because if only 3 players have cards left then we each own a share of that pot. If we play too tightly, we lose our share too often.

BTW, did anyone ask what the total antes were in this hand?

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
BTW 885 is a 60/40 favorite over a random A upcard. (Though of course the A should not necessarily be raising 100%).

[/ QUOTE ]
If you think he has a "random" quality hand and is on a pure steal 85+ percent of the time, then you're even money and it doesn't matter if you play or not. I don't think that's the case with most opponents. I know it isn't the case with me. I am doing something other than stealing 15+ percent of the time, that's for sure. And if it is true that we're sacrificing profit, it's a tiny marginal profit from the equity in the ante pool. Subtract the rake and there's even less reason to fight over small potatoes.

[edit: after typing this, I'm not sure it makes sense. 0.60 * 0.85 = 0.51 I'm going to leave it for the purposes of discussion, but I will probably post a more reasoned argument when I have time to think about it more.]

Folding Third also avoids the general bad taste marginal hands leave you with on later streets -- you can never be certain you're ahead, so you can never extract full value from them (who wants to play for a cap with eights-and-fives?), and it's ridiculously easy to get run down if you are momentarily ahead.

You have been dealt a crappy hand, and it's okay to fold a crappy hand for free, especially when so many better opportunities present themselves.

If you're playing three-handed, that's a different story.