Seeing monsters?

[dumb ox]

Sandberg,

In any given poker situation we decide to call or not based on pot odds. If there are five bets in the pot, and i have to put one more in, I'm getting 5 to 1 odds. So I can call with something that's a big underdog, since when I win I get paid more than the 1 bet it costs.

But I only raise if I'm better than a 50% favorite to win, since for every raise I put in, after the call, I'm getting 1:1 odds. My one bet, and my opponents one bet.

Obviously I'm ignoring other factors and only looking at odds.

[deception5]

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I don't assume the villain will not three bet AK here (or 88 for that matter).

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Remember that every bet that goes in the likelyhood that villian is reraising with a hand that we beat goes down significantly. Think of it as a dialog:

Preflop:

Hero raises: I have a good hand or think I can outplay the limper postflop, etc.
Villian 3-bets: I have a good hand too or I think you are too aggressive.
Hero caps: No really this is a premium hand. You're going to need to pay to outdraw me.

Flop:

Hero bets: Continuation bet with premium holding.
Villian c/r's: I know you have a premium hand but it could be a pocket pair, AQ, etc.
Hero calls: Yeah you're right I was just continuation betting.

Turn:

Villian bets with AK on the board.
Hero raises: I definitely see the ace and king and I'm not afraid. I have a big ace or better.
Villian 3-bets: I know you have a big ace or better and I can beat that - set or 2-pair.
Hero caps: I have AA/AK/KK/88. I slowplayed the flop.

River:

Villian bets: I'm not too scared of a set.
Hero raises: You should be.
Villian 3-bets: I'm not too worried about what you have, I have the nuts.
Hero caps: Call if you dare.


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There is so much money in the pot that by driving down our odds to where we only need to be right one time 7 (or 1 time in 6 if we cap) we still make a big profit on this even if we are behind close to 70% of the time!

[/ QUOTE ]
This is very bad thinking. The problem is you are looking at this in terms of making/calling a 4BB bet on the river where you might be betting around 6:1. But this is not the case - it's 4 individual bets. If we don't think we are ahead (and ahead by some margin - to account for having to call a reraise) then we are better off calling which in this case we'd clearly have odds to do because of the massive pot size. But that doesn't justify making the pot bigger. The key to limit poker is that every bet you put in should have a positive expectation (unless you are making a deliberate -EV play for image reasons or because you know someone will overplay a weaker hand on a later street, etc).

In summary - only needing to be ahead 30% is incorrect. If you knew there was a 30% chance of your home baseball team winning the World Series and you had already wagered $5000 on it (even money) would it make sense to increase the wager because you only need them to win 30% of the time? Of course not, you'd want them to win 50+% of the time on an even money wager.

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We have the second nuts. We should push it hard.

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But we always need to think about what our opponent has. And what he thinks we have. If flopped the king high flush it would still not be correct to cap the river on an unpaired board against anyone but a maniac even though you have the second nuts.

[Sandberg]

ok, ok, this makes more sense than anything anyone else has been trying to explain to me. Given this point (which is a good one), I still vote for a raise on the river. Look at it this way, there are three hands the villain could be playing this way. I include 88 in the range. Why do we assume the villain has AA exactly 50% of the time. Perhaps we just call a three bet here but I think just calling the river is too weak. We have a set of Kings and should never take our foot off of the gas pedal.

[The Bride]

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Villian 3-bets: I'm not too worried about what you have, I have the nuts.
Hero calls: F**k.

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Awesome. That about nails it. I just made one minor modification [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[deception5]

[ QUOTE ]
Awesome. That about nails it. I just made one minor modification

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Hehe. Yeah I should have included something breaking in the background [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Btw I put my mad excel skills to use and ran some numbers on this which I think are pretty interesting.

If we are always planning to call the 3-bet (which I think we have to) and we think villian has AA 30% (and AK/88 70%) of the time we should always raise the river even if he will never 3-bet a worse hand and always 3-bet the nuts. We'll gain +.1BB on average if this is the situation.

If there is a 40% chance he has AA then he must 3-bet a worse hand 35% of the time for a raise to have an EV of +.01BB.

If there is a 50% chance he has AA then he must 3-bet a worse hand 100% of the time for the raise to be EV neutral.

Obviously we could raise a lot more often if we could fold to a 3-bet but I just don't see that happening.