5 CD basic strategy?

[Matt Ruff]

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There are also some Wiesenberg articles in
Card Player that may be of help although some of the advice
is slightly inaccurate.

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Could you talk a bit about what you think Wiesenberg gets wrong?

[bigpooch]

One tidbit he didn't get right in his article Hold'em Posers
Revisited was this: the minimum number of hold'em hands for
which one has zero pot equity is seven (not eight!).

About limit draw:

Don't get me wrong, but his articles are good for beginning
draw players and will at steer them in the right direction
such as avoiding limping, folding shorts, giving up on weak
drawing hands and decent-looking, yet still unplayable
hands. Of course, he couldn't fit everything into one
article and expect his readers to think it to be close to
optimal!


Some plusses:
-------------

He strongly advocates reraising with trips and capping the
pot with them. That won't be too far off in most situations
and he also recommends reraising with jacks up, which is
okay if you play mostly five-handed and highly depends on
the opposition; on the other hand, if in six-handed, someone
raises utg, you can't really expect that reraising with
jacks-up in the hijack is +EV in most cases. Nevertheless,
his idea to get a third bet in with good two pairs and
better is very important and will help players get full
value for their hands. On the other side of the coin, he
doesn't mention situations where a failure to reraise may
bring not only immediate benefits in the hand, but future
metagame considerations as well (fortunately, that's not
going to be too important unless there are some decent
regulars in the games).

Also, he gives players the important notion that the hand
requirements are dependent upon position.


His opening hand requirements need a little refinement:
e.g., utg in 6-handed limit, KKA is a clear raising hand
(it's more than a 4/7 favorite to be the best hand before
the draw). If you are playing 6-handed, you probably don't
want to always open raise with jacks without a kicker
higher than a jack in the cutoff. Also, the button and
small blind open raising requirements are slightly too
tight. In addition, he doesn't mention limping in with a
hand such as ATxyz or AJxyz when in the small blind when
heads up against a big blind that is passive predraw.

Some deficiencies are:

0) In general, I don't like the reductionist approach such
as "with such a hand, do such and such..." since it's often
based on your position, your hand and your opponents or who
is likely to be in the pot against you.

1) There is no mention of semibluffing. You obviously
want to raise with a hand such as As Ks Ts 6s 2h when it's
down to just two or fewer opponents.

2) There is no mention of getting away from weak two pairs
before the draw and even AA when someone else has open
raised. In other words, there is no explicit mention of the
gap principle when considering playing. If you call for two
bets cold with AA routinely in the cutoff, you will often be
making a -EV decision predraw. The same advice applies to
weak two pairs less than nines up in the cutoff and the
hijack when someone else has already opened for a raise.

3) There is no mention of trapping or sandbagging, not just
by you (if you happen to want to rarely sandbag) but by your
opponents. If you aren't aware of sandbagging, you may
just end up losing chips especially on the 3-bet predraw if
you decided to isolate routinely with KK (or worse).

4) You rarely come in for three bets (or two and a half!)
cold with a mere two pairs. It's almost always a -EV
decision to cold call with less than aces up. Even with
aces up, cold calling a reraise may often be -EV in
practice as there isn't much "space" for both of the two
players that have put in the bets to have worse hands than
aces up.

5) The use of GT (game theory) for making decisions such as
payoffs and bluffing.

6) In PL, his reraising requirements are in general much too
light. Although I haven't played a lot of PL draw, I played
a lot of NL draw, so I am pretty sure that his idea of
reraising with submarginal hands such as jacks up is quite
unsound theoretically in almost all situations except for
small blind versus big blind or when it's just the button
and two blinds.

7) His "drawing for free" from the big blind needs some
slight modifications.

[flafishy]

What tables do you usually play at, bigpooch?

[wpr101]

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you make all your money at 5d by drawing at nut flushes,thats why t he game is called draw

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I feel like you don't hit these enough for this to be true. Also, the game is called draw because you draw cards and not for your idiotic reasonin.

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seriously wpr don't waste your time responding to this guy he will just tell yah yah keep taking xtasy and speed dude keep taking xtasy and speed

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I'm not sure are serious about the guy or if you are making fun of me for some post I made about 3 months ago?

[bigpooch]

I don't usually play at any tables! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If I do play at limit draw, you'll see me at any table from
$0.5-$1 up to $5-$10 at PokerStars and at other sites, I'll
take a few orbits at 10-20 or bigger (and almost never play
smaller than 1-2) if given the opportunity (I've not seen
anything bigger than 20-40 GBP on IPN - that's so long ago
in the past; nowadays there isn't usually anything bigger
than 3-6 euros on IPN. Occasionally, there are 10-20 games
on Eurobet/PokerRoom). I'm quite reluctant to play below
1-2 because it's usually not worth the effort unless I play
more than 5 tables.

At PL, I usally won't play smaller than 0.5-0.5 or 0.5-1,
but I've never played bigger than 3-6. On 24h, there are
often 5-10 euro games (and a rare 10-20 and even 25-50
euro games, but these are bit rich for my blood! I won't
play these unless there is at least one player "spewing"
although I'll probably take a few orbits eventually at these
limits too!), so I'll probably play that sometimes in the
near future since PL has more "play".

I don't usually play NL, but it seems like the antes are
too small (didn't notice anything bigger than 0.25-0.5) even
though that was a common form of draw I played eons ago at
"home games".

[Matt Ruff]

bigpooch, thanks for the detailed response.

One issue I'm still trying to understand is the business of hands like KKA or JJKQ, where you have a pair and one or more overcards. I gather the significance of the overcards is twofold:

(1) You can keep one as a kicker when drawing, increasing your chances of getting a high two pair or an overfull.

(2) They reduce the odds of someone else holding a higher pair than you predraw.

Am I right in assuming that (1) is more important, except perhaps in the case of KKA? Also, any general thoughts on when to keep a kicker rather than drawing three (I'm asking specifically in the case of limit)?

[bigpooch]

(1) If you keep a kicker, the only kicker you normally keep
is an ace. In fact, I rarely keep an ace kicker and only do
so when heads up with position and was the predraw
aggressor.

(2) The biggest reason is to make it less likely someone has
a better hand than you predraw. In addition, if you happen
to catch two pairs, it's nice to notice some high cards so
that it's less likely someone else started with or makes a
better hand.

I've talked about the times to keep a kicker to a pair in
the past, but it's usually only when heads up against a
blind that draws to weak pairs and already doesn't bluff
much (but sometimes does) and you are making it even less
likely your opponent will bluff into you. I can't see it
ever being correct to draw only two cards to KKA when it's
better to try to make trips kings which is "almost" the best
trips now that you've seen an ace. For the same reason, if
you hold either QQAKx or JJAXy, you are better off drawing
three. Only when you have QQAxy and JJAxy and are heads up
with the big blind who sometimes plays shorts and bluffs
less than GT would you want to draw two. Of course, you may
also want to just get information about what the big blind
defended the blind with! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]