How valuable are implied odds in stud?

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Trencherman -

You bring up a very good point about not being exploitable to a reraise when you are raising from a steal position.

I have often been perplexed by that one in both stud hi and razz, because there are many situations in those two games where, if you play by standard 'book' advice, your opponents would appear to be +EV on a resteal with any 2 cards (this is especially common in razz).

I made a few posts about that in connection with razz (specifically when you should steal with the second to last low card in razz, and how bad a hand you should call with versus a resteal there).

I know for a fact I play exploitably in razz and probably stud hi in many of my steal spots (that is I fold to a resteal often enough that my opponent is +EV on restealing 100% of the time.)

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Now you're asking questions that I actually know something about, lol. If you're exploitable to a reraise by atc in razz when stealing thru one last baby and the bring-in, then you may be stealing too often. Both the 'book' and experienced players know that you have to be judicious in your range of stealing hands, as the last baby will often reraise (or smooth call) and the bring-in will often call as well (whether it's correct or not). The more juice there is for you to steal, the more inclined they are to defend it (and correctly so).

[electrical]

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I don't think I conveyed my point about IO so let me try again here.

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Perhaps a better term for what you describe is implied risk rather than implied odds. You are controlling the implied risk by being prepared to fold later. It seems clear to me that the implied odds for Hero are negative, since he has represented a stronger hand than he holds. Thus opponents' decisions will be based on that possibility, and opponent will likely only put in a lot of action with a very strong hand. Conventional implied odds positions presume that opponent will not suspect that hero has a strong hand, and will be willing to put in a lot of action regardless.

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If after Phil made his initial completion, the TT guy said "Phil, how about you agree now to just put in a bet dark on every street and we will run out the cards?", it is 100% certain this would be -EV and Phil would be better off folding.

However there is some pot size where the case above is -EV but a 3rd street call of the TT's raise is +EV.

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Yes, but this ignores the fact that so much of the money Phil could get out of the pot began the hand in his stack already. If he builds a pot with his own chips and then plays for it from behind, he's playing bad poker (or gambling). The criticism isn't of the one call of the raise on Third, but of this as a general approach to poker -- put enough money in as a dog that you are marginally justified in calling some more bets later. It seems like a plan to lose the maximum and win the minimum.

I've found myself in this position before, and it sucks. It's like paying vig on money you already had.

[Micturition Man]

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Trencherman -

You bring up a very good point about not being exploitable to a reraise when you are raising from a steal position.

I have often been perplexed by that one in both stud hi and razz, because there are many situations in those two games where, if you play by standard 'book' advice, your opponents would appear to be +EV on a resteal with any 2 cards (this is especially common in razz).

I made a few posts about that in connection with razz (specifically when you should steal with the second to last low card in razz, and how bad a hand you should call with versus a resteal there).

I know for a fact I play exploitably in razz and probably stud hi in many of my steal spots (that is I fold to a resteal often enough that my opponent is +EV on restealing 100% of the time.)

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Now you're asking questions that I actually know something about, lol. If you're exploitable to a reraise by atc in razz when stealing thru one last baby and the bring-in, then you may be stealing too often. Both the 'book' and experienced players know that you have to be judicious in your range of stealing hands, as the last baby will often reraise (or smooth call) and the bring-in will often call as well (whether it's correct or not). The more juice there is for you to steal, the more inclined they are to defend it (and correctly so).

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The problem in the razz case comes in high ante games.

Say it's a full 100-200 game as described earlier in this thread.

Once you make your completion, the final low card is getting 2.9:2 on a resteal.

So if you fold 41% of the time he shows an automatic profit.

If you are raising by the book standards of (Xb)c (where b and c are different baby cards and X is a random card), then your 41st percentile hand, starting from the worst and going down, is a ten low.

So basically if you fold more than a small fraction of your tens here (and the 'book' play is to fold all T's), then your opponent, shows an automatic profit reraising you with any 2.

You can tweak the numbers a little but that's the basic problem.

[electrical]

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It might be helpful to decide what hands Ivey should be calling a raise with here. If not (98)A, then how about (J9)A? What about (KQ)A? (22)A? Three flushes only?

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In this situation, I call (rather than three-bet) with the following:

Three suited to the Ace
live underpairs
two broadway cards

Can't think of much else to call with, really. His two-straight-flush would catch my eye if it were completely live and I was anxious to play against someone bad, but not considering how dead the straight cards are.

If you don't have much of a hand, it makes sense that you ought to play on only with cards that have the best possibility of developing into a hand. Given the dead cards, Hero's hand is essentially unrelated rags.

[SGspecial]

OK, you've said a mouthful here and we need to go over it point by point if you want to get to the bottom of it.

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1. The problem in the razz case comes in high ante games.

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Like I said before, in the high antes you have more reason to steal, but there is also more reason for your opps to defend against it. Likewise, there is more reason for you to defend against a resteal. This is why the antes stimulate action.

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2. Say it's a full 100-200 game as described earlier in this thread.Once you make your completion, the final low card is getting 2.9:2 on a resteal.

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And you are getting 4.9:1 to defend against it with a reasonable stealing hand.

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3. So if you fold 41% of the time he shows an automatic profit.

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This only takes into account your folds, not your calls or 3-bets. If you 3-bet your big hands he's getting 5.9:1 to call you. How bad does his hand have to be to lay it down correctly there? How good does it have to be to show a long term break even or +EV against your likely 3-bet range?

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4. If you are raising by the book standards of (Xb)c (where b and c are different baby cards and X is a random card), then your 41st percentile hand, starting from the worst and going down, is a ten low.

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What is your definition of "baby" here, 8 or better? If so, is the 100th percentile hand a (K7)8 and the 0th (a2)3? Are you putting all the hands in order by your worst card? If so, does that mean a 987 is materially better than a TA2 against a random hand?

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5. So basically if you fold more than a small fraction of your tens here (and the 'book' play is to fold all T's), then your opponent, shows an automatic profit reraising you with any 2.

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Which book are you quoting? Nevermind, we all know which one. Aside from the fact that the default assumption in the 3rd street chapter is the low (i.e. micro) ante game, I don't believe even 'the book' decrees that all 3-card tens should be folded (tho I'll have to recheck this). If a book told you to throw away a (T3)4 getting 5:1 odds against someone reraising you with (xx)8, would you do it? If you believe that he may be reraising without a hand because you fold to a reraise so often, would you still do it?

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6. You can tweak the numbers a little but that's the basic problem.

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I don't tweak numbers. I analyze them and put them in their proper perspective.

Hope this is helpful... I did try hard not to sound too sarcastic. I just want people to realize that you can't use a cookie-cutter approach to all situations, even in a relatively simple game like Razz.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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The problem in the razz case comes in high ante games.

Say it's a full 100-200 game as described earlier in this thread.

Once you make your completion, the final low card is getting 2.9:2 on a resteal.

So if you fold 41% of the time he shows an automatic profit.

If you are raising by the book standards of (Xb)c (where b and c are different baby cards and X is a random card), then your 41st percentile hand, starting from the worst and going down, is a ten low.

So basically if you fold more than a small fraction of your tens here (and the 'book' play is to fold all T's), then your opponent, shows an automatic profit reraising you with any 2.

You can tweak the numbers a little but that's the basic problem.

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I'm not going to go through the math right now to find out for myself, but I suspect that the answer to avoiding exploitation involves three-betting on third street with both legitimate hands and some re-resteals, and that these re-resteals are going to come from hands like three-card tens.

Getting back to the original hand as posted, I think there is some merit to Phil Ivey calling the raise if there are cards he can catch to take down the pot with the worst hand without a showdown. I can't prove that, but it's a hypothesis that I have.

[Micturition Man]

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Hope this is helpful... I did try hard not to sound too sarcastic. I just want people to realize that you can't use a cookie-cutter approach to all situations, even in a relatively simple game like Razz.

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I am not advocating a cookie cutter approach at all, in fact I have often questioned some of the SOR lines in this forum. The point of my post even was to show that that the particular line in SOR is clearly exploitable.

I was pointing out that if you follow the SOR advice in a sufficiently high ante game, it becomes +EV for your opponent to reraise you with any 2 cards down.

To be honest I don't see how any of your comments dispute that.

[electrical]

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Getting back to the original hand as posted, I think there is some merit to Phil Ivey calling the raise if there are cards he can catch to take down the pot with the worst hand without a showdown. I can't prove that, but it's a hypothesis that I have.

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Okay, what worse hand would that be? What hand would split tens fold to here? All I can think of is an open three-flush with big cards or three to Broadway with a Ten, and in either case the betting would need to sell it, so it would be an expensive play. It's also in the realm of catching perfect, so I'd consider even that possibility a long shot.

[SGspecial]

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Hope this is helpful... I did try hard not to sound too sarcastic. I just want people to realize that you can't use a cookie-cutter approach to all situations, even in a relatively simple game like Razz.

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I am not advocating a cookie cutter approach at all, in fact I have often questioned some of the SOR lines in this forum. The point of my post even was to show that that the particular line in SOR is clearly exploitable.

I was pointing out that if you follow the SOR advice in a sufficiently high ante game, it becomes +EV for your opponent to reraise you with any 2 cards down.

To be honest I don't see how any of your comments dispute that.

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I realize you're not advocating the cookie cutter approach, I was just summarizing my point by warning others that your point is a good example of why NOT to use a cookie cutter approach. SOR does in fact SAY that he would usually throw away anything worse than a 3-card 9 to a reraise, but then backpedals to say that you have to adjust this strategy based on what you think the man may be reraising with. (This is a very common pattern in this book of covering all bases -- to say always or never do "this", and then amend it 16 different ways). I guess you can infer from this that if you think the restealer is in fact restealing, you can loosen up your calls. I doubt a beginning player would infer that, so he would wind up playing way too tight unless he is reading the knowledge dropped in this forum.

MY point was that even if you are playing so ridiculously tightly as to fold more than 41% of the time with your opponent getting 2.9:2 odds on a resteal, that he will not necessarily turn an automatic profit. Why? Because while he will take down the small pot whenever you fold, what happens when you don't? Does he mentally fold (or fold to a 3-bet) and give up on the 6-7 small bet pot? Even SOR says that he has no problem reraising with a very big hand, so the top 30% or so of your original raising range would merit a 3-bet.

The paradox here is that if the restealer has utter trash in the hole, he can abandon his 2-bet and will in fact make a slim profit over time by forcing you to fold. But what if he has a 3-card 8 or 9? His BEST play is to call and not give up his equity in the growing pot, but he will have to give up some EV on later streets to do so. His odds are worse if he reraises a mediocre hand against a tight stealer because the stealer's range to make that play in the first place is so limited. Now he has given back some of the small profit he makes with his resteal strat, and across the whole range of any 2 hole cards he can have he may well come out worse than if he folds trash and reraises with the good hands. Of course, he can reraise with trash AND premium hands, and smooth call with mediocre ones, but that is also an exploitable pattern that gives up EV from his playable hands.

Remember, the whole basis of both of our points is that this is a HIGH ANTE game. With so much juice to shoot for (and presumably only two players with a chance at it) a lot of different plays may turn out to be +EV for either player, and usually for both. The potential restealer in your example is already +EV just by still having a hand and being HU for the pot! That doesn't mean all of his plays are equal, as some will maximize the +EV better than others.

[pocketpared]

I remember Phil Ivey during an interview within the last 6 months or so laughing and saying he played too many hands at stud. He may have been referring to his early days in A.C.