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

[Micturition Man]

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If the eight raises and the ace just calls, how do you think the betting goes on fourth street?

If someone pairs their door card, they will presumably bet.

If no one pairs their door card and the ace catches a big (let's say face) card, will the ace-big usually bet out? If the ace checks, should the eight bet? What does the eight do if he bets and is check-raised?

If no one pairs their door card and the ace catches a small card and checks, should the eight bet? What does the eight do if he bets and is check-raised?

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The A basically puts the 8 on a straight or flush draw and plays accordingly.

[Poker CPA]

One is an "absolute or constant" with Monty, with a poker table the range is 0 to 3 (or 8 if you like). Its Random, not constant.

I enjoy your posts very much, but this one is strange. Maybe "out of character" is more like it. And please, if I missed something here of great poker importance, just keep me in the dark and fed me chit.

[electrical]

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One is an "absolute or constant" with Monty, with a poker table the range is 0 to 3 (or 8 if you like). Its Random, not constant.

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I see. There is definitely a prize in the Monte puzzle, and we are only concerned with finding it. In the poker game there may or may not be a good hand out there.

I shall retire to the study to ponder.

Have I mentioned how much fun it is to read y'all? It's great fun. Thank you.

[Spladle]

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I would call but your question just doesn’t happen in a real poker game.

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Excuse me? Which part? You mean an ace will never correctly try to steal the sizable antes looking at a deuce and an eight? The player with the eights will never make the pretty much automatic and inarguably correct re-raise in order to exploit the edge he has over the ace's range? The ace will never realize that the eight is correctly re-raising a wide range and semi-bluff 3-bet in order to induce bad folds later in the hand? Please clarify which of these things you think never happens, because all of these plays are commonplace in tough games with good players.

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If you’re afraid of a 3 bet, then don’t raise.

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This is just wrong. The only time you welcome a 3-bet is when you expect to be ahead of your opponent's 3-betting range. Only raising when you welcome a 3-bet is amazingly bad and passive and exploitable. There are innumerable situations where it is correct to raise and hope that that is where the betting stops. This is one of them.

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Per Sklansky, this rarely happens against an Ace, if at all. You win this pot on 4th and 5th with cards 9 thru 12.

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This is true only against bad, passive players or in tightly structured games.

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Your comfort level is much greater (which I think is SG's point) with a call against his range then a raise, and its cheaper.

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The point of poker isn't to be comfortable - it's to make money. This really shouldn't need to be stated over and over again. Also, you only want to keep things cheap when you're a dog in the hand but are forced to play due to the pot odds. That consideration does not apply in this situation because we are a substantial favorite.

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And its been my experience that the Ace is not folding to a RR, no matter what he has. Again I think Sklansky agrees with this too.

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Okay, in that case the raise is just a straight value bet. Saying that we shouldn't raise here because he's gonna call anyway reminds me of small stakes hold 'em players checking the turn w/ TPTK because dammit, those fish never fold anyway, so why bet? It's just indicative of a horrendous misunderstanding of how poker works.

Also not sure what you think Sklansky agrees with. If it's that nobody re-raises an ace then you're wrong. If it's that you shouldn't fold an ace if someone re-raises then you're wrong. If it's that people rarely fold to a reraise after they've raised with an ace up even though they should, then okay, but who gives a [censored]? See the above paragraph.

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A call here does create a “free card” situation.

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Please explain what you meant by this. I do not understand.

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So you asking, IMO, “Do we compound our mistake by calling a 3 bet”. I would only put myself in this situation against a real clown, and if that was the case, I CAP.

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Forgive my incredulity, but wtf? Um, duh, of course you call the three-bet on third street. No other action makes sense. Folding is obviously ridiculous and capping is only correct if your opponent will raise and three-bet with literally any three cards (and even then the cap is marginal and possibly wrong).

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Raising a pair of 8s, with a 5 kicker, into a Ace on 3rd is not a value bet. IMO

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You're wrong if the ace is raising 100% of his hands. If he is raising less than that then you may be right, but in the situation specified by the OP the ace can correctly be raising any three cards even if people play back with a pair of 8s. If you fail to play back when you hold one of the absolute strongest hands you can possibly hold in this situation, then several bad things will happen. One, you will cede too much power to your opponent's semi-bluff. Two, you will have too narrow a range when you actually do play back in this situation. And three, you will offer the bring-in good enough odds to play with many hands that you would like to see fold.

[Spladle]

electrical,

You appear to think that clumping plays a big role in the distribution of stud hands that are in late position on third street after everyone has folded. I don't think this is right, but I may be mistaken.

Basically, when someone folds in early position, you can confidently deduce that they did not hold certain hands. They didn't fold trips, they didn't fold aces, etc. However, you can't put people on hands just because they folded. Many hands that contain a single ace will be thrown away. However, I think you are right to conclude that an ace in the hole will be the card folded least often. So clumping does play a role.

Therefore it may be true that the ace is more likely to have been dealt a pair of aces in an eight-handed game with five folds in front of him than if the game were three-handed. However, because the pot will be smaller in the three-handed game, the ace has less incentive to raise as a pure steal, whereas in the full game the ace should be raising basically 100% of his hands. So even if the ace's distribution is stronger after the deal in the full game, his distribution after he raises is stronger in the short-handed game.

Make sense?

[Poker CPA]

Spladle

"Excuse me? Which part? You mean an ace will never correctly try to steal the sizable antes looking at a deuce and an eight? The player with the eights will never make the pretty much automatic and inarguably correct re-raise in order to exploit the edge he has over the ace's range? The ace will never realize that the eight is correctly re-raising a wide range and semi-bluff 3-bet in order to induce bad folds later in the hand? Please clarify which of these things you think never happens, because all of these plays are commonplace in tough games with good players."

Which part? The 885 RR. Sklansky page 102 third para. By good players do you mean Miller and the rest of the holdem players?

"This is just wrong. The only time you welcome a 3-bet is when you expect to be ahead of your opponent's 3-betting range. Only raising when you welcome a 3-bet is amazingly bad and passive and exploitable. There are innumerable situations where it is correct to raise and hope that that is where the betting stops. This is one of them."

What is interesting is the "raise and hope the betting stops" line. By calling the betting does stop.

"This is true only against bad, passive players or in tightly structured games."

So I quess you think David is wrong on defending against the ante steal

"The point of poker isn't to be comfortable - it's to make money. This really shouldn't need to be stated over and over again. Also, you only want to keep things cheap when you're a dog in the hand but are forced to play due to the pot odds. That consideration does not apply in this situation because we are a substantial favorite"

A comfortable player is a winning player, sure as chit. If we are a substantial favorite then lets drag this SOB to the river and beat him up on 5th and 6th. But we really can't do that can we, because we're just not sure. I play it Davids way. Call and play poker based on 9 thru 14.

In addition we're playing stud not holdem. I don't give a [censored] about holdem preflop or turn theories and how they relate to 3rd street play. Tell your boys to write a book on stud, I'll take david and my own experiences at the stud tables.

"Forgive my incredulity, but wtf? Um, duh, of course you call the three-bet on third street. No other action makes sense. Folding is obviously ridiculous and capping is only correct if your opponent will raise and three-bet with literally any three cards (and even then the cap is marginal and possibly wrong)."

WTF read my first post sweetheart.

"You're wrong if the ace is raising 100% of his hands. If he is raising less than that then you may be right, but in the situation specified by the OP the ace can correctly be raising any three cards even if people play back with a pair of 8s. If you fail to play back when you hold one of the absolute strongest hands you can possibly hold in this situation, then several bad things will happen. One, you will cede too much power to your opponent's semi-bluff. Two, you will have too narrow a range when you actually do play back in this situation. And three, you will offer the bring-in good enough odds to play with many hands that you would like to see fold."

My call cedes nothing, especially if I'm, as you say, a substandial favorite. Your whole premise hangs on a 3rd street raise vs a call. Thats ONE small bet, with 3 1/2 to go. Plus the possible free card for my call. The call is the play. I'll take David over Ed too.

[Spladle]

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Which part? The 885 RR. Sklansky page 102 third para. By good players do you mean Miller and the rest of the holdem players?

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No, I mean Ted Forrest, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey and Chip Reese. Though from what I hear they are pretty good at hold 'em, too.

btw,

Seven-Card Stud for Advanced Players was written using the standard $15-$30 limit game as a model. The standard structure is a $2 ante and a $5 bring-in.

I hope I don't need to point out how upping the ante 150% will impact correct third street play.

David Sklansky advocates exploitive (exploitable) strategies in his books. He's admitted as much on these forums. He defends this by saying that it won't cost you much unless you play high stakes against good players. Well guess what? Some people play high stakes against good players.

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What is interesting is the "raise and hope the betting stops" line. By calling the betting does stop.

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Yes, but it stops earlier than you'd like it to. You don't want one bet to go in on third street, or three. You want exactly two. The only way for this to happen is to raise.

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So I quess you think David is wrong on defending against the ante steal

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Not necessarily although it is possible. Remember that he is writing about a more tightly-structured game than the one mentioned in the OP. Also keep in mind what I said earlier about the whole "advocating exploitation" thing. That's important. Against bad players calling may be right. But if you want to beat good players then you can't count on a rote exploitive strategy having any value.

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A comfortable player is a winning player, sure as chit. If we are a substantial favorite then lets drag this SOB to the river and beat him up on 5th and 6th. But we really can't do that can we, because we're just not sure. I play it Davids way. Call and play poker based on 9 thru 14.

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It's only possible to be comfortable (confident) when playing people worse than you. However, you can't assume sub-optimal opponents when attempting to solve for optimal play. You have to assume that they know your range at all times and then determine if they can exploit you with that information. Your job is to ensure that they cannot.

We can't "drag this SOB to the river and beat him up on 5th and 6th" because our hand suffers from reverse implied odds. There are a lot of cards our opponent can catch that will reduce our equity against his range significantly but not so much that we will want to fold. Since calling down in these situation will be correct anyway, it's best to make it even more correct by inflating the pot while we have a guaranteed edge.

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I don't give a [censored] about holdem preflop or turn theories and how they relate to 3rd street play.

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You should, and they do. Congratulations on your ignorance though I guess. You sure seem proud of it.

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Tell your boys to write a book on stud, I'll take david and my own experiences at the stud tables.

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Who do you mean by "your boys"? 7CSFAP is not a bad book, but it is far from comprehensive. It is only applicable to certain forms of stud played against certain opponents. I don't think David has written anything about the situation being discussed here.

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WTF read my first post sweetheart.

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You mean this?

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EZ call. A fold or raise, and then folding to a 3 bet is just bad poker. Calling, with position, is the play. Its one of the few times that a call can produce a "free card".

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This does not address the question posed in the OP, which is how to correctly respond to being three-bet on third by hands that we beat on the later streets (fifth and seventh in particular). Third street play is automatic.

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My call cedes nothing, especially if I'm, as you say, a substandial favorite.

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Since you're such a fan of David's work, I strongly suggest you take a peak at <u>The Theory of Poker</u>, Chapter Twelve: Defense Against the Semi-Bluff.

7CSFAP has some interesting stuff on pp. 56-57 as well.

We haven't discussed this point much up until now, so I may have inadvertently given the impression that I don't think this is important, but it is: if the bring-in has a hand that he is correct to play for one bet but not two then it is absolutely vital to raise him out.

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Your whole premise hangs on a 3rd street raise vs a call. Thats ONE small bet, with 3 1/2 to go.

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I don't understand what this means. Please clarify.

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Plus the possible free card for my call.

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I cannot imagine a situation where you would want a free card on fourth street and get it. You should almost always bet fourth if he checks.

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The call is the play.

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The thing is, I'll bet the correct play is to have a mixed strategy here, and I would imagine that occasionally calling in this situation is correct. My argument is basically that optimal strategy would call for a raise more often than it would a call, and so raising should be your default.

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I'll take David over Ed too.

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I badly wanna make a gay joke but I told Andy I'd restrain myself. So I'll have to be content with agreeing that David is probably better at poker than Ed Miller. I can't help but wonder how this is relevant though.

[Poker CPA]

Yes I'm very proud. So is my actuary, he handles my defined benefit plan.

So you want exactly two, but not three, knowing full well that your hand suffers from reverse implied odds. In addition, calling down is correct here, but the raise just makes it more correct.

So it comes down to "Correct" vs "More Correct", in your opinion.

Is my understanding of your last post accurate (or correct if you like)? BTW I like jokes and yes I realize we are talking about the default play.

[Poker CPA]

The free card? It could be available on any street, not just 4th, it depends on how we play it. The Ace knows we are not calling with crap and that we are in call down mode. By betting 4th we're just extending it to 5th.

[SGspecial]

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One is an "absolute or constant" with Monty, with a poker table the range is 0 to 3 (or 8 if you like). Its Random, not constant.

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I see. There is definitely a prize in the Monte puzzle, and we are only concerned with finding it. In the poker game there may or may not be a good hand out there.

I shall retire to the study to ponder.

Have I mentioned how much fun it is to read y'all? It's great fun. Thank you.

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Steve, you have now shifted this thread from Stud (something I know precious little about) to the Monty Hall problem (something I actually know quite a bit about). Thank you.

Re: Monty. The way the problem is presented is of utmost importance. In order for you to have an advantage by switching doors, Monty must have shown you a door with a goat INTENTIONALLY and not RANDOMLY when he revealed one. Why? Because he knows where the prize is, and by showing you a goat he is essentially giving you a "tell". If he chooses the door at random, and happens to show a goat, it's still 33% that your door had the prize and 33% that the other door had the prize. What happened to the last 33%? The goat ate it! That is, the other 33% of the time Monty will have accidentally revealed the prize and that makes your choose moot.