Marginal Bringin Defense - 10/20 Stud 8

[SuitedBaby]

Sorry I missed this question. All I did was put in your hand and just the ace for your opponent on a program called Poker Calculator. No way to account for other dead cards that I know of. That I believe gives you 4 random cards to go with your 3 known cards and your opponent 6 random cards to go with their door card. No accounting for their range either but then we think they are on a steal.

Freeware by Janne Raevaara, someone who I believe posts here. Here is the site:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/jraevaar/pokercalculator/

Patty

[LearnedfromTV]

awesome, thanks.

[Alchemist]

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Sorry I missed this question. All I did was put in your hand and just the ace for your opponent on a program called Poker Calculator. No way to account for other dead cards that I know of. That I believe gives you 4 random cards to go with your 3 known cards and your opponent 6 random cards to go with their door card. No accounting for their range either but then we think they are on a steal.

Freeware by Janne Raevaara, someone who I believe posts here. Here is the site:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/jraevaar/pokercalculator/

Patty

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You can account for dead cards by right-clicking on the card in the table.

Once in a great while it will give an obviously wrong result, usually if running 3+ hands in O8 or stud/8 (IIRC). It'll sometimes give one of the hands a much lower equity than it should have, although I don't recall any examples atm.

[SuitedBaby]

Wow, cool, thanks.

Patty

[Tha Stunna]

Okay, people are playing way too scared these days. This is why people raise with an ace up and autobet on every street afterwards; because it is massively profitable against most of the people posting here. If people decide to fold here, what exactly do you call with? That money in the bringin is not yours, but you will be begging people to steal your bringins in the future.

Anyways, you're pretty obviously the favorite here. There are three lines here:

1. Reraise third and bet if he checks on 4th, regardless of what he catches. (You will almost never be check-raised; either you get reraise on 3rd or they will check-wince). If he catches good unpaired cards on 4th and 5th (or if he hits a bigger pair), you'll probably have to fold.

Probably the best option, although reraising sets you up for a 3 bet by a powerful hand. Still, you tend to get more money in when you are ahead and also tie your opponent onto a bad hand.

2. Flat call and raise later when you think you have the edge; otherwise, call or fold.

This is ok, but you tend to give the thief free scare cards when you do this. A lot better than folding though.

3. Flat call and call to the river unless villain catches several scare cards.

Really not the best line, but still much better than folding. As long as you are not visibly beat and play weakly, it is essential to call the river. Most players notice your weakness and will bet the river with ace high; don't let them exploit you. Pick this only if you really hate raising... A small step towards good strategy is better than none.

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What r u talking about? you never made a re-steal play....

It looks like you check-called your money away, based on the wrong presumptions.

Yes, I do believe your hand plays very badly in this spot and at 10/20.

Ok, lets give you some credit for the math in your decision on third, but the logic of the rest of the hand and the way you played it are terrible in my opinion. What a waste of money. Hope you won it back.

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Anyways, I disagree with most of this, but the first part is right. The math on third is possibly wrong if you fold on 5th in this situation, since you are a notable favorite here... Bad decisions later on can turn a good call into a bad one.

"Plays badly" is an overused term; it applies more to multiway pots or when your hand is face up (aka split queens). Both are completely untrue here, and you are not stuck with a hand that "plays badly" if you avoid the worst folds and understand that they will mainly be betting with garbage.

Most people hate pairs because they play them in the wrong spots; this isn't one of them.

And sorry if this came off a bit abrasive, but I haven't posted in awhile and someone else in the thread told me to...

[templar999]

Interesting question. My "default" line would be to call 3rd and raise any non-wheel 4th, with maybe the 678 of hearts the exceptions. If he catches a wheel card, I'd only see fifth if I caught a low card. Otherwise, you'd probably have to give it up. If I were checked to on 4th or paired, I'd expect to bet and take down the pot immediately.

Some have advocated reraising 3rd. I disagree. It's just too easy to trap yourself in that spot. Granted, I don't think it's that bad, certainly no worse than folding, but I think the raise on 4th is a much better play. It gives you one more card to bluff/semibluff/test him with at the same cost. Taking the lead doesn't do you any good if your opponent will never fold. Your folding equity is precisely zero on 3rd street; I don't know what it would be on 4th, but certainly no less than 20%. I have no idea how I got this number, but it seems right. Maybe add up all your scare cards and the times he has complete air and catches a brick, and divide that by two.

The question isn't one of equity, since your odds are good, effective odds are decent, and your RIO is mediocre at worst with a concealed high hand. It's a matter of whether your hand is a playing loser. And you need lots of information to play your hand correctly the rest of the way. If we are assuming a quality opponent, your raise on 3rd will still give you exactly zero information. If he calls, then what? Aces would frequently call and check raise you on a later street. He could easily have a pair of 8's in the hole. Or he could have complete air. But if it's complete air he has, he's going to have two overs and two to a low, or three overs, which doesn't make him a very big dog either way. If he reraises, then what? You're ahead of something like A36 in the hole. But you're still way behind a pair of queens. So you've found out that he doesn't have junk. Whoopee. You still haven't narrowed down his range much and your hand remains very difficult to play. I can count the number of times I've reraised an ace HU with two fingers: once I was rolled with a trey, the other time I had aces. I don't know how far these archives go back, but Mict Man and others started a discussion about calling an ace raiser in a semi-steal position with concealed kings. I think the same principles follow. Calling may seem like a super weak play, but it's the best you've got.

As for the rest of the hand, assuming boards that dont make you throw up inside, or an open pair larger than yours, you're just stuck if you make two pair or any 7 low. That's the way this game goes sometimes.

[ctj]

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The ante is low, so you don't give up all that much by folding third. I call, but you need to catch good in order to continue, in my opinion. I give it up on fourth.

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This cannot be right. I'm not sure how wrong it is, because I'm unfamiliar with exact stud8 equity, but it mathematically cannot be right to fold after bricking once, *especially* when the oher guy also bricks. If having 55% equity on third is correct, folding fourth is an atrocity.

It's also odd to me that stud is the one forum on 2+2 where someone can post 'well, you're getting 19:7 as a 55% favorite', the next post starts off 'you don't give up that much by folding', and no one bats an eye. I don't say this because I think I'm a better stud player than most people here - hell, I admit I suck at stud - but I do know something about poker as a whole, and that cannot be right/cannot be a good attitude to have as a forum.

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Since this is hi-lo, you aren't really getting 19:7.

[LearnedfromTV]

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Since this is hi-lo, you aren't really getting 19:7.

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Yes you are. Equity is equity, split pot or no.

[Johnny#5]

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The ante is low, so you don't give up all that much by folding third. I call, but you need to catch good in order to continue, in my opinion. I give it up on fourth.

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This cannot be right. I'm not sure how wrong it is, because I'm unfamiliar with exact stud8 equity, but it mathematically cannot be right to fold after bricking once, *especially* when the oher guy also bricks. If having 55% equity on third is correct, folding fourth is an atrocity.

It's also odd to me that stud is the one forum on 2+2 where someone can post 'well, you're getting 19:7 as a 55% favorite', the next post starts off 'you don't give up that much by folding', and no one bats an eye. I don't say this because I think I'm a better stud player than most people here - hell, I admit I suck at stud - but I do know something about poker as a whole, and that cannot be right/cannot be a good attitude to have as a forum.

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You have a very good point here and I have noticed this as well, particularly with respect to a certain person who likes to post advice on razz.

The problem with this forum is that there are very few pros who play stud games, so there is much less rigor in the level of common wisdom.

People just post what they think is right and if it's wrong, it's wrong, oh well who cares.

In the HSNL or the LHE forum by contrast many of the posters have a direct financial interest in correctly solving strategy problems, so they don't just leave wrong answers lying there.

Or such is my opinion anyway. It's really not a big deal, but it is true that the advice is less reliable here than in some of the other forums.

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Meh, I think you're being plenty harsh. Sure, the stud forum isn't without its faults but I wouldn't go as far to glorify the other forums. In the forum's defense:

- Everything is all lumped together ... Stud Hi, Stud 8, Razz, micro limit, high limit, and everything in between. So you get a sort of classism where posts and posters are judged by what game and stakes they play, sometimes correctly, sometimes not.

-Consequently threads do suffer from a who-said-it bandwagon syndrome where posts are judged by who posted and not what was actually said so a lot of good stuff gets lost and some not so good stuff gets promoted. This is hardly unique to the stud forum, it happens/has happened everywhere until the forums are more segmented. HUSH was a prime example.

-Stud isn't hold'em and stud hands (especially stud 8) are more complicated, less intuitive and harder to numerically analyze than hold'em hands. Also the equity advantages are generally smaller in S8 and implied odds greater than in HE so we get more grey areas in situations when we wonder what to do. Stud 8 hands in general don't lend themselves as easily to the "Pokerstove + Pot Odds + Combinatorics + Black Box = What To Do" number crunch exercises you see so often in LHE forums.

-I'm surprised to see you defending HSNL after your little run-in with a certain reg and his fanboys there. Plus the fact that most responses there are feel-based, therefore not analytically rigorous and those guys have far more financial incentive not to share their thought processes than anyone on the stud forum and they seemingly never agree on anything.

If the stud forum got more traffic then it could be split up and the content quality would increase, but it doesn't and you just have to decide for yourself what is good and what isn't.