Odd Quiz, introductory concepts pt. 1.

[bilbo-san]

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I didn't look closely enough at that post, I didn't see his edit.

It's still a completely fair analogy, even though mine didn't deal with complete information like yours did.

Bet/bet/bet with K8 is obviously the best line against typical opponents. Check/raising is almost guaranteed to fold out KT, assuming KT even bets the turn, which many players don't. And getting this turn checked through is a disaster with K8. What are your other lines? Bet/bet/check is terrible against KT as it will happilly check down on the river but will sometimes call a bet.

Now the optimal play with A4ss could definitely be bet every street regardless of what falls and hope you hit or that he releases his hand. Let's say we expect him to fold the river to a big bet with KT 75% of the time, well clearly just betting every street is the most +EV play. And if villain is calling KT 25% of the time on the river, then our line with K8 is also almost certainly the best line available.

They can both be the best line here as a bluff and for value, there is no logical fallacy here.

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These were my thoughts as well, and I am interested in Rob's response. Checking is almost never the best way to extract here because:

a) his equity is high enough that betting the turn is correct (he often picks up outs on the turn)
b) his hand is weak, and he'll excersize pot control often.

The exception is a K turn (or river), which you would almost certainly want to check-raise.

Also, if the board gets very scary (running spades), checking the river in hand 2 might be best, because he might decide to turn his pair into a bluff.

[sawseech]

1. chk cuz we have 0 FE.
2. pot. i want a J turn, else chk and pot riv.

[tubasteve]

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1. chk cuz we have 0 FE.
2. pot. i want a J turn, else chk and pot riv.

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you may not have FE in hand 1, but you have to bet to give yourself more options later in the hand. betting the flop lets you 1)control the bet sizing throughout the hand (since most villains wont find a raise with KT on any street here UI), 2)continue to represent a big hand on later streets, and/or 3)build a pot for when you hit your draw...since you have perfect information, playing the hand aggressively gives you the greatest EV.

[The Grumbler]

This seems conceptually simple if you believe the FTOP, but harder to implement. According to the FTOP, you want your opp to make a mistake if he knew your cards.

Hand 1
Since villain has the best hand, but only 55% equity (you have 12 outs on turn), he can make 2 types of mistakes; he can fold or charge you less than he should for your draw (leaving you with a +EV situation).

I'm not sure which is the bigger mistake. It seems we should be able to calculate this, but I'm not that ambitious right now. Given that equity is 45/55, I will ASSUME that villain checking would be the worse mistake. (maybe somebody else could calc this)

To answer your questions about the hand, I have to know my opp. If he's passive, I might C/C or C-bet small to give myself good drawing odds. These approaches would be trying to minimize the amount put in the pot while I'm behind, with no expectation of FE.

Alternatively, I could go for FE to get villain to fold. If he's aggressive, but good enough to lay down his poor kicker I could CRAI on the flop (if he won't get suspicious that I'm on a draw). Or I could plan to Pot/Pot/Pot if I thought he'd fold TPMK, depending on how the board develops.

so...
A) yes, I usually bet
B) block-type bet for pot control while I"m behind (tough OOP) or big for FE. Obv not for value.
C+D) depends entirely on villain and how I think I can get him to fold, or allow me to draw cheaply.

What's interesting is that I could check the flop and call if offered good drawing odds, C/R if I thought I had enough FE to make it +EV, or fold if I had neither.

Hand 2
I'm ahead and villain has 3 outs, so
A)Yes
B)for value
C) as much as I think villain will call (or C/R if that's a better means to extract from this villain)
D)depends entirely on villain and turn card. I attempt to get most value out of him unless T hits.

[BobboFitos]

I will post answers in 20 mins. However, The Grumbler has the gist of it and is on the right track completely. A lot of good thoughts contained here imo, even if Q2 is "simple".

[D.L.M.]

Pot bet in both spots cause whenever you have 50ish % equity or more with draws on the board there is no reason not to bet. IMO

[twosevoff]

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1. it depends on the villian... how aggreive is he? is he the type who raise since there's a flush draw out there? most reg will raise on that flop if you bet. so i would probably check call... and maybe lead the turn for a small amount if i miss my draw. it all depends on the read.


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Gross. Actually, betting the flop and getting raised in hand #1 would be the best possible result, since then you can push over him with 45% equity, a substantial amount of dead money in the pot, and tons of fold equity.

[Unknown Soldier]

i agree c/c and leading turn is terrible, but we dont want to be raised, i doubt we have much FE if he does.

[Isura]

One negative of check/calling is that we aren't likely to play a hand like JT that way. Q/J/ are pretty bad card for villain, so we'll have more FE on the turn with those hands. But of course it's bad for us when he calls turn. At that point I really don't know about whether a 3rd barrel would be good. I guess we could revert to game theory but surely we 'should' be able to do better since we know his cards. Also, in trying to use game theory wouldn't we have different frequencies on different river cards, so really it seems like its reverting back to an exploitive approach (we exploit the higher FE on certain cards). But I don't really understand game theory that well, so I'll stop spewing nonsense [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[BobboFitos]

I have a splitting headache so hopefully I communicate what I was driving towards. Again, good discussion in the thread.

For hand 1, the A4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], it's important to "know" where we are in the hand. What I mean by this - and people make this mistake all the time - is it's irrelevant what the winning hand is until the river. Rather, we view the hand through the equity lens.

So, KNOWING he has KT (and not a hand range composed of hands LIKE KT) we are 45/55 on the flop.

First then, do we want to be all in on the flop? The obvious answer is hell no. There is 17 dead, if we think opponent will raise/call if we lead (or if we weirdly c/r and he shoves on us, again, weird lines just demonstrating pot size relative to our actual equity) then we're essentially putting 243 to win 503, needing 48% equity.

So, and I say this definitively, if your plan is to "lead so that you can shove," this is bad! It's the only true -EV way to play the hand. Generally, and the truth is this is somewhat opponent dependant, when an opponent raises a hand like this on the flop, it's with the intention of felting. Of course, there is a nonzero chance they raise/fold "legit" hands, so your "folding equity" is generated from that nonzero time as well as when you can get them to raise fluff (and then have to muck it). Since we know opponent has a real hand - and some people debated how strong the opponents hand was, and for the sake of this argument, it's the type of hand that I think playing the hand with the intention of making him fold it is somewhat bizarre. I'll go as far as to say it's wrong, however, this IS opponent dependent, and since I didn't give particular reads, we'll leave it that we can rule out B3B or C/R (call of rest) on the flop.

Also, I did say opponent will just call a lead, so although we deal with the hypothetical situation they do raise (pushing wouldn't be as good as calling) we shouldnt worry about this.

So...
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a. Do you bet?

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Our hand equity is 45% on the flop, although we're not making a mistake to bet (and always be called) on the flop, we're playing more optimally by not putting any money in. Unless - and this is a huge unless, and again, another factor in the quiz - we can create a pot and then force our opponent to make a bigger mistake. (IE they contribute the money with technically 55% equity, but if they dont get to showdown to realize this, they put the money in dead for our intents)

Some people said opponent is going to fold to alot of aggression, some people said opponent is going to NOT fold (which then lets us get paid off if we hit) etc. and I think neither is really too accurate. IF opponent is going to do those things, they're MORE apt to fold to scare cards (unfortunately, those scare cards hit us: the ace and the flush card) then blanks (since they feel decently about their hand on the flop)

I still haven't answered my question a, so in the interest in time:
Checking is the better play if we know we're always called. I think people who say they want to set up a 3street bluff are noble and brave, but are not helping themselves. If you knew opponent had something like 55, T8, etc. then I would argue differently, mainly because those hands (to aggression) will not make it to showdown (even though, again, our actual equity is very similar vs that range then vs this exact holding)

So - when you know opponent has a "better hand" (I say that to mean more equity at this juncture) and you can NOT make them fold, barring superhuman reads that they will call / call / fold, it is a mistake to put money into the pot. So you check!

Clearly we're not going anywhere on the flop, if he bets, you call, and take it from there. Nowhere in this hand are you going to try to bluff opponent, especially knowing his exact hand, dont try to take an opponent off top pair.

So,

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b. If so, why?

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Hopefully I answered that above, but again in a different light, if we don't have the best hand, and we aren't going to win the pot... We don't want to bet! The bet is not a bluff nor for value, the exception is if we "build the pot" so that we win MORE when we do hit, which goes into technicalities, but there is no reason to think we can still extract (relative amounts) a decent earn if this street is checked through.

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c. If so, how much?

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Again, this created a little bit of friction, because some people argued for a small bet to price yourself in, and others wanted to overpot since it generated more folds. I dont fully know the answer to that, so really, I'd just make a standard 3/4 pot bet here. (13 ish) At that clip the pot is compensating the fact you're always getting called, and does play like a "normal" pot. Again, no best answer here.

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d. If you bet, how do you proceed on the turn, assuming he calls?

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This is a little bit tricky, since now our equity either vastly drops (from 45 to 27% or 32%) or we now have a lock (100% or 91%). The same thinking applies to question a: If we want money into the pot, we should be betting. If not, we should not.

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For Q2, now, we without a doubt want to bet. The question is more geared towards "how much," since everyone can agree betting is correct, and furthermore, we likely DO want to bet every street. (Sorry for those that thought I was disagreeing earlier, I didnt, but I had to be impartial until results time!)

Again, on the flop you're 72/28. I don't know if people would be surprised, but KT is more live then you'd expect in these situations. So, with 17 in the pot and eff. 243 behind, you want to ask yourself 2 things:
1. How must I bet in order to stack him?
2. How much must I bet in order to price him out? (Since pricing him in, ala here betting 1/4th the pot 3 times allows our opponent to benefit more by showing down rather then ceding the pot)

So, for this question,

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a. Do you bet?

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Yes, clearly demonstrated above, this is the easy answer.

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b. If so, why?

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Value son.

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c. If so, how much?

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Ok, now we go back to those 2 questions I proposed earlier. reviewing the important data, 243 behind, 17 in the pot, 72% on the flop, leading 17 makes 51 in the pot on the turn with 226 behind. Potting it again puts 153 in the pot for the river with 175 behind. Alright, well, pot pot "pot" almost works! Fair enough. If you SLIGHTLY overpot the flop - say 18 - this actually works out. (Or, 20 on the flop, 57 on the turn, 60 on the turn, 177 on the river with 163 behind).

You guys get the gist there. Again, vs a normal hand range, I'd just donk a normal standard sized bet (3/4th here, 13) but since we know he has KT (woohoo, time to get paid) we don't need to do the standard thing! That's the beauty of complete information. (When our opponent doesnt have it)

Also, with ~27% equity, any bet on the flop giving him 27% equity to play on is incorrect. (A bet of 10 is the borderline bet to if you were opponent you would "have" to call, on the flop.)

So, we want to bet more then 10, possibly more then 13 (standard in this situation barring knowing his hand) and probably more so that we can get it in comfortably (pot or overpot).

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d. If you bet, how do you proceed on the turn, assuming he calls?

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Obviously he's calling, again, you want to bet... If you still have the best hand. Villain's hand though jumps in equity; it's possible it improves picking up straight outs, thereby making our "smallest bet possible" change, but you get the idea. Also, if a scare card does hit (mainly the ace or spade) it's possible we are NOT getting paid off, and we may have to check... Only because giving up a share of the pot is alright given we're NEVER going to make a river mistake. (But they may, and we will ALWAYS capitalize on it)

So in sum, hand 1 is check / evaluate, hand 2 is bet / probably keep on betting. The amount you want in is 0 in hand 1, and as much as possible - probably pot or ~20 on the flop in hand 2. Hope you enjoyed the answers!