Rethinking big draws - Part 1

[Grunch]

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Pretend you have A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]2[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and reconsider. My point is I don't think your draws is as strong as you think it is. A one-card gutshot is not a great draw.

That said, I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'll bet your opponent has one of two hands: a draw similar to yours or a hand he considers strong enough so that you don't have any fold equity. I like calling this particular raise, then leading the turn for a smallish bet. If he raises too much, fold. Worse draws will frequently call.

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I'm seeing an OESD. But I do like just calling here, only because you are so deep and I'd like to hit my hand before jamming the pot. Less upside but less downside, and I think when you get deep stack protection becomes important.

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I meant a one-card OESD. Sorry.

[Kyriefurro]

Great replies, everyone. I really appreciate the depth of thought that went into them. My thinking during this hand was very much along the lines of Pokey's disertation (well, more like a very abreviated version of it [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]). I raised to $30. Then villain pushed.

My hand didn't improve and villain showed 88 [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

Something I've been pondering as I consider this hand - Even the strongest bid draw (OESFD) is a serious dog when villain has a set. But when we play a big draw super fast like we normally would, there's no way to forsee the strength of villain's hand. Yes, against everything but a set we're a favorite and we have fold equity, but against a set we're pretty much throwing our money away. And I'm wondering if there might not be a way to prevent that from happening?

[RobinX]

Against a set we are about a 1.5:1 dog so that is not too bad I guess. Especially when there is dead money in the pot you can make this +EV considering you are not against a set *all* the time.

[Antinome]

For some villians a reraise almost always means 2 pair or better. Against them a combo draw B3BAI is not much fun, because you have very little FE, esp on a drawy board, and because when called you will often be a dog.

These players need to be softened up in advance of the B3BAI with relentless cbetting, donkbetting with middle pair and draws. They must be conditioned to reraise your flop bets light. You need them reraising with TPGK. This way, when you actually 3BAI, they can go, OK, this time he actually has a hand. TPGK is no good I guess. And if he doesn't catch on and start reraising light, fine, start donkbetting bottom pair and gutshots. Eventually you will get caught and then you can get the lack of respect you need to win those really huge hands.

[Big Poppa Smurf]

also we need to take into account that when you 3bet and he comes over the top, we are forced to call against what is now defined as a huge hand. the 3bet-shove any turn line is good if he can fold or if his hand isn't that strong, but if he slowplays a little or the turn pairs sometimes we will be putting in a lot of $ drawing dead. also, against a relative unknown we really can't estimate how much folding equity we have here; he could be stacking off with pairs, pairs+draws, overpairs, two pair, etc. the 3bet/shove line will have us putting in most of our stack on the turn unimproved a lot, when our equity has dropped a lot, and when we are not sure of villain's ability to fold a hand.

with shallower stacks or a read i would like this line a lot more, but i think it's probably best in this hand to take a more passive line

[Sam Spade]

I have so much to learn.

[TyFuji]

I think that on this type of board it is extremely unlikely that he will get away from any hand that he reraised with, even if one of your draws hit. uNL donks don't let go of hands like two pair or an overpair (which are the low ends of his range here). I actually don't think we have a whole lot of FE here (unless 50NL is radically different from 25NL), and so I think that trying to see two cards as cheaply as possible is the best line: minimize your losses if you miss, and you can still stack him if you hit because the pot will be large enough to make a value shove if you c/c turn.

My plan: Call flop, check/call brick (or Ace) turn, check/raise AI good turn. Check/fold bricked river (including an Ace), value shove good river.

Horrible?

[Big Poppa Smurf]

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I think that on this type of board it is extremely unlikely that he will get away from any hand that he reraised with, even if one of your draws hit.

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i think we can get straights payed off here much more than flushes, since it's possible he won't put you on a seven

[Pokey]

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Yes, against everything but a set we're a favorite and we have fold equity, but against a set we're pretty much throwing our money away. And I'm wondering if there might not be a way to prevent that from happening?


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Yes, absolutely. You can minimize your loss against a big hand by:

1. Check/folding the flop.
2. Check/calling the flop, check/folding the turn unimproved.
3. Check/calling the flop, check/calling a small turn bet, check/folding the river unimproved.

Any of these plays will lose the least to a monster.

But -- and I don't mean this to sound overly callous or obnoxious -- who cares?

Your goal is not to maximize your winrate against the best possible holdings of your opponent: this is what nits do, and it's usually a significantly -EV mistake. Similarly, your goal is not to maximize your winrate against the worst possible holdings of your opponent: this is what maniacs do, and it's usually a significantly -EV mistake.

Your goal is to maximize your winrate against the properly weighted full holding range of your opponent.

Consider your opponent's range in this hand. Knowing absolutely nothing about this opponent (20 hands = absolutely nothing) and in a blind-vs-blind situation, and considering the preflop and flop action, what hands could your opponent possibly have?

1. Monsters. The safest candidates here are 88, 66, and 55. That's a total of 9 hand combinations. We could add in a VERY unlikely 97s. Discounting these heavily as being unlikely to survive the preflop raise, we have maybe 10 hand combinations total. These will go to the mat, and we will lose depressingly often against them. Against these hands, we want as small a pot as possible.

2. Weaker made hands. Here we have an unlikely 65s (probably doesn't survive the preflop raise), A8, and AA-99. Hands like AA and KK are much more likely to be reraised preflop, so we discount them slightly. A8 hands are also more likely to have folded preflop, so we should discount them as well. Call it 27 combinations of overpairs and maybe the three suited A8 combinations and you have 30 combinations of hands here. Villain likely folds these to a flop push, and might respond to a smaller three-bet with just about any action. While we don't mind winning the pot outright against these hands, we win more than 50% of every dime that goes into the pot against these, so we want as big a pot as possible.

3. Draws. All the draws out there are weaker than our hand. Against ANY draw we'll have MANY outs, and against many draws we'll have more than 20 outs. We want as much money in the middle as possible against these hands. If we call these hands 7x, [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 43, and maybe T9, plus the occasional AK-type hand, we can probably count on another 10 hands here. NOTE: I'm discounting these extremely heavily on the grounds that few of them survive the preflop raise and play this way. In any case, these hands crumble to a three-bet, but even if they don't, we'd love to have a huge pot against them.

4. Pure bluffs. If villain is aggressive and thinks you're FOS, this could easily be a preflop float dropping the hammer on a likely c-bet. Note that the flop raise was relatively small -- that's common with pure bluffs. Let's say this is unlikely from an unknown, but let's say that we have 5 hand combinations here. These all fold VERY quickly to a three-bet, and the bigger the pot against these hands the happier we are.

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So: where does this leave us? Against 10 hand combinations, we're small dogs with little folding equity, but against 45 others we're doing fine, and hoping for a bigger pot but also likely to have extremely high folding equity.

Say villain folds EVERY TIME with those 45 hands where we've got more than 50% pot equity, and calls EVERY TIME with the other 10. That means that we'll win 40 BBs 82% of the time and lose an average of 20 BBs the other 18% of the time. Note: if villain calls AT ALL with the other hands, our winrate is even higher than 40 BBs on average.

So: playing fast here, we are a better than 4-to-1 FAVORITE while we are getting 2-to-1 odds on our play. I hope now it's clear why we should be downplaying what happens when our opponents have the set.

Maybe my estimates are off. The nice thing is that if your opponent has a hand that's weaker than a set with as few as FIVE HAND COMBINATIONS, we're better off playing hard.

For instance: if your opponent's entire range is "55, 66, 88, JJ," playing hard is +EV.

[LordTacohead]

I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] Pokey.