Learning LO8, A2xx, Ace flops.

[apefish]

With regards to not raising the turn- it doesnt matter if he has a wheel OR a boat at this point, you are behind and drawing to half at best. His most likely holdings are a turn boat or a checked wheel on the flop.
You are done with your hand on the river to any significant action if you dont boat/wheel up yourself- so whether he has a wheel or not on the turn doesn't really matter.
I am hoping you arent asking whether or not your low could still be good here. When the pot gets multiway like this you arent playing for half the pot with a marginal low.
When likely behind but have enough outs and good position and can close the betting by making a simple call- do it.
Use your position on the river to make the next appropriate decisions.

Ask what you really hope to accomplish by raising the turn.
In this case if the answer is "find out better where I stand" I think the fact that this guy led into that many players behind him on the turn gives you an awfully good idea where your trips + some low stand.
Some times you actually have the info you need to come up with a reasonable assumption of where you stand but may not realize it at the time.

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
how about raising the turn? Don't you gain more info on SB, like in this case, his re-raise mean he has the 23?

[/ QUOTE ]Samara - Yes, you do get more information by raising.

But your brain may not be able to process it. For example, in this particular case what do we learn by raising? Not much. SB’s re-raise looks even more like either a wheel or a full house, meaning we probably have to improve the trip aces in order to win. But we already knew that.

Was getting verification for what we already knew worth the cost? I don’t think so. Are we more likely to save bets on the next betting round? Well... not really. Now that the pot is even bigger, we’re actually more likely to call a single bet and we weren’t likely to call a multiple bet without a full house in any event.

A general problem, in terms of gaining information, is that poker is a game of deception. Unless you're playing against your doting grandmother, for the most part your opponents would probably like to deceive you. A related problem is that your opponents may not fully realize they don’t have a good Omaha-8 hand. Especially if they’re used to playing Texas hold ‘em, they may think what is actually a rather poor Omaha-8 hand is a very strong holding.

Let's look at the effect of your raise from an odds standpoint. At the point when the action gets to you on the third betting round, there are 13 big bets in the pot. You should realize that your deuce-seven is almost surely no good for low.

If your deuce-seven does somehow win for low or if nobody somehow wins for low, that's great, but since low is already possible and your chances of winning low are slim, you should not count on winning the low half of the pot. Instead you should figure that you're only playing for the high half of the pot. Moreover, you should realize that you will almost surely need to improve to win the high half of the pot. (Trip aces does sometimes win, but I wouldn't count on it here with a straight and a full house already possible).

To make your pot odds clear, let's try using chips. Take eight blue chips and add five more blue chips. That represents the number of big bets that were already in the pot plus the number of big bets your opponents have contributed this (the third) betting round. The total is 13 big bets (represented by 13 blue chips).

If you were playing for the whole pot, you'd be playing to win all 13 of those blue chips. But you're realistically only playing to win half of this pot. Now put a red chip on top of those 13 blue chips, and then divide the stack evenly in two, leaving your red chip on top of one of the stacks. If you've followed directions, there are 6 blue chips in the same stack as your red chip. If you were playing at a live table, and if you won half the pot at this point, the dealer would probably push the stack with 6 blue chips plus your 1 red chip at you. You'd get awarded 7 chips, half of the pot, but only 6 of those chips would be what you won by calling the bet this betting round. Hopefully you can clearly see that your pot odds for your portion of the pot are 6 to 1.

You actually should want to think in terms of implied pot odds, thus also taking into account what will happen on the next betting round if you make your draw. But to keep things as simple as possible, and to deal with an important principle regarding raising or not, let's not worry about implied pot odds in this post.

Now let's look at what happens to your pot odds when you raise here. SB immediately re-raises and two other opponents call. Add six more blue chips plus two more red chips to the pile, and divide it evenly in two, keeping all your red chips in one pile. If you've followed directions, the pile with the three red chips also has eight blue chips. Hopefully you can clearly see that your pot odds (for your half of the pot) for this entire betting round have effectively been reduced to eight to three, or 2.67 to 1.

Since a grand total of 21 big bets is already in the pot when the action returns to you for the last time on the third betting round, you're getting 10 to 1 pot odds (for your half of the pot) to call the cap. So you're stuck calling the cap.

But if you hadn't made that raise, you'd have been getting 6 to 1 pot odds for the entire betting round instead of only 2.67 to 1 pot odds for the entire betting round. By raising, you turned great pot odds into poor ones. You will still probably have to improve to a full house or quads here - but now because of the size of the pot, you probably should be more likely to call a single bet on the river even when you don't improve to a full house. And that will be an additional expense.

My own opinion about that additional expense is it should somehow be added to the cost of continuing on the third betting round, but that's a whole other topic.

At any rate, your raise on the third betting round plus the subsequent re-raise from SB, was simply a disaster for you, from a favorable odds point of view.

Your odds against improving to a full house or quads, from your point of view, are 34 to 10 against. That reduces to 3.4 to 1 against.

Your original pot odds for the third betting round (for calling SB's original bet), 6:1, is a higher ratio than 3.4:1, the odds against making your draw - and the implication of that is you have favorable odds to call SB's bet on the third betting round.

However, after your raise and the subsequent re-raise from SB, your overall pot odds for the third betting round declined to 2.67:1.

2.67:1 is a lower ratio than 3.4:1, with the implication that calling has unfavorable odds. Basically, by raising, you turned your favorable odds into unfavorable odds - and then you got yourself more or less stuck in the pot, probably for one additional bet on the river, even if you don't improve.

Why not simply fold to a bet when you don't improve to a full house on the river? Well.... actually I think that’s the way to play this hand. However, in my humble opinion you should not want your opponents to recognize that you might have folded trip aces to a bet.

When you raise on the turn and then fold to a bet on the river, an astute opponent will strongly suspect that you probably have folded trip aces. You shouldn’t really want anyone to know you have folded trip aces, because that may have unfavorable ramifications on a future hand you play against that opponent. Players in your micro limit games may not notice such things, but some of my opponents do - and I do myself.

I didn't figure in your implied pot odds, which somewhat improve your situation, making the whole betting round more or less a wash if you raise. But that doesn't change the fact that by raising, you have substantially reduced your initially very favorable odds.

For the most part, in order to raise on the turn, either (1) you need the raise to knock out opponents who would otherwise beat you, or (2) you need the number of opponents contributing to your portion of the pot to be greater than the odds against making your hand.

(1) Did your raise knock out any opponents who would otherwise beat you? I don’t think so. It’s always possible that by raising you have promoted your trip aces from a loser to a winner, but I think you probably still need to make a full house or quads on the river to win here.

(2) If you had four opponents contributing to your portion of the pot, then you would have favorable odds to raise. Instead, with three opponents who end up calling your raise (and the re-raise), only one opponent is contributing to your portion of the pot. (If you don’t immediately see that, take three blue chips and one red chip and divide them evenly into two portions. The portion with your red chip only has one blue chip. That one blue chip is what you’re gaining from your raise when you win half the pot.)

At any rate, by raising on the third betting round you may get more information, but it would be much better, in general, if you try to save your information procuring raises for the second betting round where they're less expensive. (But on the second betting round here, you don’t have a bet from the small blind. Indeed you should be planning on folding to a bet on the second betting round).

On the third betting round, in general, you might raise to push someone out of the pot or when you have someone who will often be playing a poor hand but who nevertheless will call your raise and pay you off. But you probably do better by not raising when you still need a favorable river card to make a winning hand and when you want as many customers as possible on the next betting round when you do end up with the winning hand. (And that's the case here).

It may not seem so, but I advocate being aggressive on the third betting round. But not always - and not in this particular situation. It isn’t so much that you only have trip aces, which is actually a very respectable hand on the turn, as it is that in spite of your raise, one of your opponents figures to end up on the river with a better hand than trip aces (and may already have such a hand). Thus you must improve to better than trip aces. However, the fresh money odds for your part of the pot are less than the odds against your improving.

I wrote this reply before reading Apefish's reply. After reading your question about raising on the turn, I logged off, piddled around doing this and that, wrote this reply, logged back on, and then read Apefish's reply. I'm not really adding any new ideas to Apefish's reply, but mine is written slightly differently, and since I took the time to write it, I might as well post it for your benefit. Basically, I agree with Apefish.

Buzz

[Samara]

Thanks for the info. Greatly appreciated. I am sure a better player now.