high stakes limit

[kahntrutahn]

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The bottom line is A5s is not a piece of cheese heads-up!

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Both camps have good points...

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> Except for the fact that A5s is a dog to the set of random hands on a Q 7 6 board. </font>

Explain what you mean by this.

[daryn]

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<font color="blue"> Except for the fact that A5s is a dog to the set of random hands on a Q 7 6 board. </font>

Explain what you mean by this.

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flop Q76, you have A5s. he has a random hand. he is ahead.

[Lestat]

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In addition, I don't want to say this is just a simulation problem. The only reason i brought that up is to show that A5h is worse than average on this flop. The real issue, like with all heads up, comes down to playability. You are out of position, so your opponent can control the pot size. It's a terrible spot. You do have to peel sometimes against certain opponents, but raising is just giving away money against anyone semi-competant.

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Ok, so you easily could be starting with the best hand. But the flop now comes Q76r and this is such a terrible spot that you choose to...

<font color="blue"> The only reason i brought that up is to show that A5h is worse than average on this flop. </font>

What do you mean worse than average for this flop? This flop might be completely irrevelant! A flop of QJ9, JT9, or one with color, I might see your point. But what is it specifically about Q76 that makes you say A5s is worse than "average"?

The fact is, in HU play, the sb raises a lot pf. The bb knowing this, re-raises a lot. Because of his position, he doesn't always need better than A5s to make this re-raise. It's perfectly reasonable for him to make it with a hand like any suited king, small to mid suited connectors, JTs, baby pocket pairs, etc. Now if your strategy is to check/fold viable ace type hands just because they missed the flop, you're doomed!

You're saying (or someone said above), that it's ok to peel one against some opponents (assuming to fold the turn if unimproved), well I say that's ok too. I never said otherwise. If you think I'm saying to take ace-high to showdown every time you're badly misunderstanding me.

What I AM saying is that A5s will be the best hand often enough to where you'll be giving up way to much to simply be done with it every time you take a flop and it comes Q76s.

[Victor]

"
The fact is, in HU play, the sb raises a lot pf. The bb knowing this, re-raises a lot."

profound stuff.

[Lestat]

Exactly what and where do you play Victor?

[Lestat]

You seem very adept at making smart-ass comments, without saying anything of substance. To the point where you're doing little more than trolling. Either SAY something other than stupid 1-liners, or quit the thread. So far, I've given lengthy explanations for my position, while you've done nothing more than make silly quips that serve only to make you feel like you're smarter/better than you are. That's becoming all too obvious and I'm done trying to have a worthwhile discussion with you about this. All I have left to say is good luck with your heads up play. It looks like you're going to need a lot of it when not up against someone completely incompetent.

[DeathDonkey]

Hi Lestat,

Are you familiar with pokerstove (www.pokerstove.com) ? It's a simulation tool that allows you to calculate your equity against a range of hands. This is the viewpoint from which Victor and Glenn are saying A5s is a dog to a random hand - using this equity simulator A5s is less than 50% to win against the range of all hands. Of course you could say his range is more defined than that since he 3 bet preflop, and you might be able to construct a range that you would be &gt;50% against on that board, but I would guess it is much easier and much more likely that any smaller range you construct would put you as a more significant dog than {all hands}.

It looks to me like you are taking a micro-economic viewpoint to this hand and they are taking a macro-economic one.

-DeathDonkey

[Lestat]

I'm not that familiar with pokerstove. I have it, but don't use it much. Can you give me an example of how you would input the range of ALL hands? I mean, do you sit there and separately input A5s, vs. AK, AQ,... JTs, etc.?

All I know is that A5s is going to be ahead of many hands (even when 3-bet). I play a lot of HU and know this from experience (I admit NOT from any formal study of simulations). When playing HU the sb will raise pf with a wide range of hands and subsequently be 3-bet by an even wider range (this is only not true when the bb plays a weaker game, and in some other rare/isolated instances).

If you run A5s against other 3-bettable non-ace hands, such as KJs, et al., I'm pretty sure A5s is NOT a dog on a Q76 flop (that's without analysis of simulations, but I'm willing to bet that's right. Again, this from tons of experience playing HU. If I'm that wrong here, then I should be the one expected to be broke and that's far from the case and I've played a great deal against some pretty tough competition at high stakes.) So I can't be that far off here, if at all.

I realize the disadvantage of of position along with the futile strategy of taking any ace to the river. But even if I am taking a micro-economic viewpoint vs. a macro one, micro edges are everything HU! You cannot wait until you have a safe, large edge against good opponents.

What's frustrating me, is that I keep hearing how A5s is a dog against the "range of ALL hands" on this flop. This doesn't say anything without providing some examples and lines of play vs. some of these hands. So please help me out. Either provide some real world examples, or explain how you're using stove to arrive at this very rigid (and myopic in my opinion), conclusion that check/folding will almost always be preferrable to check/raising here.

[edit:] Also please note that I haven't even begun to argue any merit of the minor backdoor straight potential of A5 here. Granted, it's minor, but it still adds to A5's value.

[milesdyson]

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If you run A5s against other 3-bettable non-ace hands, such as KJs, et al., I'm pretty sure A5s is NOT a dog on a Q76 flop

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Why would this even matter? Are you trying to say that you're going to get all his ace high hands to fold? If so, wow. Otherwise, it's just stating the obvious. Of course when you omit a ton of better hands from his range, you're going to come out on top. A6 through AK is a huge amount of hands and pretty much all of them should be included in his range.