easy fold 4th? (Razz)

[2461Badugi]

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In essence I'm trying to compare two different people, one who never folds to a brick and one who always does, to see who makes more money in that situation than the other. They both happen to be me.

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There's just no overcoming your self-selection problem, though. You're trying to call fourth when it's profitable and fold it when it isn't, so any evidence you come up with is just evidence of whether you're succeeding.

In the end, the answer is that sometimes you should peel and sometimes you shouldn't, anyway.

[RustyBrooks]

Yep. But if it's always a mistake to call, then in the long run, it will catch up to me, no? I'm kind of tempted to always call for a long time and see what happens. Well, not that tempted. But curious.

[jbrennen]

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Also, I don't think you can ever consider folding to be an 0ev situation. You are always giving up the portion of the pot that is due to you by EV calculations.

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IMO, you have to consider folding to be exactly 0 EV... If my stack is $100 when I brick on 4th, and I fold, I'm guaranteed to end the hand with $100. To me, that's 0 EV.

Any value of the pot that is "due" to you is figured as part of the EV when you call, not when you fold.


The problem with your method is this... Let's say that the pot is $30 when the action comes to you on 4th. Your method actually differentiates regarding how much of that $30 was put there by you. Common sense should indicate that it doesn't matter how much of that $30 came from you vs. how much came from any other source. Once the money is in the pot, it doesn't matter where it came from, it belongs to the winner(s) of the pot.

[adanthar]

jbrennen is correct; you're doing the math wrong for the reason he sets out. You should be starting from 0 on fourth and asking whether the resulting total from a call is positive or negative.

[Praxising]

It seems to me that these discussions always revolve around math. But we aren't computers. I think that Rusty's self-selection is not what invalidates his method, as suggested, but what validates it.

There are other factors to this than just percentages - there is the message sent when I catch a K and call. My opponent is going to put me on the hand I have, the one I have 99% of the time, three less than eight. And if I'm calling with a 7, it's gonna be a darned good 7. I think it makes your hand look stronger - and, there's no telling if the OG paired, or what comes next. 4th is just too early to fold unless you are facing someone you know plays as tightly as you do who gets a perfect card, or when players start raising.

It's just not all math - odds, EV. Poker is also situational.

I just played this crazy guy - he completed or called every time he was showing 7 or better. Every. Time. When I caught some bad cards, his looked kinda-sorta worse, but he bluffed me right off what I saw later was the best hand. I had to admire him. He was like the Gus Hansen of .50/1 razz - we all knew he played junk, but he also got lucky a lot, and sometimes he had the goods and you never knew when.

He won and lost with huge swings, ended up with most of the money. (I managed to leave a winner but not by much.) But I stayed in with this guy because I thought of this discussion. This wasn't a dumb LAG, but a fairly smart one from what I could see. I'm just not convinced there is only one way to play Razz successfully.

HOWEVER-

I also paid good money for this copy of SoP, and I added a little to my bankroll. So, I'm taking a few days off to read it and I am devoting the rest of the month to playing lock-down Sklansky Razz. I will call no bricks on 4th! Nay, I despise bricks and will fold my way unto the money! I am a Restraint Warrior!!

or some such thing.

So, everyone have the humble pie at the ready.....and we'll see.

[dogsballs]

Whee. It's crazy how hte same discussions come round and round. Long thread a bunch yrs ago about the "baseline" of EV, w Rick Nebiolo.

Summary: EV of folding always = zero. It's all about the money moving forward from the point you're at.


PS: Raise 3rd, fold 4th. But I wouldn't flog anyone for peeling one after a raised 3rd - mainly cos all the online razz games I've seen are fairly soft & many will kling on badly if things turn ur way on 5th and beyond.

[RustyBrooks]

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In essence I'm trying to compare two different people, one who never folds to a brick and one who always does, to see who makes more money in that situation than the other. They both happen to be me.

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Well, OK, I'll buy it. It doesn't change anything though... instead of folding being considered a -.5bb play now it's a 0bb play and instead of calling being a -.25bb play now it's a +.25bb play. The difference between them remains the same (about .25bb per time it happens to you, but same caveat, low # of hands)

[SGspecial]

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Oh, whoops, I misread you question. I thought you asked where I was looking for hard data.

OK, well, I'm going through every hand where I saw 4th, I hit a brick, and one of my opponents did not. If I folded, then obviously I subtract whatever I put in to that point. If I did not fold, I tally up my win/loss amount for those hands. So based on the total lost by foldings divided by the number of hands, vs the same calculation made for calling, I have found that myself and some other people who I have a 2k of hand data on have made money when we called.

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This is a very ambitious project, but seems to me like you're lumping together far too many situations here. The real point of this discussion is not should you call when you brick on 4th, but when should you call. How much needs to be in the pot, are you HU or multiway, how good is your opponent(s), what kind of "brick" did you catch and what kind of "baby" did he catch, how low and live was your starting hand to begin with, etc. are all major factors in deciding whether or not to peel 4th (and there are probably some minor ones as well). Unless you can account for all of those factors orthogonally in your analysis, you're not likely to come up with a definitive conclusion.

One of the other factors that no one has mentioned yet but that I find interesting (note: potential thread hijack here) is let's say for the sake of argument that Rusty were to find that a peel in such and such a spot was marginally +EV, maybe a 2-3% winner in terms of ROI. However, the hero has no fold equity in a pot like this (or very, very little if you account for what happens when he catches perfect-perfect on the next two streets), so all of his equity is showdown equity. By definition, this will be a high variance line since you're counting on winning slightly more when you go to the river than you lose. This kind of swinginess is very bad in a lot of situations, i.e. tournaments, playing on a limited BR, trying to build your BR, etc. So while the play may even have some small net value over 100k hands, is it really correct to take that line?

[RustyBrooks]

A lot of very good points there. I'd love to break it down more than I have but I don't really have enough hands to support the breakdown I have now. I'd probably need hundreds of thousands of hands to do any kind of real analysis. I just got curious and went looking.

Your note about all the equity being at showdown is true, except in the cases where villian is betting complete air - which happens a lot if you fold to every brick.

In fact, I got to thinking last night : how much should I expand my prefourth calling range to account for the fact that I will win a (small) pot every time my opponent bricks (against a single opponent who I know will always do this)? Obviously I can't play every baby face-card because I will still have to actually play 3/4 of the hands, but I wonder if I can expand my range into hands that I'd normally fold, because of that little boost I get from my opponent folding 4th a lot. Can I start calling with 9 5- 5-? 10 5- 5-? Stuff like AA4? (This is, I guess, assuming that I play as well as, or better, than the guy who always folds 4th). I'll be playing more marginal hands post-4th but I wouldn't expand my range to include really awful hands.

[adanthar]

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In fact, I got to thinking last night : how much should I expand my prefourth calling range to account for the fact that I will win a (small) pot every time my opponent bricks (against a single opponent who I know will always do this)? Obviously I can't play every baby face-card because I will still have to actually play 3/4 of the hands, but I wonder if I can expand my range into hands that I'd normally fold, because of that little boost I get from my opponent folding 4th a lot. Can I start calling with 9 5- 5-? 10 5- 5-? Stuff like AA4? (This is, I guess, assuming that I play as well as, or better, than the guy who always folds 4th). I'll be playing more marginal hands post-4th but I wouldn't expand my range to include really awful hands.

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Now you get to the fun part.

I'll give you a hint: the answer is very different on FTP than on Stars.