Suited Connectors, Implied Odds, and You (Theory/Math)

[mornelth]

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Another thing to consider is that SC dont hit against TPTK as easily as PPs do. Lets say you are against AK, what are the odds of you both hitting that flop? If you hit a straight they missed, if you hit 2pair they are less likely to have hit. I think when people think about implied odds they forget that a lot of the time you hit your hand and dont get paid off. What happens when you are playing against players that play more than top hands, if you are going to flop or fold I believe you are giving up a lot of money to these players.

Anyways this is interesting, I almost never call raises with SC and dont feel as though I am giving up as much as if I dropped PPs from my calling range.

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You: 6s 5s
Villain: Ad Kc
Flop: 4s Ks 7c.

[linuxrocks]

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Aslo, somewhat OT - what does "tl;dr" stand for? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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too long; didn't read
Urban dictionary def.

[Rocco]

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The strategy I have one cardinal rule that I try never to violate. If I flop any of those 20-25% percent of hands we've been talking about in this post, I play to get my money all-in, but I do it in PSB increments. I don't care if I'm in position or OOP. If I bet and get raised, I 3-bet. If I'll have less than a PSB left for the next street then I push. Simple. If I get called, I pot it on the next street. If I'm still called and I've got a lot left for a river bluff I'll frequently fire as big as I can there too. It takes STONES to call three PSB with top pair. A hidden gem about this strategy is that it tends to push out better flush draws so I don't hit and lose big pots. It also tends to get people giving me lots of money and then folding without a showdown. Try it.


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So, basically you're saying that you fire out a PSB everytime you flop a flush draw (or straight draw) or better? And if in position and OR bets out, you make a PSB raise everytime? Will this strategy work at $50NL?

[linuxrocks]

Great analysis, goofy.

One thing I wanted to add is the equity of playing the SCs after flopping a pair. The odds of flopping a pair that's not paired is 30%. The equity obviously is not that great, but there's certainly some value in backdoor draws, hitting your second pair, trips etc. This is especially true when we are the one raising or re-raising. This, I think is the big difference compared to small pairs. They are almost useless, if you don't hit the set.

Calculating equity of a middle pair against a pre-flop raiser is quite a hairy calculation, but I am guessing it's much higher than the equity when small pairs don't hit set on the flop.

P.S. BTW, I am the PPadala on TP.com forums

[ianlippert]

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You: 6s 5s
Villain: Ad Kc
Flop: 4s Ks 7c.


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I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. I mean If I got a flop like this every time I played a SC I would love them.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if the raiser has AK and I have a PP the odds of flopping a set and my opponent flopping TPTK is 3%. I dont think people have calculated this into their posts. The majority of the time you are against 2 big face cards you will not be getting their entire stack let alone the 50% that is needed to make the call.

[jskinn04]

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The strategy I have one cardinal rule that I try never to violate. If I flop any of those 20-25% percent of hands we've been talking about in this post, I play to get my money all-in, but I do it in PSB increments. I don't care if I'm in position or OOP. If I bet and get raised, I 3-bet. If I'll have less than a PSB left for the next street then I push. Simple. If I get called, I pot it on the next street. If I'm still called and I've got a lot left for a river bluff I'll frequently fire as big as I can there too. It takes STONES to call three PSB with top pair. A hidden gem about this strategy is that it tends to push out better flush draws so I don't hit and lose big pots. It also tends to get people giving me lots of money and then folding without a showdown. Try it.


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So, basically you're saying that you fire out a PSB everytime you flop a flush draw (or straight draw) or better? And if in position and OR bets out, you make a PSB raise everytime? Will this strategy work at $50NL?

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I haven't played NL cash online for a while. I learned this strategy while playing "World Championship Poker" which has T.J. Cloutier's namesake. I was pretty much a break even player at $25 NL before I starting playing this game. I was actually losing to the computer in this game. I vowed to improve. I reread Super System and I applied some of Doyle's advice about playing middling straight flush cards (SC's, S 1-gaps). After adding these hands and this strategy I absolutely owned.

It's pretty simple why. If they decide to run me down when I have a bare flush draw, I have a 35% shot at outdrawing the guy. If the guy has the stones to call all three bets then I lose 65-35= 30% of my stack every time this situation occurs. That's when I have a bare flush draw. When I have a set and he calls me down in this situation I win about 95% of my stack. When I have two pairs and he has and overpair or TPTK I win about 50% of my stack over the long run. If villain plays to stop me from bluffing him he pays off HUGE when I've got him dead and that's really really hard for him to recover from. Also, since I'm playing a wide range of hands preflop, it's very hard to put me on a hand. I could just as easily have two pairs or a set as I could have a flush draw. They both get played the same way.

What's even sweeter is when I get called on the flop and turn by someone holding TPTK and then I get a fold on the river. I make a ton of money ever time someone makes a bad fold for that many chips.

An even better benefit is that this style puts people on tilt.

If I find that I'm always getting called down then I'll c/f weak flush draws and straight draws and tailor my range more towards made hands. I think it's a great strategy to put someone holding 1 pair in a huge game theoretic bind. Either he's a little ahead or he's WAY behind and it's going to cost him his stack to find out.

[bestcellar]

quick question - aren't regular draws already included within the combo draws section?

For example, if hero has 9[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

are the "regular" draw odds excluding all the times it's a combo, or does it assume the flop is


7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] *non-6, non-T, etc. etc.*

versus

7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] *any card*

[munkey]

vnh OP and jskinn about playing these speculative hands.

Something I find happens occasionally with SCs in multiway raised pots are when when you hit the straight and a TAG hits a set and can't wait to push the money in - and possibly sandwiching the PFR for a x3 stackathon.

[goofyballer]

Re: counting draws more than once, I made sure that I discounted subsets of draws that I'd already calculated; for example, in the tl;dr math section,

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Flush draw (9 outs):
Two clubs + a blank that does not complete a flush or pair your hand:
11/50 * 10/49 * 33/48 * 3 = 9.26%

Subtract 1.424 and 2.661 since we already counted the times where the flush draw gives you an OESD, and you get 5.175% non-combo flush draws.

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I accidentally left out "and gutshot" after "gives you an OESD", but yeah, I accounted for all that.

Thanks for the additions Jouster/jskinn, very helpful posts.

[maddog2030]

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Any chance you can make this program available to the public (or just me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])?

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I wouldn't have a problem doing that, but it's pretty much the exact opposite of user friendly so it would be pretty hard for someone else to use.

I have no problem running sample hands through and posting the results. I just think that I posted the most interesting cases... anything worse isn't worth really playing pr studying anyway.

Also the program, as I wrote it, is limited in that it just figures out whether you hit a pair or not (doesn't differentiate between BP, MP, and TP) since my primary goal with the program was to get the numbers I posted. So it's really only useful for hands where you aren't concerned what type of pair you have.