flat calling with quads on the river

[hate_dr_dre]

alright, so I was in a hand at .25/.50 fixed o8, and villain's play tilted me because it was so bad. I don't have the hand history but I have the general points that matter, so hopefully I can get some decent feedback on this.

I have A3xx utg, villain 1 has 88xx on button, villain 2 has a3xx in CO.

flop was 8 8 6 T 2 (I can't remember how the betting went up to the river, but I don't think it's necessarily incredibly pertinent to my point)

I led river (put CO on a2xx, but i was wrong), CO reraises, button flat calls, I call.

The question was, wouldn't a 3-bet with the nut high be the perfect play here? Villain argued he flat called to trap in my last bet, and that if he raised I might have folded. I countered that if he 3 bet and I did fold, CO has to call for 1 more bet which would have been the bet he was hypothetically losing from me. By 3 betting, he basically would have had a freeroll to another 2BB in the pot, at worst his 3-bet would have the exact same result of just calling.

thoughts?

[jcx]

Send villan a thank you note for not reraising. No one is folding at these stakes to a reraise on the river. Easiest reraise of all time.

[Buzz]

Hi hate_dr_dre - Button with high hand only gets half of the pot.

If he raises and loses you, he loses getting half of your call of Cut-Off's raise.

Buzz

[Mojo Tooth]

This is the first time I'm really analyzing an o8 hand so be gentle if I'm screwing this up.

We know the button gets half the pot. So he gets half your bets and half of the other low's bets. So, with that in mind, here are the various different scenarios:

- No reraise by button, hero calls
hero puts in two bets, CO puts in two bets. Four total. EV=2.

- Reraise by button, one fold, one call
Hero puts in one bet, CO puts in three bets. Four total. EV=2.

He nets the same with either of the two scenarios he proposes. So his thinking was incorrect, but it doesn't hurt him based on what we've looked at so far.

HOWEVER. There are also other scenarios that we need to see to get the whole picture. From his perspective, there is small possibility that somebody actually playing at him with 66 or TT in pocket. There is also the possibility that BOTH the other players fold to a reraise.

- Button reraises, one fold, scoops pot. EV=4
- Button reraises, two folds. EV=3

To know how likely he thinks these two are, we need to know the betting that happened throughout the hand. However, suffice to say the probability is non-zero.

There is also a small possibility that hero folds based on the CO's raise and it doesn't matter whether or not villain calls. This last scenario is:

- Button calls, one fold:
Hero puts in one bet, CO puts in two. EV=1.5

So in other words, if he flat calls his overall EV is lower than two bets. If he reraises, his overall EV is higher than two bets. Conclusively, he made the wrong play.

[Buzz]

O.K., Mojo Tooth, I'll look at your response.

[ QUOTE ]
- No reraise by button, hero calls
hero puts in two bets, CO puts in two bets. Four total. EV=2.

[/ QUOTE ]Do you mean EV=2 for Button? If so, that's incorrect. Instead EV=1 for Button, because he has to put in two bets himself and only wins half of the pot.
2+2+2=6,
6/2=3,
3-2=1.
EV=1 (Button gets half of the pot, but his own investment is an expenditure you have to deduct to determine his profit. In other words, you have to subtract Button's own investment.)

[ QUOTE ]
- Reraise by button, one fold, one call
Hero puts in one bet, CO puts in three bets. Four total. EV=2.

[/ QUOTE ]No again, for the same reason.
2+2+0=4
4/2=2
2-2=0.
EV=0

Clear?

Buzz


hate_dr_dre incorrectly thought [ QUOTE ]
at worst his 3-bet would have the exact same result of just calling.

[/ QUOTE ]But that's not true. If Button has to split the pot with CO, and if UTG folds to the double bet but would have called a single bet, then Button loses half of the single bet UTG would have contributed.

(1) Button seems to assume that CO has the low, and that thus Button will have to split with CO in any event. (2) And then Button reasons that UTG is more likely to call a single raise than a double raise.

Button is correct in his reasoning (2). However, Button may be making a mistake in his assumption (1).

If his assumtion is incorrect, Button is making a blunder by not re-raising.

But if his assumption is correct, then he can either raise (gambling that UTG will call the double bet) or call (playing it safe and taking half of a single bet more from UTG).

The (obvious) flaw in Button's reasoning is CO may not actually have the low.

Indeed UTG may be the one with a low - and it may be a poor low that he would have folded to a double bet. And in that case, by not raising Button loses half of the pot.

Thus it's foolish for Button to merely call CO's bet. In playing it safe to win half of a big bet he may be risking half the pot!

I might have pointed that out in my first response to this thread. Instead I simply responded to hate_dr_dre's own incorrect reasoning.

Buzz

[Mojo Tooth]

Right. How freaking stupid of me. I discarded button's own investment even though he's only getting half his bet back. I might actually delete my post completely.

But I think you and I came to the same general conclusion. Because he knows he can't be tied and quartered for the high, he may as well raise. If he raises, he at least gets a chance of forcing a scoop.

Here's one way to look at it: if he calls, he sets a ceiling on his EV, whereas if he raises he sets a floor.

[hate_dr_dre]

great responses guys. I understand where his play could be considered correct in a vacuum, but there are a few factors here that weren't discussed, more on the level of game theory than basic omaha theory.

At this level (.25/.50) people do not play to save X BB on the river. I think some of my prejudice against button's decision was based on the fact that he has history with me, knows I am a winning player and knows I play a lot of two way stuff. Given the board and the action, I was convinced I had the only nut low, and wasn't going to play it tricky, so I bet out to try and make something like a25x the counterfeited nut low make a crying call.

So back to my point, he knows me, he knows I have something, and the guy behind me just reraised. At 2/4, 3/6 and higher this is obviously more of a decision, but once again based on the players in the hand, I still think it was misplayed.

If he 3 bets, I am flat calling with the nut low, and with how bad this game is, there is a very large chance CO caps. More often than not, this is how this hand would go down in this game. Also, many of the times it would go down just like that, and I would take the entire low pot when CO has an overplayed lower full house.

[donger]

You probably have nut low here and the guy in the middle probably has a FH or nut low with some sort of high hand that he's trying to get HU to quarter or scoop you with. Neither of you are folding to a threebet with those hands, so I think the river flat call is dumb.

[rando]

I think the real issue here is at what level game does calling become the preferred play? Maybe at like 25/50 calling is a good play, but at 0.25/0.50 the difference between being called or not is such a small amount of money you might as well go for it, knowing that most of the time you're dealing with people who jump in the boat, not wriggle off the hook. I think the pro-call analysis is more oriented towards far higher stakes, generally speaking. I pump this pot up hoping to drag along a dead boat. Hell I play 200 max PL and recently got dragged along with top boat to flopped quads (mind you he played it perfectly), so I don't think at these low stakes we need to worry about that extra single bet holding out on hero.