Limp behind hand in razz

[Praxising]

[ QUOTE ]

5th Street - (5.18 BB)

Seat 2: xx xx 4[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]___bets___raises
Seat 6: xx xx 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]___calls___folds
Hero: A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 7[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]___raises___calls


[/ QUOTE ]Seat 6 isn't dead with two cards to come and a couple 8s showing. He might be foolishly chasing without much expectation of a win, but he is still a threat. I vote for 5th as played.

[RustyBrooks]

[ QUOTE ]
I ran the numbers with rusty and it seems a call is the best play on 5th. Raising puts you in a bad position with the 86 and letting seat 6 draw to a 7 gives him only a 3% chance of making that 7.

[/ QUOTE ]

It might be as much as 5% but yeah, he's drawing waaaaay slim. This is not like on 4th where you have a 4 card hand, an opponent has a 4 card hand, and another has a 3 card hand. In that case, the 3 card hand can catch up in one card, you'd rather he was gone, or pay through the nose, and also, you are probably closer in value to the other good hand than in this case.

Further, when considering eliminating a player, you want to figure out if his equity will shift largely to you, increasing your chances, or to your opponent, increasing his, or to both, increasing both of your equities a little. Sometimes eliminating a player can buy you some equity. In this case, not so much.

[electrical]

If seat 6 will come along, raising Fifth has to be better than calling, and the only way to find out is to make the raise. If Seat 2 is made, hero is a 2:1 dog on Fifth, so I want the overlay of the third guy paying the raises.

Not to denigrate the OP and the limp behind gambit, but the value in this hand comes from seat 6 paying to come along drawing thin, and then Hero catching inside to draw out on seat 2. I suppose your read would tell you if completing on Third would have changed the way Fourth or Fifth were played, but usually not, and it would have made a bigger pot.

[RustyBrooks]

If you're actually behind then the first guy is going to re-raise almost all the time though, and even the loosest called with T9 is going to get out, I think. All you succeed in doing is putting in more money as a dog and losing a potential caller of another bet on 6th

[Praxising]

[ QUOTE ]
If you're actually behind then the first guy is going to re-raise almost all the time though, and even the loosest called with T9 is going to get out, I think. All you succeed in doing is putting in more money as a dog and losing a potential caller of another bet on 6th

[/ QUOTE ]Yay! The new software is finally here! Almost.

And that potential caller is also a potential winner. I think the choice is a toss-up.

[jbrennen]

If we can confidently put Seat 2 on starting with a three-card 7, there are 118 possible combinations of down cards he could have when the action comes to us on 5th street. We're ahead of 36 of those combinations.

So very roughly, we're ahead 30% of the time here. Figure that whichever of us is ahead is about a 2:1 favorite. Also let's give Seat 6 a charitable 10% chance to win a 3-way if he stays in.

Also assume that Seat 2 only reraises if he's ahead, and that we only cap if Seat 6 comes along.

Here are the EV deltas for raising vs. calling on this street alone, not counting implied odds:

We're ahead, Seat 6 calls:
By raising, we put an extra 1 bet into the pot. Our extra equity is 60% of the extra 3 bets, so 1.8 bets equity. Raising is +0.80 bets EV.

We're ahead, Seat 6 folds:
By raising, we put an extra 1 bet into the pot. Our extra equity is 66.7% of the extra 2 bets, plus 6.67% of the existing pot representing the times that we only win because seat 6 folded. If we had called, the pot would have been about 8 BB, so we pick up about 0.53 big bets of equity that way in addition to our 1.33 big bets of showdown equity, giving a total of +1.87 bets equity, and +0.87 bets EV.

We're behind, Seat 6 folds:
By raising and calling the reraise, we put an extra 2 bets into the pot. Our extra equity is 33.3% of the extra 4 bets, plus 3.33% of the existing pot representing the equity from Seat 6 folding. We pick up about 0.27 bets from Seat 6 folding, and we have an extra 1.33 bets equity from the bigger pot, giving a total of +1.60 bets equity, and -0.40 bets EV.

We're behind, Seat 6 calls and everyone caps:
By capping, we put an extra 3 bets into the pot. Our extra equity is 30% of the extra 9 bets, so 2.7 bets equity. Raising is -0.30 bets EV.


So to summarize, if we raise and Seat 6 calls, our EV is +0.80 EV when we're ahead, and -0.30 EV when we're behind. Given that we're ahead about 30% of the time, we get +0.24 EV when we're ahead and we get -0.21 EV when we're behind, for a grand total of +0.03 bets EV.

If we raise and Seat 6 folds, our EV is +0.87 when we're ahead, and -0.40 when we're behind. Again, figuring we're ahead 30% of the time, we get +0.26 EV when we're ahead and -0.28 EV when we're behind, for a grand total of -0.02 bets EV.


So under all of these assumptions -- Seat 2 had a three card 7 to start with, that he plays 5th perfectly (only raising when ahead), and that Seat 6 has a 10% chance to win if he hangs around -- it basically doesn't matter whether we raise or call here, the EV difference is either +0.03 bets if Seat 6 comes along or -0.02 bets if Seat 6 folds.


Personally, I think that's an argument for raising here. First of all, Seat 2 may not play 5th "perfectly" -- he may call behind when he's ahead in some misguided deception or if he's trying to actually entice Seat 6 to put more money in the pot. He may raise when he's behind in an attempt to represent that he is ahead or to drive Seat 6 out of the hand. Secondly, Seat 2 may not have started with a 4-card 7 in the first place (admittedly not a very likely chance, but we only need about 0.05 extra +EV to swing it in our direction).