Hole Cards Confessions Study Group: Enter Steal Equity

Welcome to week 2 of the Cards Chat study group of “Hole Card Confessions” by Drag the Bar instructor Owen Gaines. Each week we will be covering two sections of the book and Owen will be joining us in the threads to answer questions.

I will be posting brief summaries of the material to be discussed in the OP of each thread. I will not be regurgitating the whole book so people don't have to read it. I will not be quoting long sections of copyrighted material. The goal is to give each thread a starting point; not to reproduce the book for free for anyone who finds the thread.

If you haven't already gotten your copy of “Hole Card Confessions” you can purchase it at Owen's site. http://qtippoker.com/

This thread is for pages 61-75 and will cover:

1. Two ways to skin a pot.
2. General Relativity
3. At the table
4. Open Limping
5. The Bread and Butter.

If it wasn't for steal equity, I'd have no equity at all.

I know the open limping section talks about the appropriate times to overlimp vs certain villains in certain situations, but still I think this hand relates to why it's not a good idea to open limp OOP, and maybe also speaks to steal equity (assuming my pair of 6s are not good already).

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 4 players

BTN: $57.55
SB: $49.25
Hero (BB): $50.00
CO: $144.30

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with 6 ♠ 3 ♠
2 folds, SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to $2, SB calls $1.50

Flop: ($4.00) 6 ♦ J ♣ Q ♠ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.80, SB calls $2.80

Turn: ($9.60) 4 ♠ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $6.75, SB folds

Final Pot: $9.60
Hero mucks 6 ♠ 3 ♠
Hero wins $8.98
(Rake: $0.62)

Couldn't have asked for a better turn barrelling card.

Some important differences between villain's situation and what I talk about with open limping or limping behind in the book.

Villain only has 1 person to get to fold the blinds.

That person isn't a 50 vpip.

Hero has no ability to play in position.

The ideas in the book point to a situation like:

You're in the cutoff with 78s. The remaining three players are all loose preflop (like many home games, etc) and the button doesn't raise much preflop. Raising is still likely to take you multiway and you have little steal equity postflop.

That's the idea.

So would do this with your monster hands as well in the same scenarios to keep a polarized range?

No. Play exploitively not balanced.

I doubt a polarized range here is even appropriate. You're probably raising your premiums and your high cards (KJ etc.) to flop TP type hands against villains who won't fold pre or post.

I think Owen is talking about sneaking into multiway pots with hands that can make monsters. He's not going broke with 87s if he flops TP multiway for example.

Alright thanks for the clarification there

Exactly. Spots where your preflop steal equity is low and your postflop steal equity will be low and you have a speculative hand. But you don't want to fold because there are players at the table that will pay you if you hit it big.