Oh MY! What to do???

Curious how many of you would have played this. I'll post results later maybe in two parts. For now though I'd like to see some thinking other than my own.
Please thank you.


PokerStars Game #16125193668: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/03/20 - 20:05:32 (ET)
Table 'Johanna IV' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: arco222 ($6.35 in chips)
Seat 2: playajpzy ($6.05 in chips)
Seat 4: mla~ ($2.05 in chips)
Seat 6: BuzzedLogic ($10 in chips)
Seat 7: xloripx ($3.90 in chips)
Seat 8: MrDaMan ($9.90 in chips)
xloripx: posts small blind $0.05
MrDaMan: posts big blind $0.10
OhSheBetZ: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MrDaMan [5h 5s]
arco222: folds
playajpzy: raises $0.20 to $0.30
mla~: folds
BuzzedLogic: raises $0.90 to $1.20
xloripx: folds
MrDaMan: calls $1.10
playajpzy: calls $0.90
*** FLOP *** [7d 4h 7s]
MrDaMan: checks
playajpzy: bets $1
BuzzedLogic: raises $1 to $2
MrDaMan: calls $2
playajpzy: calls $1
*** TURN *** [7d 4h 7s] 6♦
MrDaMan: checks
playajpzy: bets $2.85 and is all-in
BuzzedLogic: raises $3.95 to $6.80 and is all-in
MrDaMan: ?????

I would have folded when it was $1 to me before the flop.

Had I accidently hit the call button there...

I would have folded when it was $2 to me after the flop.

It all seemed a bit too cryptic so I added the stuff until my turn decision, I haven't posted too many hand history's. I'll wait to explain myself later, just want to see some input.

A raise and a reraise before it gets to me; I'd fold preflop. You're geting 1.5:1 pot odds and you're 8:1 to make a set. At best, with one opponent you're in a coin toss against two over cards, with two opponents, likely one of them has you crushed.

I'm on the BB and the pot has almost 2.50 in it before it gets to me, I figure holding a small pocket pair I ought to see the flop, if it hits it could pay well.

Positive EV??

The flop is difficult and I've put my opponents on bigger pairs, no ones hit a set yet and the bet is only 2 dollars, with aprox 7 bucks, 9 if I call. I think it's cheap at 2 bucks and if I hit I "think" the EV is good.

Positive EV??

The turn gives me 11 outs, outside straight draw and the other two 5's can make me a full house, my opponents go all-in. Again is this positive EV?

Is this an automatic call? Am I overplaying this hand, giving too much attention to the math or not enough?

ChuckT, AlienGenius, LoDog am I stretching or should I have gotten out of this hand earlier?

I'm wondering if I can learn anything from this hand.

It's a fold preflop.

You don't know what the original raiser is going to do. If he folds you're not getting the odds you need to set mine and if he 4bets you'll be forced to fold. Since he called you got lucky because now you do have the right implied odds to look for the set, but when you didn't hit it on the flop you have to fold. I figure you sucked out for a str8 (or folded but would have hit) here but you played the hand poorly.

In a vacuum, if you think you can get all of their chips into the middle if you hit your set, then you have implied odds to call them pre-flop.

The problem isn't the fact that you will only flop this hand 1/8 times - you can easily fold the other 7 and get away from it, which is fine.

The reason I think you want to fold here is that if you make your hand, you can still lose to a better hand, and by the time you realize it, it's too late (because you have gotten all of your chips in the middle).

Against 2 random hands, you're going to win about 50% of the time if it goes to the river. Against their probable holdings, it's more likely around 20%.

Yeah Hillbilly I won the hand, I'll go ahead and post it.

BuzzedLogic had pocket Aces and was mad as a hatter He went on tilt and was cussin up a storm, someone called support and they hushed him up.

Now, I knew that calling the pre-flop raise was chancy, and I knew the post-flop call was also chancy. But the positive EV kept me in. The turn I figured was pretty much automatic.

I kind of feel that even though I lucked out (sucked out) I played it wrong, but then some of my best profits have come from stepping out of the norm.

A LOT of my worst downward slide have come from the same, stepping out of the norm too. Which is why I thought I'd share this here and see if I can learn from it.

*** TURN *** [7d 4h 7s] 6♦
MrDaMan: checks
playajpzy: bets $2.85 and is all-in
BuzzedLogic: raises $3.95 to $6.80 and is all-in
MrDaMan: calls $6.70 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [7d 4h 7s 6d] 5♣
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MrDaMan: shows [5h 5s] (a full house, Fives full of Sevens)
BuzzedLogic: mucks hand
MrDaMan collected $7.30 from side pot
playajpzy: shows [9c 9d] (two pair, Nines and Sevens)
MrDaMan collected $17.35 from main pot
playajpzy said, "bs"
BuzzedLogic said, "OMFG"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $25.90 Main pot $17.35. Side pot $7.30. | Rake $1.25
Board [7d 4h 7s 6d 5c]
Seat 1: arco222 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: playajpzy showed [9c 9d] and lost with two pair, Nines and Sevens
Seat 4: mla~ folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: BuzzedLogic (button) mucked [Ad As]
Seat 7: xloripx (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: MrDaMan (big blind) showed [5h 5s] and won ($24.65) with a full house, Fives full of Sevens

I would've also folded preflop. That is a big raise preflop from BuzzedLogic.

nh

You got VERY lucky in this one. Even on the turn you were slightly less than 25% to catch and win. You risked $6.70 to win $19.30. Play this hand the same way every time and you LOSE $$. So what you thought was +EV was actually -EV.

So, knowing what they actually held, the numbers are easier to run.

All of this assumes that they will commit their entire stacks by the river.
Obviously that won't always happen, so you would need to calculate based on what you expect the final pot to be.

Before the flop, you can expect to win 16% of the time
You're paying 1.20 for the chance to win 15.95
(their entire stacks)
EV for calling pre-flop is:
(.16 x 15.95) + (.84 x -1.20) = + $1.54
Based on this, calling the pre-flop bet should be profitable, over time

On the flop, your odds of winning drop down to 11%
Now you are paying 2.00 for the chance to win 17.15
(their stacks, plus your pre-flop bet)
EV for putting in the 2.00 on the flop is:
(.11 x 17.15) + (.89 x -2.00) = + $0.11
This is barely break-even in a best-case scenario, and if you can't get every one of their chips in the middle, you will lose money by calling here.

On the turn, your odds move up to 24%
You are paying 6.70 for the chance to win 19.15
(their stacks, plus both of your other bets)
EV for putting in the 6.70 on the turn is:
(.24 x 19.15) + (.76 x -6.70) = - $1.34
You're losing money every time you make this call, no matter what the result is on an individual hand.


If you have the discipline to make the call on the flop, and then fold when you miss your set, then it's not a problem to do that. Once you stray from the plan, and keep drawing, you're going to lose money in the long run.

Nice numbers Ken, but I still think it's a fold preflop because we don't know what the EP raiser will do. If he folds or 4bets our call is -EV. If we were closing the action preflop we can call but with the early raiser still to act we should fold.

I agree completely - you have to know that the person left to act is just going to call to even thing about playing. Personally, I'd be folding as soon as that second raise went in, no matter what.

The main point of my second post was that if you somehow talk yourself into calling those raises pre-flop, you *have* to be able to lay it down when you miss. If you don't it's going to cost money.

So easy, fold pre-flop i think it was T.J Clotier in Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em that said the three bet pre-flop is 99% of the time aces and i tend to agree evertime there is a raise then the re-raise im out of the pot unless i have AA (perhaps KK-TT if im against a maniac) myself.

glad you lucked out but yeah fold it after the second raise next time me thinks.

Fold preflop - you're not getting implied odds and your hand is rarely best.

Fold flop - you're beat most of the time.

Fold turn - you're beat, and don't have odds to draw to the straight or the full house.

^^^^ Overrated imo :P

Once you have made the mistake on calling pre flop, why did you call the flop bet? You called pre flop to hit your set which you missed so you should have folded on the flop. Even if you put your 2 opponents on 2 overcards, a huge majoirty of the time, an overcard is going to hit the turn, so then what?

Fold every street

what on earth is "the positive EV kept me in" supposed to mean? throwing phrases like that around without any explanation really makes it look like you don't know what you're on about, i'm afraid.

it's an easy preflop fold, easy flop fold, and you're right the turn is automatic - an automatic fold for reasons already mentioned.

fold EVERYWHERE

Before you send him to the gallows, you might consider that he is getting conflicting advice in this thread. He is, without a doubt, asking for advice here and not making a case for this type of play.

ChuckT said:

"Fold preflop - you're not getting implied odds and your hand is rarely best."

While Ken said:

"Before the flop, you can expect to win 16% of the time
You're paying 1.20 for the chance to win 15.95
(their entire stacks)
EV for calling pre-flop is:
(.16 x 15.95) + (.84 x -1.20) = + $1.54
Based on this, calling the pre-flop bet should be profitable, over time"

The above statements are mutually exclusive.

Implied odds are precisely the reason this play shows a (very) high positive expectation in Ken's analysis.

Perhaps calculating his opponent's entire stack is misleading. Perhaps his implied odds before the flop are not all that grim. Perhaps a bit of both.


Either way I do not see his preflop call as his biggest mistake. I like it better than the call on the flop.

as you touched on...

1) even if we flop our set we're not always going to stack one of them, let alone both.

2) there's no guarantee we won't get shoved on preflop by the original raiser and have to fold.

3) even if we flop a set and get stacks in we're not going to be 100% to win.

ken's analysis was somewhat... 'optimistic'.

besides, if we're bad enough to stack off here against two players with flopped second pair and a turned oesd on a paired board then we definitely should be folding preflop, as calling can't possibly be +EV.

edit: you're right - it's definitely not the worst part of the hand (the flop and turn calls are much worse), but it's still a bad decision.

In an attempt to be more clear... I think calling pre-flop is a really bad idea. There have to be better spots to get the money in than this.

If you can manage to see the flop for only the $1.20 (it worked this time, but won't always happen), then it's not a losing call over time. There is still a lot that can go wrong, and no matter how much the numbers coax you to call, all of those unknowns make this a very risky gamble.

I agree that the numbers I posted were optimistic - the only reason I based them on the entire stacks is because that's what actually happened. Even though this is micro limit (where it seems to be more likely that the chips are going to the middle, for some reason) we can't count on that happening. You will need them to commit another $3.92 every time you hit your set, just to break even on all the times you fold on the flop.

If you don't fold on the flop, the situation quickly becomes much worse. There aren't enough miracle cards out there to cover the losses you will experience.

@ drawingneardead and ken,

a) I'm not sure where you got '%16 to win' that from. We've got to assume we're playing strictly for a set since we're almost never getting our stack in postflop without one, so our chances of that happening are %12, or 8:1 against which of course both worsens our immediate odds and requires us to get better implied odds

b) we're not guaranteed the price we're getting. We're not closing the action, and the initial raiser might push.

c) we're not guaranteed to stack %100 of the time postflop. That's a huge assumption and it's skewing the EV calculation a lot too.

d) the smaller the pair we have the more inclined we should be to fold since there's the minute chance of getting oversetted, and the smaller our pair the bigger that chance. We should basically be looking for better pot odds as our pairs get smaller.

EDIT: e) ken, you're making these calculations based on us KNOWING the cards which is nonsense - we have to calculate it against a range. I know the method you're using actually supports my side of the argument (at least pf), but postflop we could already be dead or drawing very slim.

I still agree that pf is probably the 'best', or rather 'least poor', decision in the hand, but that doesn't make it ok. tbh I'm too lazy to do maths right now, but I don't think we're getting odds to call long-term. I'm very fatigued right now and realize I'm kind of contradicting what I've said in my other thread (my 88 being a 'correct' call), but I think there are significant differences between the two, mainly that I'm playing at higher stakes where players will respect a postflop move and the fact that I have position and can both extract value and make moves more efficiently.

EDIT: I told you I was fatigued. Dorkus basically said what I meant to say simpler and in fewer words. sigh.

a) Taking 55 to the river against almost any 2 other hands will win at least 16% of the time. The only exception that I can think of is when one of the other two hands is also 55. I agree that the only way to play this hand (assuming you can close the betting) is to fold when you miss the set. I didn't think it was right to assume that (and the 12%), since he chose to continue when he missed

b|c|d) I agree completely.

e) Understand, but I couldn't find a range that seemed logical (in the context of the betting) that would worry me much with this board. I used the actual cards to make the point that even in the extreme case where you think you know *exactly* what they hold, it's still a bad play. Not knowing the cards just makes worse.

I think I'm going to sit back and be a spectator on this thread for a while. I can't think of anything new to add... except maybe going back and editing my original reply to simplify it. Something like:

Fold. Just Fold. Trust us.

%16 to win if we're seeing all five cards which of course we're not. We have to assume we're going to most probably be facing more betting on the flop, and so the price we're getting now should only be compared to our odds of flopping a set, ie %12.

Well I'm not sure there really is much to add. Preflop was closer than I thought but still not a profitable call imo, but postflop is clearly fold fold FOLD!

MrDaMan: I would be thinking in term of "no set, no bet" with regards to this hand postflop. Certainly when you are coming in on the bottom range of pocket pairs.

You would have taken down a great pot if you had hit your set there on the flop.

I am retracting my initial criticism of your preflop play, because it was a good investment. I would try to aim @ around %7 of total stack when looking to flop a set (not 11 OR 12%). This will allow you to release your hand (uninvested) when you miss. Also, if you are not particularly lucky and you miss 5 or 6 times, your eventual hit & (hopefully) double through will show profit longterm.

You have to release on the missed flop. Late made sets often put you in dicey situations. Got anymore good analysis hands??

how do you know this?

The 3 bet before the flop.... When we limp with a small pair and flop a set, we usually have to be deceptive to win a big pot. When we call a raise to get there, we tend to get paid off.

If the 3 bettor had a big pair, we get paid. If he had some random paint & connects to the flop, we get paid. Bottom set rulez....

I think IO was good here. I like to get in a bit cheaper myself, but I'll slowplay a set like a dog......& if I have to muck it later, so be it.

Not gonna recommend to any player that they limp & slowplay.

EDIT: Dorkus Malorkus....y does that sound so familiar? I think my stepmother used to call me that....Is it from something or did u make it up???

it's from the simpsons. i think bart said it

p.s. oh noes i used my 3000th post explaining the origin of chris's screen name

POTY

Quick, get a mod to delete 10 or so posts ....


ask Chris

LOL Dorkus I like your blunt honesty. You're right, my notion of "positive EV" is skewed and I will have to re-invest some time into re-studying that concept. I have read many books on poker and truthfully my eyes gloss over when they get into the math and I've probably given the concept the wrong definition in my mind.

Which is one of the reasons I posted this here, I wanted to learn from this hand and have learned quite a bit from the comments from everyone. So thank you all for taking the time to give me some input.

There are a lot of different reasons why people play poker and just as many reasons why they play a hand a certain way. I did play this hand terribly and got lucky, I accept that.

Here's my perspective on this hand.

Keep in mind that I play 1/2 no limit live with 200.00 buy-ins, online I have played the 50.00 and the 25.00 max buy-ins I'm used to calling and playing better than 2, 5 and 20 dollar bets. Stepping down of late to the 10.00 max table with nickel and dime blinds had a lot to do with my decisions in this play.

I do know that pre-flop the re-raise represented Aces or Kings, I took a chance on the call, it's "ONLY" 2 bucks. What I was doing without realizing the ramifications was playing outside the table limits.

Pretty much through out the hand, I knew each call was wrong but the chance to triple my stack kept me in and I erroneously called it "positive EV". It was a tilt/gamblers call and I got lucky.

In my mind I could "afford" to lose the 10 bucks ...most definitely a bad play on my part.

In this hand I'm out of position, and call knowingly a raise which represents a higher pair than I'm holding. Oh the humanity

I asked about "positive EV" because I had a feeling I was interpreting it wrong, especially in this instance. See the question marks after "positive EV"????

Thanks for the input everyone, I'm off to re-study some math concepts. LOL

hey,
i may be quite drunk but this is an easy fold pre-flop and if not, a definete fold on the flop, the big raise preflop says to me he has at least an overpair to ur fives, if i had 99, 1010 or JJ i'd bet big and try to collect the blinds + any other limpers.

I'm not trying to be harsh but you winning with a full house when you shouldnt even have been in the hand is real bad luck on both of the other players and is quite hard to take! Everyone has to learn though and as long as you take in the comments that the guys on this site give you, u should learn not to make calls like that again because in the long run u would lose a small fortune, a raise and a re-raise and you call with 55 seriously not good man, even if u do hit a five if theres any over cards u cant rule out someone with a bigger PP that may also have hit there set and ur gonna stack off in a hand u should never have been a part of in the first place.

I'm not trying to make out that i'm a god at the tables, just trying to give my piece of advice. Good luck in the future

Very interesting scenario...no comment at this time. Sry.

As I suspected, my understanding of positive EV was way skewed. In this hand I could assign positive EV to 5/5 when it was dealt to me, but I'd have to evaluate position and being on the BB lowers it.

The pre-flop raise and re-raise put me heavily in the negative EV range and I shouldn't have called the original bets.

I was thinking of positive EV being "what I could win compared to my stack size/tripling up" confusing myself thinking the "gamble" is worth the calls. Tripling my stack *IF* I win. BUT I was ignoring the actual indicators/reality that I was actually in a negative EV situation.

Even when I win one of these, I lose because it reinforces gambling instincts rather than smart solid poker basics.

Maybe I was thinking "pot odds"??? LOL I think I better go re-study that too before I make more of a fool of myself.

Evidently "EV" doesn't consider chips already entered into the pot, "EV" positive or negative is the expectation of the value of your hand relative to the other players and the texture of the cards on the board.

Here's a couple of articles I found on "EV".
:: expected value :: - www.bet-the-pot.com :: intelligent poker community

Poker articles: An in-depth look at the nature of poker

This was a foolish hand on my part, I had an Idea I could learn something from it, I didn't know how far out of line I actually was. Foolish but nothing ventured nothing gained.