steve101651
Enthusiast
Silver Level
Now, adding trash to your raising range to polarize it, that is another mistake. Your raising range will already be polarized, in the sense that it will have hands that you intend to fold to a reraise. And, as you progress through a hand, your betting range will stay polarized if you are bluffing correctly with your complete misses. You don't need to add garbage to your range to make things happen. It happens naturally.
If i have decent stack I open raise with suited connectors no matter how low they are, like 2-3 or 4-5 suited cards. If I feel like the table is soft I sometimes can put a 3bet with those types of hand.
Now, what might surprise you is that I believe there is a TON of value in playing total crap from good positions CHEAPLY. If I can get into a pot for only $2 with 9 2 in the button I very well might. But ... and this is VITAL ... I'm only doing this to obtain an under the radar 2 pair. I'll get one about every 10ish hands so effectively I'm paying $20 on average for a chance at a monster pot that I'll win $100+ on. Only do this if you have the discipline to fold a ton of mediocre pairs on the flop. If you don't then stick to the basics.
You will flop two pair about 2% of the time, not 10% of the time. It's closer to 49-1 against, not 9-1 against. That is a massive difference in expectation. If you are playing 9-2 in order to flop two pair and win a big pot, you are making a big mistake. This is even more true when most players won't build a big pot unless they can beat top pair. If they can beat top pair, they will frequently also be beating two small pair. That means the times you build a big pot, you don't win as often as you need to.
Well, you're 32.4% to flop a pair or better. That includes your 1 pair, 2 pair, trips, full house, and quads flops.
After that, I just flat out disagree with all your conclusions. This is just bad logic. The fact that you can improve, does not mean you will improve to the best hand. And, poker is a game that is very unkind to the second best hand. This is even more likely when big pots are built. You are going to be up against very strong hands, and you don't want to develop a habit of starting with the worst of it in those sorts of races.
If you only play great cards, you aren't going to limit your huge pots. They will happen. You will get sucked out on, which is a good thing. If you are constantly getting sucked out on, it means you're putting the money in on the right side of the equation and your opponents are putting it in on the wrong side. If you're the one doing the sucking out, you're paying a high price for that opportunity.
And, nothing you have said stops you from suffering huge damage when you have a good but second best hand.
If you want to give away $2, there are better ways to do it.
In many cases, however, the two equities
combined are still not enough to make the hand profitable. For
example, say you have 7♦2♠ under the gun. You have showdown
equity and steal equity. After all, you can flop a full house, or you can
raise and win the blinds. However, due to your weak hand and poor
position, usually these equities will be relatively small—too small to
justify risking money to take advantage of them.
* All hands have two kinds of equity: showdown equity and steal equity.
* When the combined equity is worth more than what you have to risk to play on, the situation is profitable.
* When the combined equity is too small to justify the risk, fold.
Few hands can be played solely to make the best hand. One
common error many players make is that they focus too narrowly on
showdown equity with hands like suited connectors, small suited aces,
and other speculative hands. With these hands they try to see a cheap
flop and hope to catch a monster. If they miss, they usually don’t
bother trying to steal. They just fold. Unfortunately, these speculative
hands don’t connect with the board often enough to have good
showdown equity. Unless your opponents are exceptionally loose,
these hands rely on steal equity to be profitable. If you won’t
frequently make money from stealing, your default play should be to
fold them.