Fun Poker Question - Psychic Ability

dgangsta

Hello Everyone,

A friend posed me an interesting question the other day and I thought I would put it here to see what you all have to say.....

You have a choice of being bestowed one of two infallible psychic poker abilities during headsup holdem play:

a) Being able to know one of your opponents hole cards (could be the higher or lower).
b) Knowing the river card

I would like to know your choices and most importantly why. :-)

Dgangsta

cadillac

Playing heads up I would seldom need to know the river card so I would choose the hole card (the highest one obv.)

I could use the hole card information to influence my betting on every street.

The river card would help me the most in first level thinking situations.

Knowing the hole card helps more in the 2nd level.


Caddy

Zarbuck

I don't think you get to choose which of the opponents cards you "see". So you can know one of their cards but you don't know if it is the high card of the hole or not.

Seems to me and a couple friends of mine, that in heads up, you are only gonig to make a little headway pre-flop and pre-turn... if you want all the chips(your goal), you have to go the distance (either betting to the river or going all-in).

And the river looks like the best place to know something for sure. You know the combo of hole + river and can use that to suck-out or just have high-percentage hands even before the flop.

moose

Very few heads up hands go to showdown. It is of more value to know the hole card. In addition, the river card would even more rarely determine the winner of the hand. If you go to showdown and lose, by and large you have played the hand incorrectly from the start.

Bobsi38127

hmmm..... so does this power of knowing the river mean ONLY the river or future streets? Knowing the hole card would be better if its ONLY the river, but the problem with this ESP power would be that if you knew one card it could sometimes F with your head in terms of what ur opponent has. What if you know one of his cards is an Ace and he raises PF and you held AJ? Would you go over the top or smooth call? A majority of players ,whether they are good or bad, raise heads up w/suited aces or big aces and going over the top COULD screw you if fact in you feel he is strong. I think it would be just as challenging, maybe more,knowing one card then knowing no cards at all cuz the problem with the human brain is that it loves to make you overthink when caught in a corner.
For instance, your playing a crap player and you have A,7 os limped in and the flop came A,6,3 and u know ur opponents card is an A and ur opponent goes all in (lets say hes short stacked), this is certainly tough, cuz his heart is pounding whether he has A,3 or A,2 mainly because he hit the card he wanted, that stupid ace u hit! The problem with this board is if u call and ur wrong, chopping is NOT an easy task so it'd be a tough call to make regardless (hes not a good player remember), I think I would in this scenario and hope intuition is with you.(just to put a twist to the hand ,lol) he then says " nice call" and rolls over A,5 suited, then the turn comes a 2 and the river comes a 4, lol bad beat. With this ESP power it still makes playing still somewhat of a gamble, but would still give an edge, probably moreso in multi handed games.

g2

Bobsi38127 wrote: »

hmmm..... so does this power of knowing the river mean ONLY the river or future streets? Knowing the hole card would be better if its ONLY the river, but the problem with this ESP power would be that if you knew one card it could sometimes F with your head in terms of what ur opponent has. What if you know one of his cards is an Ace and he raises PF and you held AJ? Would you go over the top or smooth call? A majority of players ,whether they are good or bad, raise heads up w/suited aces or big aces and going over the top COULD screw you if fact in you feel he is strong. I think it would be just as challenging, maybe more,knowing one card then knowing no cards at all cuz the problem with the human brain is that it loves to make you overthink when caught in a corner.
For instance, your playing a crap player and you have A,7 os limped in and the flop came A,6,3 and u know ur opponents card is an A and ur opponent goes all in (lets say hes short stacked), this is certainly tough, cuz his heart is pounding whether he has A,3 or A,2 mainly because he hit the card he wanted, that stupid ace u hit! The problem with this board is if u call and ur wrong, chopping is NOT an easy task so it'd be a tough call to make regardless (hes not a good player remember), I think I would in this scenario and hope intuition is with you.(just to put a twist to the hand ,lol) he then says " nice call" and rolls over A,5 suited, then the turn comes a 2 and the river comes a 4, lol bad beat. With this ESP power it still makes playing still somewhat of a gamble, but would still give an edge, probably moreso in multi handed games.

Does anyone else's head hurt after reading that?

Why would you call an all-in with A7 on an A63 board when you KNOW your opponent has an ace? With A7 you're only ahead of A(5,4,2). You're losing to A(3,6,8,9,T,J,Q,K,A). Bad players get hands better than A7 just as often as good players. Just because they overvalue weak aces doesn't mean they always have weak aces.

/g2

Bobsi38127

good point g2, I understand what ur saying, but if u knew he had an A and he was short stacked, (I said he was crap) I'd imagine he'd probably be all in preflop with (A,10-A) but just to limp? It shows weakness in his ace. In a sequence of 13 cards in the suit, 5 would be written off I'd think, possibly 6-7 including A,8 and A,9 depending on how desperate or how bad they really are, so that only leaves 2,3,4,5,6,7. The only reason I'd call it would be that 3 kickers I beat, 1 I can chop and 2 (4 if 8 & 9 is included which still is a 50% decision on his kicker) I don't, so it's a decent gamble and if I lost I wouldn't be eliminated, they would, so why not take a chance to finish off the short stack? I'd just cut my loss and build myself back up on a better hand, if I did lose.
The hand was beside the point of my reply, I just used it as an example, to show how knowing one card can F w/ur head in terms of playing.

speedmaster

I'm assuming that if you know one of your opponent's hole cards that it would be pre-flop. Which should also mean that you should know the river card pre-flop. In that case, knowing the river will change your whole playing/betting strategy and should greatly improve your turn play (which is sometimes pretty tricky in itself). You can get better pre-flop draw odds.

The issues I have with knowing your opponent's hole card would be that it's random, you don't know if it's the high or low card, and sometimes you can put your opponents on that hole card anyways (by their own tells/betting patterns) so your 'special powers' didn't really help in that hand anyways.


Just my 1/2 cent.
Speedmaster.

NuTZnBoaTz

I would have to say hole card, because I agree, Heads up, the river card usually isn't a factor most of the time since it doesn't often get there.

I would rather have the ability to know whether or not my opponent had the ability to know one of my hole cards or the river...

NuTzNBoaTz
The early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the Cheese