Sorry... LONG overdue response. I have been in something of a malaise lately, but I am emerging. Whew... back to work.
I scanned this long and interesting thread. Here are some quick thoughts.
(1) There seem to be a lot of folks saying things like "I would NEVER put him on X-X." Careful, words like "never" in poker are often eaten later. I have often been guilty of believing that the enemy thinks like I do. He doesn't. No matter how badly I want him too.
(2) You are beat. Your Q-J is NOT the best hand. If your opponent as an underpair or AK then you may be a very marginal favourite. On balance, however, you have to assume that you do NOT have the best hand. You are drawing.
(3) I favour folding. You have what LOOKS like a good draw, but is it? The board is paired. You might be drawing completely dead. It is a REAL bummer to move all your chips into a pot and find out you are drawing dead.
(4) Nobody suggested what I would have done... checked the flop. I like the pre-flop raise. But, a player with position on you called pre-flop. HE HAS SOMETHING. This is not a big-blind who may be mucking around with a WIDE range of hands. This is a player who called a raise AND who has position. I am checking and seeing what he does.
-- Why bet the flop? ANY hand that has you beat would reraise. The standard play when someone bets a flop with two pair cards is to reraise the person off their draw or low pair, so any two cards should reraise. You have to call your str draws in these situations, thats what you wanted to set up with this play.
I like the bet on the flop, but 12-15k allows you to get out or might give you a chance to reraise and take the pot. I like checking even better then the 20K bet, against good players this will let you reraise -get a free card - or fold if he overbets the pot (only if your play is defensive - and you want to be conservative in chips for whatever reason - an overbet makes me wanna call even more )
No respect I tell you no respect..,.
Dave, given you are beat and your draw is good. Why not make the call? (the mistake here was the flop bet - but lets go where it left off)
150K in the pot, you have 75K to call and you have 8 outs turn and river ?
What makes you fold in this situation, what makes you call?
IMO, to make a call in this case you need to have a open ended straight, a flush draw and at least one of you cards be good as top kicker in case you spike a Q and that wins on its own. Roughly 20 clean outs.
You need to be able to put your opponent in a very small box.
IMO, to make a call in this case you need to have a open ended straight, a flush draw and at least one of you cards be good as top kicker in case you spike a Q and that wins on its own. Roughly 20 clean outs.
You need to be able to put your opponent in a very small box.
So your sayiong you need to be a 87% favorite before you put your money in?
What if you had QQ? and the betting went the same way? You really have only two "clean" outs. Do you fold?
Having QQ in this hand would be a tough call for all your chips and I would more than likely go broke.
Playing a SNG table today. I have KK on the button flop comes QJ 10 off. I raise he calls Turn is a 3 I raise he pushes all in, I call. He has AK. Like I said
On the example I am giving I was a 60/40 to on the flop an almost as much on turn. The message I am giving is you better have a very good chance to win!
After loosing in the above example, I did some reading and found a similar example in Harrington's book. He need 20 clean out to play this type of example.
Harrington may be referring to 10 outs twice. In fact if anything the impression I got from his book is he will take almost any +EV situation, which I found very surprising for a player of his ability. I recall Raymer saying he plays this way as well after the 2004 WSOP. In the thread you linked to you are a bit less than 60/40 which isn't great, but when the pot is giving you much better than 1:1 on your money you would be foolish not to take a coinflip or better for all your money in all but the earliest stages of the tournament when many bad players remain and you can expect better. In fact if there is going to be a lot of dead money in the pot I will often go out of my way to look for coinflips. This is espeically attractive on a short stack.
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We are definitely not going to agree on this. This is a tournament situation and not a cash game. You can't always have the nuts but ending your tournament on a coin flip?
I am not sure who said it but the advise was not to call your tournament away.
I play at least one live tournament with 30+ players every week and it never fails, the guy who is usually just hanging in there playing the best situations always makes it deep into the money.
We are definitely not going to agree on this. This is a tournament situation and not a cash game. You can't always have the nuts but ending your tournament on a coin flip?
I am not sure who said it but the advise was not to call your tournament away.
I play at least one live tournament with 30+ players every week and it never fails, the guy who is usually just hanging in there playing the best situations always makes it deep into the money.
This is one of the largest misquotes I have seen on the forum so far.
SirWatts actually said:
...when the pot is giving you much better than 1:1 on your money you would be foolish not to take a coinflip or better for all your money in all but the earliest stages of the tournament when many bad players remain and you can expect better.
I would agree with the latter form of the quote.1
ScottyZ
1That is, I agree with the general idea, although it may be tough to get a precise handle on exactly how much better "much better" is.
I would think 1.5:1 would be pretty automatic in almost any case to take a coinflip, obviously as you get under more pressure that 1.5 gets closer to 1. I was thinking about this a bit last night and it occured to me I didn't know what the EV was of taking a coinflip getting 2:1 odds., and then what that EV corresponds to in terms of being a favourite getting 1:1 on your money. So bear with me I'm about to do a bit of maths. Say we are getting x:1 on our entire stack and we have probability p of winning the all-in. Then our EV is px - (1-p) = p(x+1) - 1 times the size of our stack. since we win x*stack with probability p and lose 1*stack with probability (1-p). So a few cases.
1. Getting 2:1 on a coinfip. Our EV is 0.5 stacks. This is equialent to getting all-in even money as a 3:1 favourite. (we set x=1 and solve for p in p(x+1) - 1 = 0.5) I think we can all agree it would be a terrible mistake to fold a 3:1 favourite in almost all situations. This is better than getting all-in with something like AK vs AQ.
2. Getting 1.5:1 on a coinflip our EV is 0.25 stacks. This is equivalent to getting all-in as 62.5% favourite, or 5:3. Maybe you can pass on such a situation early in a tournament but in the mid-latter stages you should be happy to get your money in so good. This seems to support taking 1.5:1 on a coinflip as a fairly automatic decision in most tournament situations.
Disclaimers:
1. It is hard to know when you are a coinflip EV-wise. I'm not telling you to call an all-in with 22 getting 1.5-1 because he might have AK , since he could easily have a big pair and your EV is much worse than 50-50 against his range.
2. I think everyone understands this but I'll state it anyways: It does not matter if you are on a draw or you have the best hand at the moment. All that matters is p, your probability of winning. Statements such as "it is wrong to go all-in on a draw " are just wrong, though they are used commonly to mean "going all-in on a draw (typically a flush or OESD which is a dog) getting incorrect odds is wrong". No one is going to disagree with that.
Now a sample play based on what we've learned. Blinds 200/400 you are the BB and have 4000 after posting. there are 3 limpers and the SB completes. You look down and find 99. You have no reason to believe anyone is slowplaying a big pair. What do you do?
A: You go all-in. If you are called you are likely a coinflip at worst and you may well get called by a smaller pair hoping he's a coinflip getting 1.5:1. In fact you have excellent fold equity here so the decision isn't even close. I would make this play with pairs down to 77 automatically, and possibly even with smaller pairs depending on my opponents.
I agree 100%. But we must be very careful when deciding when we have a coinflip situation. As we could be very wrong and be in very bad shape.
Last night for example I flopped middle pair and a flush draw on a nonstraight draw board. I bet approx. the pot and my opponent pushed all-in. At the time we both had huge stacks and no blind pressure. I was certain that I was up against top pair at worst...wrong answer...I called for the same reasoning Sirwatts is using above only to find out I was against top set. Needless to say my fourteen outer turned into a 6 outer with many redraws agaist me if I did turn my flush.
So just be careful not to assume you have a coin flip.
I agree 100%. But we must be very careful when deciding when we have a coinflip situation. As we could be very wrong and be in very bad shape.
Last night for example I flopped middle pair and a flush draw on a nonstraight draw board. I bet approx. the pot and my opponent pushed all-in. At the time we both had huge stacks and no blind pressure. I was certain that I was up against top pair at worst...wrong answer...I called for the same reasoning Sirwatts is using above only to find out I was against top set. Needless to say my fourteen outer turned into a 6 outer with many redraws agaist me if I did turn my flush.
So just be careful not to assume you have a coin flip.
That's a tough break, unless your stack was really deep it would be hard to fold since you would likely be getting huge odds and it's pretty unlikely he has a set. That's poker as they say.
Coinflip -- a situation in which the odds or winniner are about 50/50 AND AND AND the pot odds are about 1 to 1.
Positive EV situation that CANNOT be passed up on if you are going to have a lot of success at poker -- Being about 50/50 to win the pot, but getting 2-1 on your money.
Comments
I scanned this long and interesting thread. Here are some quick thoughts.
(1) There seem to be a lot of folks saying things like "I would NEVER put him on X-X." Careful, words like "never" in poker are often eaten later. I have often been guilty of believing that the enemy thinks like I do. He doesn't. No matter how badly I want him too.
(2) You are beat. Your Q-J is NOT the best hand. If your opponent as an underpair or AK then you may be a very marginal favourite. On balance, however, you have to assume that you do NOT have the best hand. You are drawing.
(3) I favour folding. You have what LOOKS like a good draw, but is it? The board is paired. You might be drawing completely dead. It is a REAL bummer to move all your chips into a pot and find out you are drawing dead.
(4) Nobody suggested what I would have done... checked the flop. I like the pre-flop raise. But, a player with position on you called pre-flop. HE HAS SOMETHING. This is not a big-blind who may be mucking around with a WIDE range of hands. This is a player who called a raise AND who has position. I am checking and seeing what he does.
A novel idea to be sure. I like it.
ScottyZ
Yeah... that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
No respect I tell you no respect..,.
Dave, given you are beat and your draw is good. Why not make the call? (the mistake here was the flop bet - but lets go where it left off)
150K in the pot, you have 75K to call and you have 8 outs turn and river ?
What makes you fold in this situation, what makes you call?
You need to be able to put your opponent in a very small box.
So your sayiong you need to be a 87% favorite before you put your money in?
What if you had QQ? and the betting went the same way? You really have only two "clean" outs. Do you fold?
Yes in this situation. Either way you cut it you are still drawing to the better hand.
Having QQ in this hand would be a tough call for all your chips and I would more than likely go broke.
Playing a SNG table today. I have KK on the button flop comes QJ 10 off. I raise he calls Turn is a 3 I raise he pushes all in, I call. He has AK. Like I said
http://www.pokerforum.ca/forum/index.php?topic=5030.msg42163#msg42163
I am not perfect in any way!
On the example I am giving I was a 60/40 to on the flop an almost as much on turn. The message I am giving is you better have a very good chance to win!
After loosing in the above example, I did some reading and found a similar example in Harrington's book. He need 20 clean out to play this type of example.
You have the odds to call *if* your straight is good. It might not be.
And, 75K is still lots of ammo. Calling is taking a coinflip. Too close for comfort.
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We are definitely not going to agree on this. This is a tournament situation and not a cash game. You can't always have the nuts but ending your tournament on a coin flip?
I am not sure who said it but the advise was not to call your tournament away.
I play at least one live tournament with 30+ players every week and it never fails, the guy who is usually just hanging in there playing the best situations always makes it deep into the money.
This is one of the largest misquotes I have seen on the forum so far.
SirWatts actually said:
I would agree with the latter form of the quote.1
ScottyZ
1That is, I agree with the general idea, although it may be tough to get a precise handle on exactly how much better "much better" is.
1. Getting 2:1 on a coinfip. Our EV is 0.5 stacks. This is equialent to getting all-in even money as a 3:1 favourite. (we set x=1 and solve for p in p(x+1) - 1 = 0.5) I think we can all agree it would be a terrible mistake to fold a 3:1 favourite in almost all situations. This is better than getting all-in with something like AK vs AQ.
2. Getting 1.5:1 on a coinflip our EV is 0.25 stacks. This is equivalent to getting all-in as 62.5% favourite, or 5:3. Maybe you can pass on such a situation early in a tournament but in the mid-latter stages you should be happy to get your money in so good. This seems to support taking 1.5:1 on a coinflip as a fairly automatic decision in most tournament situations.
Disclaimers:
1. It is hard to know when you are a coinflip EV-wise. I'm not telling you to call an all-in with 22 getting 1.5-1 because he might have AK , since he could easily have a big pair and your EV is much worse than 50-50 against his range.
2. I think everyone understands this but I'll state it anyways: It does not matter if you are on a draw or you have the best hand at the moment. All that matters is p, your probability of winning. Statements such as "it is wrong to go all-in on a draw " are just wrong, though they are used commonly to mean "going all-in on a draw (typically a flush or OESD which is a dog) getting incorrect odds is wrong". No one is going to disagree with that.
Now a sample play based on what we've learned. Blinds 200/400 you are the BB and have 4000 after posting. there are 3 limpers and the SB completes. You look down and find 99. You have no reason to believe anyone is slowplaying a big pair. What do you do?
A: You go all-in. If you are called you are likely a coinflip at worst and you may well get called by a smaller pair hoping he's a coinflip getting 1.5:1. In fact you have excellent fold equity here so the decision isn't even close. I would make this play with pairs down to 77 automatically, and possibly even with smaller pairs depending on my opponents.
Last night for example I flopped middle pair and a flush draw on a nonstraight draw board. I bet approx. the pot and my opponent pushed all-in. At the time we both had huge stacks and no blind pressure. I was certain that I was up against top pair at worst...wrong answer...I called for the same reasoning Sirwatts is using above only to find out I was against top set. Needless to say my fourteen outer turned into a 6 outer with many redraws agaist me if I did turn my flush.
So just be careful not to assume you have a coin flip.
At the time I saw the quote I basically stop reading there.
Sorry.
That's a tough break, unless your stack was really deep it would be hard to fold since you would likely be getting huge odds and it's pretty unlikely he has a set. That's poker as they say.
Coinflip -- a situation in which the odds or winniner are about 50/50 AND AND AND the pot odds are about 1 to 1.
Positive EV situation that CANNOT be passed up on if you are going to have a lot of success at poker -- Being about 50/50 to win the pot, but getting 2-1 on your money.
AND AND AND me.
ScottyZ