KTs call it down?

[Danenania]

Villain in this hand is loose-aggressive preflop. Not much of a read on him postflop although he seemed at least somewhat aggressive.

Party Poker 5/10 Hold'em (6 max, 5 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

Preflop: Hero is MP with T/images/graemlins/spade.gif, K/images/graemlins/spade.gif. UTG posts a blind of $5.
<font color="CC3333">Hero raises</font>, <font color="666666">2 folds</font>, <font color="CC3333">BB 3-bets</font>, <font color="666666">1 fold</font>, Hero calls.

Flop: (7 SB) 4/images/graemlins/club.gif, Q/images/graemlins/spade.gif, T/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="blue">(2 players)</font>
<font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, <font color="CC3333">Hero raises</font>, <font color="CC3333">BB 3-bets</font>, Hero calls.

Turn: (6.50 BB) 8/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="blue">(2 players)</font>
<font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, Hero calls.

River: (8.50 BB) 7/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="blue">(2 players)</font>
<font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, Hero calls.

Final Pot: 10.50 BB

How aggressive of an opponent do you need to call this down?

[J.R.]

I don't care for the flop raise when you will end up calling anyway unless you expect this person to 3-bet out of position with a worse hand quite frequently (which isn't common IMO), why not wait until the turn and work from there? The flop raise may slow him down when behind and cost you more when you are wrong.

How loose and aggresisve was your oppoent, and had you seen this person 3-bet much, as many 6-maxers are aggressive raisers but much more tentative 3-bettors.


"How aggressive of an opponent do you need to call this down?"

Fairly aggressive, although there are good players who are fairly aggresisve but do so in favorable spots (typically in position), and then there are much more indiscriminate aggressors who will have similar aggression factors to the good player but against whom I would be much more inclined to call down against.

[DyessMan89]

If you werent against the BB (whos in bad position) I would have actually folded pre-flop.

Anyways, since he is in bad position, his raise pre-flop indicates that he has a strong hand. He caught the queen IMO, due to his pre-flop move and his agression post-flop. I would put him on AQ.

[fsuplayer]

If you werent against the BB (whos in bad position) I would have actually folded pre-flop.

Im sorry, what?

[DyessMan89]

Nevermind, didnt realize this was 5-handed.

[Schneids]

Let the LAG keep bluffing (if he is) and call down.

What does raising on the flop accomplish?

[Danenania]

Good point. I think what happened is I forgot my read at first and played him like a typical opponent on the flop, then remembered it again when I called him on the turn and river. Having a seamless plan is so important.

Results: villain flips AQ and MHING.

[kiddo]

[ QUOTE ]
Let the LAG keep bluffing (if he is) and call down.

What does raising on the flop accomplish?


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, often my plan when someone catches me with a tiny preflopraise and I hit a bit of the flop. It will cost you 5SB to call, and pot will be 16SB, its ok against a lot of players, not only LAGs.

Today I twice raised preflop with something like A5s and got 3bet (by different players) from blinds. Headsup on flop that is A-rag-rag. They both bet all way and I called all way. First hand against KK, second against QQ. If I am behind I lose minimum and if ahead I win maiximum.

[naphand]

You lose exactly the same amount of $$ when behind as you win when ahead, plus the SB. So to make this play +EV you have to be winning around 50%. It's not a case of "winning the max" and "losing the least", it's a case of making the same money in a situation where you have to be confident you are winning at least 50% of the time.

[J.R.]

"You lose exactly the same amount of $$ when behind as you win when ahead"

If you are talking about kiddo's Ax getting 3-bet preflop by one of the blinds and flopping Axx example, don't you lose 5 sbs (1sb on flop, 1 BB on turn and river) when behind, but win 11 sbs (6 in the pot preflop [plus either the value of the small blind if the big blind 3-bet, or the value of the big blind if the player in the small blind 3-bet], 1 sb one flop and 1 BB on the turn and river) when ahead?

[naphand]

Kiddo makes this point already (the "It will cost you 5SB to call, and pot will be 16SB"), which I do not disagree with.

I was thinking post-flop, when a strategy of calling down denies the possibility of maximising or minimising your wins/losses. You win as much as you lose in a 50:50 scenario (barring any other trickery). I don't think it is a question of max/min, it seems more like "I win this more than 5/16 times (plus I might have improved by the River and extract an extra BB)", which is different mathematically, surely?

[J.R.]

'when a strategy of calling down denies the possibility of maximising or minimising your wins/losses."

But the more frequently your opponent will fold a worse hand when you raise and 3-bet a better hand when you raise, the more the call down strategy approaches both maximizing wins and minimizing losses, and given the dead money in the pot, is there any other way to play?

[naphand]

I think it is the terminology Kiddo uses that is confusing. While calling down could be argued as "losing the least to see SD when behind" it cannot equally be argued that it also wins him the most when ahead. This cannot be true for the same hand.

In terms of EV, which is really the question here, then it simply maximises EV by playing a straight percentage game, or "I am ahead often enough to justify this". By employing the calling strategy against an aggressive player who will bluff or bet a weaker hand through, you do indeed pick up more bets. But you don't actively maximise extra bets when you are ahead, this will only happen when you improve by the River and can raise there for 1 extra BB (less, as he clearly folds his bluffs). You are sacrificing any extra BB you can win when ahead (raising Turn or River) by reaping the benefit of losing less when behind and picking off his bluffs/weaker pairs. Strictly speaking, it minimises the losing hands, maximises the bluff hands, but potentially loses a BB on the hands you are ahead against a hand your opponent will call a raise with.

[J.R.]

While calling down could be argued as "losing the least to see SD when behind" it cannot equally be argued that it also wins him the most when ahead. This cannot be true for the same hand.

Yeah, because he is either ahead or behind in this hand.

But isn't the idea to adopt the best strategy against the range of hands your opponent may have. If we had x-ray vision and knew what our opponent held we would optimally either maximize our value or minimize our loss in each specific hand (giving some consideration to the residual effect on future hands that comes from the way we play this hand).

But without this knowledge of our opponent's specific hand (but with some notion of the range of hands our opponent holds), aren't we left to adopt the best strategy against our opponent's range of hands, which we can't differentiate from one another (or specficially identify) based on our opponents preflop play and flop bet?

One can fashion an optimal strategy against a range of hands that both maximizes our edge when ahead and minimizes the loss when behind. If the pot were zero we would fold much more but because of the pot size we must be willing to accept a greater margin for error and endure a greater risk of putting bets into the pot when we may be behind because we can't tell from our opponent's betting pattern whether they have a hand that beats us or not this time, but we know on average, against our opponent's range of hands that we come out ahead getting to the showdown because of the dead money in the pot.

[kiddo]

[ QUOTE ]
Strictly speaking, (1) it minimises the losing hands, (2) maximises the bluff hands, (3) but potentially loses a BB on the hands you are ahead against a hand your opponent will call a raise with.

[/ QUOTE ]

We all agree on (1): We cant make him fold a better hand, we probably lose minimum if he is ahead by calling.

And we agree on (2): As long as he is bluffing we should just call.

But (3) is more problematic. We are putting him on a range of hands (as J.R. says) and the reason we called flop and turn was because we think (1) and (2) happens often enough to make it a bad move raising hoping he has (3) but will call all way. If this is right we have to call flop and turn.

What is left raising is river. But I think that against most players, if they 3bet preflop out of position and bet both flop, turn and river on a A-high board with no obvious draws they probably got the A and the best we can do is call.

Of course we are not maximizing our winnings excatly those times he would have called with a worse hand. But consdider the range of hands we are putting him on we can use a simple strategy: Call if he bets, bet if he checks.

[naphand]

I'm trying not to say anyone is wrong, because they are not wrong. I just find the terminology misleading, it paints a different picture of the reasoning behind the play, which is a little more complicated than first appears.

I think Kiddo/JR, you obviously know why this is the best play. I don't think we have a different understanding of why this play is made. But I do know if I was trying to learn from the post I might struggle to understand how I can be "losing the least and winning the most". These are two sides of the same coin, but this hand, in fact, displays 3 different possibilities; the behind, the bluff and the ahead (sounds like a spaghetti western... /images/graemlins/blush.gif). The bluff is, of course, just another form of the "ahead" but one that requires a different strategy.

I think saying I lose the least when behind (correct) and win the most when ahead is not really true. Like so many tricky hands, it is a balancing act between losing too much and winning more, we sacrifice a little here, to save more there. The net result is that we win the most, period.

The more I rattle on about this, the tighter my sphincter muscle gets, and the less I feel we are progressing. And Kiddo, I'm not attacking your English, which is far superior to my Swedish. The ahead/behind phrase is quite often used when describing this kind of situation, I just don't think, in this case, it describes it well enough.