Bluffed out of the pot....

Should I have called:


Game is texas holdem, limit $1-2

I'm in pos. 7 with AA before the flop


Player in pos. 3 (A) calls before the flop

Player in pos. 4 (B) calls before the flop

Player in pos. 6 (C) calls before the flop

Me (holding pocket aces) raise before the flop

Player A, B, C call


The flop: 268 unsuited

Player A, B, C check

Me: Bet

Player A: Call


B: Call


C: Fold


The turn 2-6-8: 8


Player A: Bet

Player B: Raise

Me: Fold (Guess I should have called here)

Player A: Call


The river 2-6-8-8: 6

Player A: check

Player B: Bet

Player A: call


player A: mucks

player B: shows K10 unsuited (wins with 2 pair


6-8, king kicker)


Should I have called on both the turn AND the river?????????

You will get more responses to hand play questions if you post in the small stakes forum (for future reference).


In Ray Zee's split poker poker, he describes marginal situations by saying "you have to play good poker". This is one of those situations. In your average weak, loose 1-2 game, that is not a tough fold. It is probably "the standard play". However, this time, it was decidedly incorrect. You need to examine the other information you had about the players to see if you could have figured this out. Were they mainiacs? Did they raise with nothing a lot? Think to see if you missed anything that would hint at a strong possibility of this sort of situation. I cannot discern these things from reading the play of the hand, you must see them while at the table, that is, "play good poker". Also remember that odd things will sometimes happen. You may only have the best hand here 1/30 times, so it is a clear fold, you just happened to see that 1 in 30 this time. However, there may have been extra information that could have altered your decision. This is what you need to decide when determining if you made a mistake.

You may only have the best hand here 1/30 times, so it is a clear fold,


How did you come up with these odds? There are 46 unknown cards, 2 of them are 8's and there can be only one PP of 6's and one PP of 2's out. That is 4 hands possible that can be ahead of you right now. Add to these facts that many players will autobet when the top card pairs and I think you must at least call down here if not reraise the turn. Plus you have 2 aces as outs to improve the few times you are behind.


Now if you are check raised here it is somewhat more likely you are beat but still nowhere close to 30 to 1 against you. If anything you are probably only behind here less than 50% of the time. How many people have an 8 in their hand after a calling preflop raise.


Against most 1/2 players I am going to call this hand down 95% of the time. Unless you do know your opponnents quite well and believe they will play this way often should you ever consider folding.


Jimbo

1/30 had nothing to do with the actual hand, it was just an example of a number that would make it correct to fold, but is still large enough that you should see the unexpected result sometimes.


"There are 46 unknown cards, 2 of them are 8's and there can be only one PP of 6's and one PP of 2's out. That is 4 hands possible that can be ahead of you right now. "


This is very wrong. For instance, K8, Q8, J8, T8, and 98 are 5 hands that are ahead of you right now. There are 8 ways to make each of these, BTW.


"Add to these facts that many players will autobet when the top card pairs and I think you must at least call down here if not reraise the turn"


Even if this is true, there was a raise too.


"Plus you have 2 aces as outs to improve the few times you are behind. "


And the times you are ahead there will usually be cards that can come that will beat you.


"How many people have an 8 in their hand after a calling preflop raise. "


First off - THIS IS 1-2!!!. Secondly, there were 3 limpers before he raised.


I stand by my response. The fold is player dependent. Against passive players, there is almost nothing they can have that you beat. It will cost at least 3 big bets to see the showdown, mabye more since you do not close the action. This is not a simple crying call situation. It is fairly likely that the raiser either has you beat or is on a stone cold bluff. The chance of the stone cold bluff is the main factor here, IMO.

Glenn,


You said "This is very wrong. For instance, K8, Q8, J8, T8, and 98 are 5 hands that are ahead of you right now. There are 8 ways to make each of these, BTW.

That is nothing more than gibberish Glenn. What kind of card deck are you using?

You may have overlooked the fact that all your examples, K8 Q8 J8 T8 98 ARE ALL ONE HAND, not 5 different hands. They all require an 8 to be a hand that beats your AA. Since there are only 2 more 8's available only 2 people maximum could have one. In addition as I said 22 or 66 beat you as well that is 4 possible hands to which you may be behind.


Certainly if I was a 30 to 1 dog I would fold but AA is not a 30 to one dog here unless you KNOW that one player has an 8. Then you are a 45 to 1 dog and in a jackpot game you would still call here hoping he had quads and you would catch an A as long as the jackpot was over $90.


Now I do agree that the fold is player dependent but you said you would be beat 30 times out of 31. I hardly find that realistic nor very good advice to No Problem.


Since you do like odds how about this? It is 46 to one that a player has one of the 2 remaining 8's in their hand with one card to come. Instead of being 30 to 1 against you it appears it is 46 to one in your favor that you have the best hand.


Jimbo

If your opponent had only 1 card, there would be a 2/46 chance it was an 8....that is 1/23.

Nevermind that you have 2 opponents and they have 2 cards each. So lets see...that's 4 cards and 1/23 are 8's. Doesn't look like 33:1 or 46:1. You also have additional information which certainly hints that someone may have an 8, 22, or 66. It is thus not strictly a random cards problem anyways, but since you are so bent on outmathing me...


K8, Q8, J8, etc... are distinct hands. They are not one hand. For lack of a better way to explain this... If bob has j8 you would say..."Jack eight, huh, nice hand Bob". If he had Q8 you would say "Queen eight, huh, nice hand Bob".


If you actually read my first post, or my second post, the 1/30 had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HAND IN QUESTION.


Listen if you call here, you call here, I call here or reraise in most of the games I play in. I fold in loose passive low-limit games.

It is not wrong for the reasons you mentioned, since they were based on faulty analysis. Arguing seems like it could be futile, but I'll keep trying.


-g-

Each player, at this point, can have one of 1081 different possible two card hands.


<UL>

AA 1 100

88 1 100

66 3 100

A8 4 100

K8 8 ?

Q8 8 ?

J8 8 ?

T8 8 ?

98 8 100

78 8 100

58 8 nil

48 8 nil

38 8 nil

68 6 nil

28 6 nil[/list]


That's 25 definite hands and 32 hands at, maybe, 50%. That's 41 hands out of, not 1081, but say 30% of that, 324.


Now, the tricky part is assigning % to betting action for those 324 hands for both players. If he bet out with all hands, very unlikely, the bettor is about 6.9-1 against having it.


<UL>

KK 6

QQ 6

JJ 6

TT 6

99 6

A6 6

56 6

67 6

9T 16[/list]


That's 64 plus some % of the 184 hands that are two over-cards to the board that he might bet out, listed below. Lets say, 16 of those, making 80 hands


<UL>

KQ 16

KJ 16

KT 16

K9 16

QJ 16

QT 16

Q9 16

JT 16

J9 16

AK 8

AQ 8

AJ 8

AT 8

A9 8[/list]


Or about 2-1, 80-41, against a better hand, using this range of hands and this strict betting system. If you give the other player the same range of hands, which maybe incorrect, it makes it close to even money.


MS Sunshine

Glenn,

Last try, in this case K8 Q8 J8 T8 and so on are all the same. That is why I referred to them as one hand. Why is this so hard to understand? The 2nd card is irrelevant, all that matters is if he has an 8 or a 22 or a 66. I state again, there are two 8's out and one possible 22 and 1 possible 66. That still leves only 4 possibilities that you are behind. If he has K8 or 38 it does not matter, only the 8. Do you agree or not?

I meant to correct my odds to 23 to 1 but typed in 33 to 1, my mistake and apologies. At any rate in your first thread you said " ....Also remember that odd things will sometimes happen. You may only have the best hand here 1/30 times, so it is a clear fold, you just happened to see that 1 in 30 this time."...."In your average weak, loose 1-2 game, that is not a tough fold. It is probably "the standard play".


Now I interpreted the above statements to mean that you agreed that he should have folded his hand with the information available. If that is incorrect I apologize again but that is how it reads to me. If you did mean that and your 30 to 1 meant anything at all we still disagree. He should have at the very least called down and in most circumstances reraise the turn.


Jimbo

"That still leves only 4 possibilities that you are behind."


This is what I have a problem with. There are 46 cards left in the deck. That means there are 46*45/2 = 1035 distinct possible hands for an opponent. 3 of these are 22, 3 are 66. 89 hands contain an 8. The chance that at least 1 player holds an 8 is not 1/23, but is about 1/8 give or take. 1/23 is the chance that a given card is an 8 as I stated above. Obviously, your opponents have more than 1 card between them. There are 95 hands that beat him, not 4.


When I say "you MAY have a 1/30 chance" i meant "you may" as in a situation could occur where you only have the best hand 1/30 times, not that this is that situation. The point was that even when you act correctly you will still sometimes see the results deviate from what is expected. Obviously, in most games 1/30 is not close to the case. As I clarified in my second post, I meant that even when your decision is "easy" you will still occasionally see things that make that decision wrong, so a surprizing showdown does not *necessarily* make his decision wrong.


Like I said, in most games I call or raise here. However, in many passive low limit games, when someone raises, you'd better watch out. This is why many "good" players complain that they can't beat loose, easy games they can only beat good players. I don't know if the game he spoke of was passive, but he must have thought it so to make that fold. Basically I just told him to look for information he might have missed that would have told him otherwise. If there was none, then his decision may not have been incorrect.


If you try to put his (assumingly non-sophisticated) opponents on hands, there is little you can come up with that he beats besides a stone cold bluff. If someone was frisky enough to raise with a six here for instance, wouldn't they have likely bet or raised on the flop? The chance of a stone cold bluff by the raiser could certainly be high enough to warrant a call or reraise. However, it sometimes isn't. This is what he has to decide in the game, and what we are incapable of deciding having not been there.

yes

Now we are moving in a direction I can fathom Glenn. You insist there are 95 hands that beat him, I concur, but don't all of these hands consist of either a PP of 2's, PP of 6's or an 8? If there are 1081 possible hands out with 95 that beat you and one that ties you then 1080/95=11.368 to 1 that you have the best of it. Why ever fold the hand if you are unsure as to the calibre of your opponents? Particularly when you have good pot odds to continue?


Jimbo