Example of raising A A 2

[Ironman]

I want to say right up front that this example is NOT exactly like the example that Gooper had given, but it's darn close and the hand just happened half an hour ago.

Playing Ultimate Bet O8 1/2 Full Table the usual loose players

I'm in the big blind.

Dealt A /images/graemlins/club.gif 2 /images/graemlins/club.gif A /images/graemlins/spade.gif 5 /images/graemlins/heart.gif

So I do have what I would call a premium hand

2 folds, 2 calls, 1 fold, 2 calls, sb completes....I raise.

1 fold and 5 callers

Six players see the flop (6 big bets)

Flop (Q /images/graemlins/heart.gif K /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 6 /images/graemlins/spade.gif)

Now this flop certainly didn't hit me, but it probably didn't hit anyone else either.

check, I bet, 2 folds, 3 calls

down to 4 players (8 big bets)

Turn (Q /images/graemlins/club.gif)

It's checked through

River (3 /images/graemlins/club.gif)

sb checks, I bet, all fold

If I hadn't been agressive early, someone could have easily had a better hand.

I'm not crazy about the tentative play at the turn. Should I have bet there and tried to take it down there?

If I had this hand in a late position I would have felt more comfortable betting the turn.

What do you think?

Ironman Dave

[Alchemist]

I don't think they got out of your way because of your pre-flop aggression. My opinion is you were fortunate enough that none of your remaining opponents held any queens. I can't see them checking the turn behind you and folding the river if they did.

But I agree that your flop bet may have knocked out a Q which very well could have led to your winning the hand.

[Ironman]

Alchemist,

That is exactly what I was thinking. I didn't want someone with two outs or a long shot straight draw sticking around to the river without thinking they were behind.

Last night I played for about 3 hours. In that time I played 21% of the hands, so when I was in a hand, I tried to make the people drawing against me pay when they were behind.

It didn't work every time, but over the entire evening, I made money.

You are absolutely right of course about the river hands. If anyone has a queen, I'm dead. When I checked the turn and then bet when the Q came out on the river, I guess they put me on a queen instead of the pair of Aces.

In the end I think this is a hand that illustrates why you should be aggressive preflop with a good hand so that when the flop, turn, and river don't really hit you...you can still win the money in the end.

Or...it might just show that I got lucky...and I can live with that too. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Dave

[GooperMC]

[ QUOTE ]
but it's darn close and the hand just happened half an hour ago

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. The suited A changes the hand a lot.

[ QUOTE ]
If I hadn't been agressive early, someone could have easily had a better hand.

[/ QUOTE ]
You only knocked 1 person out of the hand preflop! I think that your flop bet only knocked out the people that missed everything and I think that your raise pre-flop may have actually decreased your chance of taking this down w/o a showdown. Why? Because your pre-flop raise increased the desire for everyone else to draw which means more cards will beat you.

I think that you played this hand well, however I also think that you got lucky because it looks like everyone else missed everything and I don't attribute that to your pre-flop raise.

I'm sorry if I sound like I am getting agressive (I don't mean to be). Maybe I will add some examples to my other post to try and clarify my point.

[Ironman]

Gooper, I didn't take it that way at all. I really appreciate your (and everyone else's) comments.

I know my level of play has jumped considerably since I started reading 2 + 2.

Thanks

[GooperMC]

[ QUOTE ]
Gooper, I didn't take it that way at all.

[/ QUOTE ]
Good. It is always hard to really emote on a forum so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't upsetting anyone off.

[ QUOTE ]

I know my level of play has jumped considerably since I started reading 2 + 2.

[/ QUOTE ]
Me too. This place has been a god send for my O8 game.

[Ribbo]

[ QUOTE ]

But I agree that your flop bet may have knocked out a Q which very well could have led to your winning the hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Winning or losing a hand is irrelevant, only your EV matters. Until you start to realise what that means, you won't ever develop good Omaha/8 skills. You raise AA2 to earn yourself EV, not to make players fold who would have beaten you otherwise, as it could just as easily make players who you will beat anyway fold and the players who beat you not fold.

[GooperMC]

[ QUOTE ]
not to make players fold who would have beaten you otherwise

[/ QUOTE ]
But making people fold is what makes AA2 rainbow more +EV. See chart:
http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sjaspan/poker/O8_AA2vsRandomHands.html

[Ribbo]

Statistics prove anything dont they? The problem is YOU'RE NOT PLAYING AGAINST RANDOM HANDS. Go back and try again.

[GooperMC]

[ QUOTE ]
Go back and try again

[/ QUOTE ]
Do I get to pass go and do I get to collect 200?

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is YOU'RE NOT PLAYING AGAINST RANDOM HANDS

[/ QUOTE ]
This is true even with non random hands. Go to twodimes, plug in a bunch of reasonable hands, and see for yourself.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
not to make players fold who would have beaten you otherwise

[/ QUOTE ]
But making people fold is what makes AA2 rainbow more +EV. See chart:
http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sjaspan/poker/O8_AA2vsRandomHands.html

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be interested in seeing some similar simulations with other hands besides AA2.

Or having Buzz post those simulations again if he's done them.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
Statistics prove anything dont they? The problem is YOU'RE NOT PLAYING AGAINST RANDOM HANDS. Go back and try again.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure it would make a lot of differnce, since real opponents will play better hands, but those better hands are more likely to be dominated.

sorta like in holdem how AK is a much better hand in general than 76s, but if you're up against AA, you'd rather have 76s.

--Greg

[Ribbo]

You are making several terrible terrible assumptions. The first one is that each opponent will go to the showdown chasing all their non nut flush draws and backdoor flush draws from the flop. This simply isn't true. Against real life opponents you will find many folding weak flush draws post flop, because with a lot of players involved they can't like their draw. In real life on a board of 378 all clubs where you have Ac 2d you can bet and raise it up and quarter the other A2 more than they will quarter you. AA2 makes a lot more value in large handed games, especially because players fold good draws they think must be beaten.
And at the end of the day, which is the only point that matters, raising AA2 is always preferred over not raising it, as it earns you more money by doing so.

[GooperMC]

I re-issue the challenge but I am even willing to do the work now because this type of stuff interests me (I know I am a little masochistic). Give me a reasonable board (any street), I will plug in reasonable hands and I will show you why you want your opponents to fold instead of school.

As long as we are talking about limit I am confident that you will make more money against fewer opponents.

[GooperMC]

I can do them if you want or I can email you the program that I am doing them with. It doesn’t have as much functionality as wilsons but it is freeware so its value / price is infinitely better then wilsons:). You do have to have java installed to run it though.

All I ask is if you run any interesting sims post them so I can take a look.

[gergery]

Try a simple example.

Draw out a graph with an X and Y axis. Label the Y axis “strength of hand”. Label the X-axis “Liklihood to improve”

Take AA2x rainbow. At point 0 on the x-axis it has value has made pair. As you move to the right on the X-axis, the line will jump up as your hand makes aces-up, then it jumps up again as it makes trips, and then for a boat. Drawing this graphically looks like a stair-step pattern.

Then take a line and draw it across the page horizontally, based on number of opponents. With 1 opponent, the line maybe bisects the first stair, low down. This is because your over-pair is likely to hold up for high unimproved. Against 4 opponents, maybe the line bisects the 3rd stair, because vs. 4 players your overpair is not likely to hold up, but trips will often win.

Then multiply out value you get for different points on the curve (bets from opponents), times the frequency your hand will improve, give your opponents a specific range of hands, and you could get a theoretically optimal number of opponents using differential calculus if you could specify the weighted likelihood of hands and their value.

This won’t matter whether you are talking about just the flop, or going to the river --- over many iterations, your opponents will be able to continue on the flop with a certain percentage of their hands. Sometimes they’ll have to fold the best hand (but then you won’t make much), but sometimes they’ll have good implied odds and take half or more of the pot away from you (you lose lots).

Net, you want to raise with AA2, you do so to maximize your EV, and your EV is maximized when some hands call, but others with implied odds fold, because the weighed likelihood of the following ---- winning a small amount unimproved times winning a medium amount needing some improvement times winning a large amount but needing a lot of improvement ---- favors you MOST when it’s a smaller amounts not needing as much improvement.

--Greg

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
not to make players fold who would have beaten you otherwise

[/ QUOTE ]
But making people fold is what makes AA2 rainbow more +EV. See chart:
http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sjaspan/poker/O8_AA2vsRandomHands.html

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree with your interpretation of that chart.

Let me copy it for ease of viewing:

<ul type="square">Playing AA29 vs a different amount of random hands

Note that these numbers are gathered via a monte carlo approximation so they are not exact but they should be very close.
Num Opponents Pot Equity Expected Value
1 .6992 .1992
2 .4555 .1222
3 .3565 .1065
4 .2940 .0940
5 .2546 .0879
6 .2292 .0863
7 .2108 .0858
8 .1956 .0844
[/list]
The amount in the right column is the advantage over par. For example, with 8 opponents, par is 0.1111. If you actually get 0.1956, that is 0.1956-0.1111 = .0845 over par.

The amount on the right keeps decreasing, which looks like you don't want more opponents. However, that should be multiplied by the size of the pot, which is larger when you have more opponents. When you multiply 0.0844 by a pot of size 9, you get a more substantial equity advantage than when you multiply 0.1992 by a pot of size 2.

Here is how much you get back for every $1 you put in against n random opponents when you have AA29r:

1 $1.3984
2 $1.3666
3 $1.426
4 $1.47
5 $1.5274
6 $1.6041
7 $1.6864
8 $1.7596

That suggests that when you have AA29, you should be happier when you have more opponents with random hands. The one exception is that you would prefer to have 1 opponent rather than 2.

[GooperMC]

good point. Of course there are other reasons to raise AA2 but you bring up a very valid point so I am going to have to this about this more.

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
I do have what I would call a premium hand

[/ QUOTE ]

Dave - Agreed. AA25s is a premium starting hand.

[ QUOTE ]
Now this flop certainly didn't hit me,

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

[ QUOTE ]
but it probably didn't hit anyone else either.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're making a fundamental mistake with this assumption. It might not have hit anyone, but I think with five opponents seeing the flop there's a very good chance that it did. What I mean is probably at least one of your opponents probably can use at least two of the flop cards to make a full house or high straight. Somebody might have AKQJ, KKQJ, KQQJ, KQJT, or just A2KK or A3QQ - or even A266. And all those hands fit this flop better than yours.

You had a premium starting hand but you missed the flop. What I mean is you don't meet the bare minimun standard of fitting the flop: you can't use two of the flop cards to make a very good five card hand on the river. And at least one of your opponents very likely can.

Your premium starting hand has turned sour. That often happens in Omaha-8.

[ QUOTE ]
If I hadn't been agressive early, someone could have easily had a better hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's true. Your aggressive play may have knocked out someone who would otherwise have beaten you.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not crazy about the tentative play at the turn. Should I have bet there and tried to take it down there?

[/ QUOTE ]

No opinion. With five opponents seeing the flop, there's a pretty fair chance of running into an opponent with AKQJ, KKQJ, KQQJ, KQJT, or just A2KK or A2QK - or even A266 or A3QQ - and that doesn't exhaust the list of possible hands that fit this flop and turn better than yours does. As it turns out, you're not up against any of those hands and you take down the pot with your aces. Your flop bet might have knocked out an opponent with a single queen, and if so, worked well for you this time.

[ QUOTE ]
If I had this hand in a late position I would have felt more comfortable betting the turn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
You raise AA2 to earn yourself EV

[/ QUOTE ]

Ribs - I don't understand what you mean.

How does raising "earn yourself EV"?

By "EV" do you mean "expected value"? If not, what does the acronym "EV" stand for?

In any event, how are you measuring EV?

I'm not attacking you. I'm trying to understand what you mean.

Buzz

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
Or having Buzz post those simulations again if he's done them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Greg - I'm not sure what simulations you want. I have a bunch of stuff in my simulations folder and will be running some more syms today (this afternoon - it's about four a.m. here now). If there's anything you'd like run, let me know. I'll check this computer to see if there's anything before I leave. (I love this Mac that I have home here, but I run the syms on a fast Dell in a friend's office).

I can run various AA2X hands, and against various numbers of opponents with random hands, or with some random cards, if there's something specific you want to know. I'm happy to work with you on it.

However, it's pretty hard to say from the syms I run what the effect of raising or not will be on the opponents we face.

Buzz

[Buzz]

pzhon - Working independently before I read your post, I came to about the same conclusions as you.

Buzz