The professor is out of line

[somapopper]

Sorry if this has already been discussed.

I was reading this Howard Lederer article, where he breaks a 9 on the last draw, and then calls a river bet with a baby pair (3s). His reasoning is his opponent may be on "a complete snow" and the pot is offering him 10.5 to 1.

Howard doesn't come out and fully explain this, but I think he's thinking his opponent might have a hand like 2727x, or something of that ilk.

I just don't buy it. With a hand where you're using up a lot of outs like that, a snow seems much more likely to take the form of drawing one and then standing pat on the second round. Plus, it seems like the guy might have a pair of 2s and another low, I don't know. The call just seems loose to me, and I'd like to hear what others think. Link is below.

http://www.howardlederer.com/howard-lederer-poker-article2.html

[Chris Daddy Cool]

i'll just say this about calling a bet with a pair.

if you miss on the river, don't be afraid to bet because theres a good chance he missed too.

[fnord_too]

Breaking and calling a bet from a pat hand with a pair is kind of silly though. I did not read the link, so I don't know the action, but I think if you are going to play the river raising is usually superior there. Also, 10.5:1 means that villain is snowing almost 10% of the time, that seems incredibly excessive. Hell, maybe I should go read the article.

Edit - after reading the hand betting is much better than check calling, c/ring is very dangerous, since he will likely check through any hand that would fold to a c/r, but pretty hot if you know he would bet all his crappy made hands like J high.

[fnord_too]

Ok, I just read the hand in question. I think he should have stuck with the 9 and paid off if the river went check check bet fold. Honestly, that does not even seem close to me. Maybe that game plays way differently than what I am used to, but there are 9.5BB in the pot going into the river. Some random observations.

1. He knows sb draws, hes a favorite over that hand.
2. If button has a pat 8 or better he looses another BB 100% of the time
3. If button breaks, HL is still a favorite over two 1 card draws.
4. There are LOTS of worse hands a steamer can be incorrectly playing pat here.
5. He has killed 5 of the 32 cards less than 8, and his 9 is a 97.
6. The hand is 3 way, so more low cards are dead than the average HU hand (espcially since the blind called two pre flop then drew 2, and has improved.)

If he had say a pair, he is certainly getting correct odds to call and try to hit his hand. If he is going to pay off anyway, though, I think it is much more +EV to call and check it down. I don't have the time to really do a full EV calculation here, but I think HL played this hand horribly on the turn. I don't think his alternate line of him c/ring the turn is any good, either, if he truly believes that villain is on an 8 or better or snow.

I could be completely off base here, but this hand seems awful. He's up against a horrible button, but is playing in a way that does not punish button nearly enough.

[dibbs]

This hand hasn't ever made a lot of sense to me, but there's a chance his game may play pretty different from mine.

[timprov]

Mark made a good comment about this hand (and used the method against me) in our headsup match. I'll let him talk about why, but drawing and calling regardless of what you catch is certainly a good play HU. The presence of the SB might lead to standing pat being better, I'm not sure.

[MarkGritter]

[ QUOTE ]
Mark made a good comment about this hand (and used the method against me) in our headsup match. I'll let him talk about why, but drawing and calling regardless of what you catch is certainly a good play HU. The presence of the SB might lead to standing pat being better, I'm not sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

I may have forgotten the insight already. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Here is the hand, I think, #70 in our match.

1st round: Hero gets 4679T in the small blind, raises. Villian calls.

2nd round: Villian draws 3, hero draws a 2 for his T. Villian checks, hero bets.

3rd round: Villian draws 2, hero stands pat. Villian checks, hero bets, Villian raises.

4th round: Hero draws one (ditching the 9), Villian bets, Hero calls.

If Hero stands pat here he is relying only upon Villian having no hand. If Hero breaks and calls with anything, he has two ways of winning: Villian is on a complete bluff or Villian has a decent hand but Hero improves.

(FWIW, I caught the 8, and T had 22Axx.)

What does the equity look like here? If Villian has a legitimate draw he is only about 10% to have made an 8 or better. Suppose Villian also bluffs his worst 10% (which may not be a particularly good percentage...)

From my draw calculator, worst 10% looks to be a pair of sixes or worse if Villian had 723. Worst 30% is a pair of deuces or better. Best 10% is 97532 or better.

In this case, half the time Villian has something that any small pair or better can beat. There are 6BB in the pot. Calling two more bets to win 7BB is clearly OK with anything but paired 7s. Thus only 3 outs lose (against this specific opponent.)

The other half of the time standing pat has 0 equity. We likely have more than 3 outs, perhaps as many as 10. Hitting an extremely strong hand (#2 in this case) will likely win us an extra bet.

So, against an opponent who is 50% likely to be bluffing, with his worst hands, drawing and calling with anything but the worst pair looks good. But this case is arranged so that Hero's equity in the case of a bluff is virtually unchanged by drawing.

Suppose Villian takes an alternate approach and raises only his top 20%. Then we are being 'bluffed' 10% of the time again, but our equity against 976 to T-high is much lower with one draw.

We have 6-7 outs to catch a 7, and most likely win against villian's top 10%. We can catch an 8, 9, and sometimes T (5-7 + 2 additional outs) against the bluffs and also win against his next 10%. With a 40-card stub:

50% villian is legit, we have 15%-17% equity.
50% villian is bluffing, we have 32%-37% equity.

Total equity of standing pat = 50%.
Total equity of drawing = 23%-27%.

It is unlikely than an extra bet on the river will make up for breaking here. So, against this opponent you are better off calling the pot down.

Of course, in both these cases Villian is being rather foolish and probably bluffing way too often. He is risking 3BB to win a pot of only 4BB.

[somapopper]

I need a little more time to digest this, but fwiw, this is a really awesome post. I do think though that this is a very different situation from the HL post as the 2 card draw gives you additional information.

This may be a dense question, but why would villian ever choose to bluff his worst 10%? It seems so much more EV for him to bluff his 10-20% range you give in the second example (equity in scenario 1 is a little short of 65%, right?). I understand that villian's thinking may be "I can't win with this crap, so might as well try to take it down here," but doing it with a q is so much better than a big pair if he's trying to maintain a ratio of bluffs to real hands. If he's bluffing far too often with a wide range, then staying pat and calling down is obviously correct.

[timprov]

[ QUOTE ]

This may be a dense question, but why would villian ever choose to bluff his worst 10%? It seems so much more EV for him to bluff his 10-20% range you give in the second example (equity in scenario 1 is a little short of 65%, right?). I understand that villian's thinking may be "I can't win with this crap, so might as well try to take it down here," but doing it with a q is so much better than a big pair if he's trying to maintain a ratio of bluffs to real hands. If he's bluffing far too often with a wide range, then staying pat and calling down is obviously correct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Practically, it isn't so much his worst 10% as somewhere in the middle. Most of the time snowing is done when you have several key cards (especially deuces and sevens), and sometimes that means you have a really bad hand. In our HU match we each showed low straights once, and I showed a full house (2s full of 4s). So a player who's going to snow with trip deuces is in some trouble to this.

After reading the Lederer article and thinking about it for a while, I've started dropping paired key cards in my snows. Since you're usually drawing at least once anyway, it's pretty easy to discard two of the three deuces you're dealt on the first round. This gives you a few extra possibilities if you get caught with a draw left as well.