Rate these situations

Rate the following "mistakes" below in the order of cost per instance or overall (your choice). Some of the might not be "mistakes".

All pertain to full game limit holdem unless otherwise stated:

Assume normal typical conditions, whatever that means. Basically, don't concoct some situation where a certain thing would be right/wrong. Yes, and of course it depends.


1)UTG with AQoff. Calling with as opposed to raising.


2)In the big blind, all fold to agressive small blind who raises. You call without looking at your cards.


3)You open raise from the cutoff, small blind reraises, you call, two of you see the flop for three bets. The flop comes, small blind bets, you call without looking at the flop. (Yes, I intentionally did not say your hand or the flop).


4)OverCalling both a bettor and a caller with a set(u have the set), when the obvious flush card gets there on the river. The pot is about 20 big bets.


5)On the button with A2o. Three betting cutoff who open raised first in. Cutoff plays 80% of his hands with a raise. Blinds are loose.


6)Using a stop loss when bankroll is not an issue and all is well otherwise.


Thanks. Whats the biggest "mistake"; which is the least?


regards

I particularly don't like 2, 3 & 5

6


5 (i.e. assuming that he raises 80% of the hands that he plays as opposed to he plays 80% of all hands and he always raises with every one of them).


4


1


3


2


Biggest mistake to smallest mistake. If I am way off, it wouldn't surprise me /images/smile.gif

I would guess (and guess is the operative word) 6-5-4-3-2-1 most costly to least costly. I'll leave it for others to elaborate.


On 5, I assume you are saying cutoff raises 80% of the time he plays, not cutoff plays 80% of his hands and always raises with them. On 4, I know you cautioned against the "it depends" defense, but it does depend on how "obvious" the flush card is.

backdoor,


I'll rate this in cost per instance and forget frequency of occurance


"1)UTG with AQoff. Calling with as opposed to raising."


A fairly large mistake unless you are doing it with just this hand (while raising with AK and AJ) with opponents who don't have enough time to catch on.


"2)In the big blind, all fold to agressive small blind who raises. You call without looking at your cards."


Since you should almost always at least call getting 3 to 1 with position it may not be a mistake at all. Is it better to pretend you are looking or let him know you are not looking?


"3)You open raise from the cutoff, small blind reraises, you call, two of you see the flop for three bets. The flop comes, small blind bets, you call without looking at the flop. (Yes, I intentionally did not say your hand or the flop)."


Not a big mistake as long as the small blind doesn't know you haven't looked at the flop.


"4)OverCalling both a bettor and a caller with a set(u have the set), when the obvious flush card gets there on the river. The pot is about 20 big bets."


This depends on the previous action but it probably is not much of a mistake.


"5)On the button with A2o. Three betting cutoff who open raised first in. Cutoff plays 80% of his hands with a raise. Blinds are loose."


Probaby not a mistake since the cutoff will usually have a much worse hand if he raises this often.


"6)Using a stop loss when bankroll is not an issue and all is well otherwise. "


Not a big mistake for most of us as long as the stop loss is around 100 small bets.


Regards,


Rick

Soopah situational exam. Very tough to rank them because they are so close. On a scale of 1-100, I'd say these six decisions rank in a cluster of about 20 points, not much seperation. But here goes anyhow, ranked 1-6 with 6 a being the worst.


Well, phooey, I tried, and couldn't come up with viable reasons to rate any of them above or below any others. Most clever of you.


Tommy

Biggest mistake is 6, using a stop loss when bankroll is big enough and all is well.


In terms of the smallest mistake, it's a very close race, but I'm going to give the prize to limping UTG with AQo. Not much of a mistake here, depending on game conditions of course.


natedogg

Well, 6 basically costs you your hourly rate, and all the rest, taken together even, comprise a small fraction of your hourly rate. On the other hand, 6 may be a prudent measure -- but I don't think 5 ever would be...

Here's a contrarian view: Number 3 is the only unequivocal mistake in my book.


1. I love this play and do it up to 50% of the time. Especially great to trap aggressive players who have KQ, AJ, AT. Easy to get away from hand post-flop if you don't hit and there's heavy action (not that you shouldn't anyway, it's just easier on the psyche)


2. Should be an almost automatic call (with the occasional raise thrown-in) if SB raises every time, otherwise raise or call depending on hand strength. Never fold to a SB who raises more than 20% of the time heads-up.


3. If you have a strong hand, not a bad time to slow-play. If not, you are getting not bad pot odds to see one more card. The weakness here is when you got an OK hand, you won't know where you stand on the turn. Also you won't be able to play for a free card.


4. Huge pot odds. You better be making this call fairly often or you are way too easy to bluff out of a pot. I'll be representing a flush to you almost every time with top pair or two pair.


5. I'd do it about 1/3 of the time, fold 1/3, call 1/3. It's an essentially neutral starting position, so if you're better than the other guys, why not go for it every once in a while.


6. I play for the competitive challenge (i.e. fun) and my win rate is just how I keep score (and make my tournament buy-ins). I almost always quit if I go down two racks. I am even more inclined to do so if the game is full of weak players. I just get infuriated making mistakes or taking bad beats and even though I am disciplined enough not to let it effect my play, it is no longer enjoyable. Since I will only pursue the game over time if I enjoy it, quitting when I am down two racks in a session should actually help maximize my poker earnings over time, though it lowers my expected win rate for that particular session. If I ever lost 4 racks in a 20-40 game, I'm not sure I'd have the stomach to play for a few months.

2,3,5,1,6,4. biggest mistake being 2 and down. 2,3,5 are really bad mistakes.

1)UTG with AQoff. Calling with as opposed to raising. In some situations, this might be preferred (when your raise will not narrow the field). Assuming a typical table, I'm going to say this is maybe a 0.2 SB error.


2)In the big blind, all fold to agressive small blind who raises. You call without looking at your cards. According to HPFAP21 you should be calling with the best 40% of your hands heads up against an overaggressive button. The pot odds are the same in this situation, except you have position, so you can maybe call with the best 50% of your hands. So call this a 0.5 SB error, assuming you will play well once the flop comes.


3)You open raise from the cutoff, small blind reraises, you call, two of you see the flop for three bets. The flop comes, small blind bets, you call without looking at the flop. (Yes, I intentionally did not say your hand or the flop). The SB's bet is automatic, so doesn't say much about his hand. You should probably call or raise if you made a pair or draw on the flop (say 1/3 to 2/5 of flops), as long as there wasn't an ace that missed you (1/6 of flops or so). So overall, you are probably calling or raising 1/3 of the time anyway, making the blind call something like an immediate 0.7 SB error.


4)OverCalling both a bettor and a caller with a set(u have the set), when the obvious flush card gets there on the river. The pot is about 20 big bets. It's quite likely this is not a mistake at all, given there are 20 BB at stake and you probably win more than 5% of the time. Assuming your chances of winning are actually 15% or so without knowing the context of prior betting, this is a +2.0 BB move.


5)On the button with A2o. Three betting cutoff who open raised first in. Cutoff plays 80% of his hands with a raise. Blinds are loose. Assume 1 blind calls on average, so you are committing 3 bets to a 9.5-10 bet pot. As long as you win 30% of the time, this isn't a bad move. With position, you can pick up most of the about 40% of flops that both of your opponents whiff (plus the times you actually make something) making this potentially a +EV move. However, with the possibility of being reraised preflop, being dominated, trapped by check raises, and the horrible pair value of your two, I'm going to back off some and call this a break even play (which makes it a bad move, since it certainly raises your SD).


6)Using a stop loss when bankroll is not an issue and all is well otherwise. For most very good players this is a -1BB error per hour early you quit. That would probably make this the largest error here, assuming you could otherwise have made your normal earn for a few hours more.


So, from worst to best, I rank these as 6 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 5 - 4.