Today's O8 hand- Calling a raise from the big blind

[lunchmeat]

For anybody following my O8 posts, I've decided to value raise pre-flop a lot less. With hands like AAQs3s, I probably do have the best hand before the flop (I'm playing .50/$1 at Party afterall), but since I'm only drawing to the nuts I'll fold without hesitation non-nut draws that the guys holding A4xx, and 24xx will call "in turn" with. So it doesn't seem worth it to put more money in the pot when I'm probably going to fold anyway. For the time being I'm not raising with anything less than a suited A2xx... but because of my opposition's love affair with the "call in turn" button, I'm jacking it up from any position. On to today's hand...

I played in my first aggressive game recently, and was faced with the dilemma of what to play from the big blind when the pot is raised. (I lied, there are two hands)

Hand 1) Two EP callers, MP raises, 2 LP calls. I call from big blind with Ks, Kc, Jh, 8h.
Flop: Kd, 6d, 6c
By the end no low was possible and I won a huge pot from two non-nut flushes. But was this a good call before the flop?

Hand 2) Raised UTG, 3 callers, I fold Ad, 9s, 8s, 3s in the big blind.
My reasoning was that, while my opponents are loose, even they probably wouldn't raise with anything worse than A3xx. So even if I do flop a 2, there's no guarantee I'm going to win all of the low.
The flop came A99, which would have ended up getting me the whole pot had I played, so I think this hand stuck in my head more than it probably should have.

So my big blind standards are looser than usual for high hands because the pot's bigger (I'd usually fold KKxx for a bet), but tighter for low hands since I'm likely facing the same hand or better. Is this a good strategy?

[ProvidencePete]

I think you should call in both of these spots. I don't think the chance of splitting the low when you make it is great enough to make a call unprofitable. I don't think this is a bad fold, I just think a call is better, especially if you play well after the flop.

[Phat Mack]

I don't know if you'll find this interesting, but here are a couple of sims on your hands:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre> Monte carlo simulation results from Poker Calculator 1.1.4.1
Omaha Hold'em hi/lo 8/b, 100000 combinations tested.

Hand 1:
Ad9s8s3s


Hand | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
High | 4298 | 5444 | 5351 | 5536 | 5479 | 5423 | 5474 | 5496 | 5374 |
Draw | 10456| 5371 | 5548 | 5516 | 5520 | 5497 | 5523 | 5554 | 5553 |
Lose | 72799| 81240| 81268| 81102| 81131| 81398| 81179| 81207| 81232|
Scoop | 3497 | 5042 | 4843 | 5020 | 4894 | 4824 | 4965 | 4879 | 4829 |
Low | 10176| 3391 | 3478 | 3328 | 3463 | 3402 | 3379 | 3366 | 3514 |
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
Win% | 13.3%|10.93%|10.77%|10.93%|10.88%|10.72%|10.89%|10 .81%|10.78%|
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+


Hand no.1:
High Card win: 0 draw: 0 lose: 3716
Pair win: 2 draw: 0 lose: 26457
Two Pair win: 655 draw: 201 lose: 39885
Three of a Kind win: 462 draw: 65 lose: 5998
Straight win: 1629 draw: 1564 lose: 8938
Flush win: 1356 draw: 0 lose: 3797
Full House win: 3257 draw: 348 lose: 1230
Quads win: 214 draw: 0 lose: 3
Straight Flush win: 220 draw: 0 lose: 3



</pre><hr /> <font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre> Monte carlo simulation results from Poker Calculator 1.1.4.1
Omaha Hold'em hi/lo 8/b, 100000 combinations tested.

Hand 1:
KsKcJh8h

Hand | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
High | 6453 | 5771 | 5942 | 5924 | 5680 | 5853 | 5943 | 5976 | 5936 |
Draw | 1461 | 6831 | 6808 | 6975 | 6845 | 6825 | 6735 | 6821 | 6669 |
Lose | 83700| 79284| 79093| 78955| 79376| 79111| 79152| 79027| 79170|
Scoop | 8386 | 3649 | 3735 | 3711 | 3655 | 3822 | 3707 | 3642 | 3713 |
Low | 0 | 5233 | 5143 | 5207 | 5216 | 5173 | 5224 | 5302 | 5281 |
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
Win% |12.17%|10.88%| 11.0%|11.05%|10.83%|11.06%|10.98%|11.01%|11.01%|
------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+


Hand no.1:
Pair win: 1 draw: 1 lose: 27040
Two Pair win: 255 draw: 28 lose: 35387
Three of a Kind win: 2727 draw: 53 lose: 10742
Straight win: 1918 draw: 1298 lose: 3689
Flush win: 2087 draw: 0 lose: 4035
Full House win: 6739 draw: 81 lose: 2804
Quads win: 997 draw: 0 lose: 3
Straight Flush win: 115 draw: 0 lose: 0

</pre><hr />

[iblucky4u2]

At .50/1 I would call with both of these hands, although I like hand 1 MUCH better than hand 2. The reason I like it and would call is if I hit I will probably scoop. I would even call if it gets re-raised and capped.
I would call hand 2 only because I am last to act and it will not cost me any more bets to see the flop. I would not call if there was a chance it would be 3 or 4 bets.

[Buzz]

Lunchmeat -
You flopped a full house for both of your sample hands. Usually one doesn’t have such good fortune, but it’s not at all rare to end up with a full house.

Any hand with four different ranks of cards has a 5.04% chance of ending up making a full house or quads.

With a pair in your hand, you have an 9.02+% chance (but 0.74+% of those involve trips on the board such that an opponent could have quads). Thus a better value to use is 8.30%. Roughly twice as often, when you have a pair in your hand, you end up with a set or trips (which could pose a problem).

The other problem with full houses is you don’t want to end up with a losing one. There are four general categories of full houses:
(a) full houses where a pair in your hand is lower than the board pair (underboats)
(b) full houses where a pair in your hand is higher than the board pair (overboats)
(c) full houses where you don’t have a pair in your hand.
(d) full houses where there are trips or quads on the board and you have a pair.

Clearly underboats are the least desired while overboats are the most highly prized. You avoid underboats by not playing starting hands with low or medium pairs. Sometimes, as with very playable hands like Ah3c2c2h, you can’t avoid a possible underboat.

Over boats can be beaten by quads - and you’re usually stuck when this happens - but it only happens something in the neighborhood of 5% at a very loose table. Thus something like nineteen times out of twenty at a very loose table your kings full of sixes will be a winner, with no opponent holding the requisite pair of sixes. Note that at a tight table, probably nobody is playing a pair of sixes as part of a starting hand. Also note that over boats can also be beaten by better overboats - but you can easily avoid being on the losing end of these occurances by avoiding starting hands with small or medium pairs.

When you don’t have a pair in your hand, you want one of your cards to match the pair on the board and the another card to match the highest card on the board. If so, you’ll beat (or tie) any boat but an overboat.

When there are trips on the board, you want the card to make quads. When you don’t have it, you don’t want anyone else to have it and you want the highest pair.

I’ve only seen quads on the board once, and somebody with a pair of kings beat somebody with a pair of tens on that occasion.

To avoid ending up with a losing full house, I tend to avoid playing pairs lower than queens, and I don’t even like queens much.

As to your starting hands, neither Ks-Kc-Jh-8h nor Ad-9s-8s-3s is a very good starting hand, in my humble opinion. Playing Ad-9s-8s-3s is generally trickier than playing Ks-Kc-Jh-8h, at least for me.

I’d regularly fold Ks-Kc-Jh-8h from early or middle position, but I might limp in from late position (cut off or button) if nobody behind me was expected to raise. When I missed the flop, then it would be easy to get away from the hand.

Ad-9s-8s-3s is the equivalent of Ad-9s-8s-2s when nobody has acey-deucy - and in a full game that’s about sixty per cent of the time. If you’re going to play the hand looking for the nuts on the flop, it’s easy to get away from this hand also - but if that’s how you’re going to play this hand - with no feel for the table - then I think you don’t play it at all.

Of the two hands, I think Ks-Kc-Jh-8h generally has a better chance to scoop, but Ad-9s-8s-3s gets a share of more pots. And since you can drive the betting with a low hand more often than with a high hand (not on either of these flops, of course), and, as a result, since sometimes you can end up scooping by default - against certain groups of opponents you might actually end up scooping with Ad-9s-8s-3s more often than with Ks-Kc-Jh-8h.

A-2-X-X is obviously the prime low driving hand, but if you have an exceptional feel for the table, sometimes you can drive with A-3-X-X. And I think that’s the only way you can play Ad-9s-8s-3s. You need to have an exceptional feel for the table, you need a flop where you can drive the betting, and you need to drive the betting.

So what about these hands from the small blind? I don’t think I’d generally call a raise with either one of them. With Ks-Kc-Jh-8h, you’re not going to hit the flop often enough to continue play after the flop, and when you do hit the flop you won’t get enough action to justify the times when you miss the flop. With Ad-9s-8s-3s, the danger of the raise having come from an opponent with A-2-X-X is simply too great. Before the flop, Ad-9s-8s-3s is total crap when an opponent has A-2-X-X.

I might or might not play either of these hands from the unraised small blind, but if I played either of them, it would be more for image than because of the inherent value of either hand as a starting hand.

Just my opinion.

Now I have to go spend some time studying Mack's sims. Maybe they'll change my mind.

Buzz

[lunchmeat]

Great info. Very interesting.

I'm kind of a helmut when it comes to math, but it looks to me like since the sims show that both of these hands are (slightly) profitable... By virtue of it being a "Monte Carlo" simulation, I'm assuming that the program runs all hands to the river against a 10 handed table.

In one sense, it seems like both hands would be more profitable than the sims indicate, because it is easy to toss hands like straight draws when a flush draw is out... but on the other hand the opponenets are, on rare occasion, folding garbage hands; so the sims may be too generous with in their evaluations of the hand.

Anyway, thanks for running the sims. They really have got me thinking about the less obvious ways a hand can win.

[lunchmeat]

You are the man, Buzz.

The percentages you gave of catching boats are very helpful to me, as I still haven't gotten to know the O8 odds very well at all (I know that learning hold 'em odds played a big part in increasing my profit in that game)...

I definitely wouldn't call a raise with either of the two hands from the small blind, and I probably wouldn't call in late position for 1 bet even if the pot was big because I don't know if I'm good enough yet to play marginal hands profitably. I'm beginning to think that marginal hands are much easier to play in O8 than in hold 'em though, because in O8 you either hit your hand or you don't, so the play is much more clear-cut. But that's another matter.

From the big blind (where I was dealt each of the two), I'm starting to think the A3xx hand is even worse than I first thought because, as you said, a raise screams A2, so at least one of the cards I need is probably in an opponent's hand. With the KKxx hand, as I stated the first time around, the pot is huge so it seems worth a call. And everyone's comments have reinforced my belief that this type of hand is profitable in this situation.

[Phat Mack]

By virtue of it being a "Monte Carlo" simulation, I'm assuming that the program runs all hands to the river against a 10 handed table.

Right, except it was only a 9-handed table.

[Buzz]

"The percentages you gave of catching boats are very helpful to me, as I still haven't gotten to know the O8 odds very well at all (I know that learning hold 'em odds played a big part in increasing my profit in that game)..."

Lunchmeat - Thanks. The first value, 5.04% when you don't have a pair is basically the same value shown in Mack's first sim (5.05%). Alas, the second value is off a bit from Mack's second sim. Some of the full houses that would show in Mack's second simulation would involve a board with three or four of a kind. I didn't include those situations since an entirely different type of reasoning would be involved. but even considering that, I need to recheck my calculations.

But, yeah, any starting hand can make a full house. However, that's not a good enough reason to play a hand.

"I'm beginning to think that marginal hands are much easier to play in O8 than in hold 'em though, because in O8 you either hit your hand or you don't, so the play is much more clear-cut. But that's another matter."

Well... it's not always clear cut. When you start with Ah3h4sKs and the flop is 6h7s8c, have you hit your hand or not? (If nobody has A-2-X-X, then you have the nut low with counterfeit protection, plus back door flush draws. But you're in trouble if an opponent has A-2-3-X, or even A-2-X-Y. But you certainly should be playing that hand (Ah3h4sKs), and to fold it whenever the flop doesn't hit you squarely is to give away too much of the value of the hand. It's maybe not horrid advice to suggest a beginner should fold when not flopping the nuts or a good draw to the nuts, but in truth if you can read your opponents, you can profitably play hands which are not the nuts. And I think you have to do that (win without the nuts) to be very successful playing Omaha-8.

"From the big blind (where I was dealt each of the two), I'm starting to think the A3xx hand is even worse than I first thought because, as you said, a raise screams A2..."

I like your phraseology ("screams"). Depends on who raises, but acey-deucy is always a strong possibility, especially at low limits.

"With the KKxx hand, as I stated the first time around, the pot is huge so it seems worth a call. And everyone's comments have reinforced my belief that this type of hand is profitable in this situation."

I'm sorry if I have contributed to the reinforcement of that belief. Let me play the devil's advocate.

What do you do when you don't catch a king on the flop? For example, what do you do if the flop is 8s-8c-6c?

You're up first.

Then, assuming you continue to play after the flop, what do you do after the turn when the board is 8s-8c-6c-Td.

You're up first again.

Then, assuming if you're still playing and check your trip eights with a king kicker, do you call a bet on the river when the pot is huge and the board is 8s-8c-6c-Td-4h?
---
Or, as another example, what do you do if the flop is Th9c2h?

You're up first.

You have the third nut flush draw, plus an eight-out nut straight draw (but two of those outs make the flush), plus a back-door shot at a full house or quads.

Assuming you continue to play after the flop, what do you do after the turn when the board is Th9c2h7h? Now you have the third nut flush with a one out re-draw to a straight flush.

You're up first again.

Then, assuming you check your third nut flush, do you call a bet on the river when the pot is huge and the board is Th9c2h7h3c?
---
It's easy to play the nuts, and it's easy to dump your cards when you have no fit. But then there are all those other hands where you maybe had a draw to the nuts after the flop and maybe even after the turn, but have ended up with less than the nuts on the river. It's especially tricky when a split pot is involved. The pair of kings is nice, but the problem with that jack-eight of hearts is you tend to end up in situations that are tough to get out of. And the size of the pot when there has been a pre-flop raise makes it tougher to get out later - even though you don't have the nuts. Honest.

If you only continue with Ks-Kc-Jh-8h when the flop has a king (or when you make quads or a straight flush), then you only play about one flop out of eight, the bulk of those flops being where you flop a king.

I can't make money playing a hand I'm going to fold after seven out of eight flops. It's just that simple.

My opponents do not play poorly enough for me to profitably play starting hands I'm going to fold after seven out of eight flops.

What that means is in order to profitably play K-K-X-Y type hands, I need to sometimes use K-X, K-Y, or X-Y. Yeah, KK is fine, but neither KJn, K8n nor J8s is generally a very good combination in a loose game of Omaha-8.

Even so, I'll see the flop sometimes with Ks-Kc-Jh-8h, but not because I think the hand, per se, is worth seeing the flop. I think overall the hand is a loser. Let me rephrase that last sentence. I'm absolutely certain that playing Ks-Kc-Jh-8h loses more money for me than it wins. Period. (O.K., I might be able to profitably play it for half a bet from the small blind in a family pot - and I probably could profitably play it from the unraised big blind if you don't count my initial forced blind investment).

Then why play the hand at all (except for a half bet from the small blind in a family pot or from the unraised big blind)? Well, if I had just played the previous three hands in a row, I'd muck Ks-Kc-Jh-8h without a second thought. However, when I haven't voluntarily played a hand for two hours, I have to wonder how that makes me look to my opponents - and under those circumstances I might play the hand from late position or for a half bet from the small blind.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

[Aragorn]

I think both of your calls are fine in the big blind, but I wouldn't call with either hand outside. To call with A-3, I normally want another card of the same suit as the ace, so I have a chance to flop a nut flush draw. That way I have a chance at scooping. And if a 2 doesn't flop, I am ususally done with the hand. Also, you don't have much to fall back on for low if your low gets counterfeited. But with 9 bets in the pot it is worth putting in one bet to see what develops.

Your KK hand is definitely strong enough to call with from the BB.