AA hand dedicated to Rich "The Rock" P.

I'm still finding Rich "The Rock" P.'s post "Playing in wild loose games" a bit distressing. I sincerely hope there aren't any 2+2ers taking his advice not to raise pre-flop with AA and other big pairs. Of course, I hope all my opponents play exactly as he reccomends.


Today I played a couple hours of 4-8 Hold'em with $1 and $2 blinds at Mandalay Bay on the Vegas Strip. The game was surprisingly tight for about half an hour. Then, a new player raised twice pre-flop and the game suddenly got wild and loose. There were straddles and pre-flop raises with junky hands like A4o and K5s. I knew what I was waiting for and I got it.


I'm in early/middle position and pick up AhAc. Two players limp to me and I RAISE FOR VALUE. I prayed to the Poker Gods for everybody to call my pre-flop raise because I know that I want as many callers as I can get when I raise pre-flop with AA despite the greater probability of being outdrawn. The cutoff, button, both blinds, and the two limpers all call. 7 players see the flop. Oh well, 7 out of 10 isn't bad.


The flop is: Kc,9h,7c


Nice flop. Two clubs and some straight possibilites should get some people to chase me while I've got the best hand- exactly what I want. Chase me! Chase me!


The big blind bets out. Both early limpers call and I...RAISE FOR VALUE. The cutoff folds. The button calls. The small blind folds and everybody else calls. 4 chasers pay two small bets to outdraw me on the turn.


The turn is: Kc,9h,7c,3h


Really good turn card. That can't help anybody. The big blind bets out again. Both early limpers call and I...wait for it...wait for it...RAISE FOR VALUE. The button mucks. The big blind calls and both the early limpers give up as well (that surprised me). I guess they just didn't enjoy the chase that much.


The river is: Kc,9h,7c,3h,5s


The big blind checks. Ah...I've got him. I bet (FOR VALUE!) and get called. I turn over my AA. He makes his final weak play and shows me his KTo.


I pull in another big pot...just like I did an hour later with KK. In an hour and a half of this wild/loose game I made more than $200 by playing a standard raise when I had the best of it and play as cheaply as possible when I'm drawing to beat someone else.


And it worked? Imagine that!

Hey Dynasty,


How does that 4-8 game with 1-2 blinds work? BTF.. everyone has to come in for 2 or 4?


I've always played 4-8 with blinds of 2-4.


Later,


CJ

Great post Dynasty. Nice pot.


CJ: In unstructured 4-8 games (1-4 8 /images/glasses.gif with 1-2 blinds you can raise anything between 2 and 4, making it $4, $5 or $6 to go.


In structured games with 1-2 blinds your preflop raise makes it $6 to go, meaning the BB must throw in $4 on top of his $2 to call. This is obviously a substantial difference between 1-2 blinds and 2-4 blinds.


Dynasty can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Mandalay Bay changed from unstructured to structured a few months ago, meaning he had to make it $6 to go.


Clark

While I agree completely with the spirit of your post, I believe you are operating under a misconception. You state:


"I prayed to the poker gods for everyone to call my preflop raise because I know I want as many callers as I can get...."


While you have a positive EV with pocket aces regardless of how many players come in, I believe your EV is higher with fewer opponents as long as they are each playing some semblance of a hand. In other words, it is better to raise and have three opponents then to call and have six opponents. While raising and getting six opponents has a positive EV, I suspect that your EV would be even higher if your raise happen to drive out some of your opponents thereby reducing the field.

Yes its $2 to call if nobody raises.

Clarkmeister described the $1-$2 blind system correctly.


Mandalay bay is structured so I HAD to make it $6 to go. Whenever I play in an unstructured game I always raise either $4 or $8 to charge my opponents the most. However, others sometimes charge me less than the max to draw out on them. I've occasionally called small $2 bets and sucked out when I wouldn't have called a bigger bet. A nice trade off.


I think every Strip poker room (he he.. Strip poker!) has the $1 and $2 blind structure with the exceptions of the Bellagio and Mirage. But don't ask me why.

I'm surprised to hear that from you.


I expect to have a higher EV with more opponents but with a substantially higher standard deviation.


Is anyone aware of any writings which specifically focuses on EV/Standard Deviation of big pairs against (a) 1-2 opponents, (b) 3-5 opponents, and (c) 6 or more opponents

Thanks,


Just wondering as I am going out there in early December. I usually play at Mirage/Bellagio so that is why I didn't see that blind structure. Maybe I'll jump in that Mandalay game while I'm there.


Thanks a bunch,


Later,


CJ

I am not sure that I am correct, but maybe a simulation would help us out here. I would like to see three scenarios.


Scenario 1: AA raises under-the-gun and gets three cold-callers.


Scenario 2: AA raises under-the-gun and gets six cold-callers.


Scenario 3: AA limps in under-the-gun and gets six callers including the big blind who gets a free play and the small blind folds.


All three scenarios have positive EV. But I suspect more often than not, scenario 1 has the most positive EV with scenario 3 having the least positve EV and scenario 2 is somewhere in-between. This would be a good problem for Abdul Jalib or David Sklansky to solve.

Hmmmmm. Interesting post. VERY interesting. So. Let me get this straight. You CLAIM to have been dealt pocket ACES, RAISED before the flop, and WON THE POT. Furthermore, you CLAIM to have performed this miraculous feat of stupendousness in a LOOSE GAME, and to have won a BIG POT. These are some pretty fantabulous claims you are making here… How can this possibly be true? You didn't just make this up, did you? I mean pocket aces are just for getting beat, aren't they? Weren't you s'poseda lose with a big pair in a loose game? Didn't you just waste extra money by bothering to raise before the flop with a lousy loose game hand like AA? Shouldn't you have waited to see the flop first, to see if you got a good flop or not? Shouldn't you just save your money and keep it cheap until you are sure that no one else flopped anything good, or has a good draw against you? The only reasonable explanation for the supposed outcome of your moronic bumbling of this one is that a MIRACLE must have occurred….


Allright, allright… enough of the fooling around….


I am still having trouble with Rich's stance on the AA thread as well. Although I cannot mathematically prove it at this time*, I firmly believe that the equity you gain by raising pre-flop, which is derived both from weaker hands calling, and from those times that you knock out the blinds, when they would have outdrawn you had you not raised, is considerably greater than any equity you might gain post flop by increasing your chances of knocking other players out due to smaller pot size.


Let's see now, pre-flop you raised with aces, then you were hoping people would call. This is actually not the kind of thing that a raving lunatic with a Hold'em deathwish would do, rather, it's something a player who realizes that ANYONE who calls this bet is theoretically losing equity to those mighty aces. Sure, the more players who theoretically lose equity to you by calling, the more likely it is that you will wind up getting outdrawn and lose the pot, this is not in question. What's in question is the difference between equity gained pre-flop by raising vs. equity gained post-flop by not having raised pre-flop and having a better chance to knock someone out. I doubt there's any contest….


Next, you get a flop. It's a good one for aces. You have players who have likely flopped top pair, middle or bottom pair, a flush draw, or a straight draw. Each of these hands stands a chance of drawing out on your pair and beating you. Each of these hands has outs against you. If you add up ALL the outs of ALL the hands in the pot, there COULD BE a whole bunch of cards that might change your status from ahead to behind, assuming you ARE still ahead. So someone bets into the pre-flop raiser and two more call. You "RAISE FOR VALUE." I do have a small problem with that statement, in that you are not only raising for value, you are now raising to knock people out as well. If you are still in the lead, anyone who calls here with a cheesy hand is losing money. This IS a situation though that can present you with an exception to the FTOP. Someone with a good draw, like 8c7c, could be sucking equity out of your hand. IF this IS actually the case, you must still raise anyway, because if you could bet an unlimited amount, there is a theoretical point at which the exception to the FTOP would no longer apply. Just because it's POSSIBLE that you may be facing this situation, does not mean you ALWAYS are, and it really doesn't matter anyway, because you still must raise 1) for value, 2) to knock people out, and 3) to partially counteract the possibility that an exception to the FTOP might be happening here. So you correctly raised, but there were more than one reasons to raise.


On the turn, the BB sure is being cooperative, assuming you are still ahead. You get another chance to raise for value, to knock people out, etc. Now there could be a problem if the BB reraises, if that happens, you might have to slow down and consider the possibility that you may have been outdrawn, despite your pre-flop value raise.


On the river, when the BB checks, you bet. I believe that calling this a bet "for value" is perfectly reasonable. You can probably expect to be called by many worse hands here, one of the reasons to bet the river. It's unlikely you will knock out a better hand, but one out of two ain't bad, and is often more than enough to bet.


Good post. Of course we all know that since you won the pot with pocket aces, and they are just for getting beat, that you must have played it all wrong….


Dave in Cali


*I'm not sure if this could be conclusively proven mathematically or not. I don't know for sure how to calculate the equity of each hand before the flop, or if it can be straightforwardly calculated at all. I'm sure someone will mention simulations, and I have TTHE, but I don't use the simulator, and I don't put much faith in their application to real-life strategy. I believe that pocket aces are "s'posed" to win about 33% of the time in a ten way pot where all go to the river… Since not everyone will go to the river every time, and since your raising will knock people out some of the time, aces in general must win more often than that, so the case for raising seems quite clear to me….

The Mandalay Bay game was so good yesterday that I went back today.


I got AhAd in late position and I RAISED FOR VALUE. But then I got limp-reraised by someone in early position (Whoo hoo!). I 4-bet pre-flop and my opponent the 5-bet it (Yes!). That's the cap. Two other players called the capped betting as well.


The flop was K-high. Can't say I liked that but I bet anyway when he checked to me on the flop. Yadda...yadda...yadda and on the river I bet.


I turned over my AhAd. He turned over his AcAs.


I can't believe how poorly he played pre-flop. What was he thinking?

Look Dynasty, he's just a moron, a Super-Magoo, for raising with such a cheesy hand.


Actually, I once saw two guys raising each other, then a third player, totally tilting, capped it. The tilter flopped a set of fives in a three way pot, and took the other two guys, both of whom had pocket aces, for a bunch of bets. At the end of the hand, the two guys with pocket aces high-fived each other as the tilter was stacking the chips! That'll teach 'em to raise with aces!

"While you have a positive EV with pocket aces regardless of how many players come in, I believe your EV is higher with fewer opponents as long as they are each playing some semblance of a hand. In other words, it is better to raise and have three opponents then to call and have six opponents. While raising and getting six opponents has a positive EV, I suspect that your EV would be even higher if your raise happen to drive out some of your opponents thereby reducing the field. "


I believe that whether you would prefer three opponents to call your raise or six to call your raise depends on the RATIO of bets won/bets invested. If I could spend two bets to win six or three bets to win ten, I would rather spend the three bets, even if my variance went up as a result. Conversely, if I could spend one bet to win three or two bets to win five, I would rather spend less and win the smaller pot. The EV might be higher in one situation (as far as absolute value), but the ratio of bets won/bets invested higher in another. This is an observation I have made by analyzing some hands with excel, but I am not absolutely sure of the validity of my conclusions. If anyone has reasonable evidence to prove/refute these statements, please speak up.


I analyzed one drawing hand vs. top pair situation using excel and found out some interesting information. In the particular example, top pair did about the same, as far as bets won/bets invested, whether they called the flop and raised the turn (to drive players out more effectively), or raised + capped the flop (to charge weak draws now), and bet the turn. However, the flush draw did MUCH better when the flop got capped. The exact value of each hand in each scenario depended on what the other hands were. Both hands had a positive expectation either way.


I think each specific hand would be different, and it's not really feasible to make gross generalizations that cover all situations. However, I have also analyzed hands where someone with the best hand increased their chances of winning the pot, and this virtually ALWAYS makes a BIG difference in their EV, which inclines me to believe that your generalized statement here is probably true. At any rate, I think that most of us will still be inclined to RAISE BEFORE THE FLOP WITH ACES either way.


Dave in Cali

When I was in Vegas this summer, I tried all of the main card rooms and I thought Mandalay Bay had the best games of all of them. I really like the 1-2 blind structure. I find it makes other players play worse because most players were calling with ANY two cards since "it's only $2". The Mandalay games I played in also had a half kill which really livened things up. It made the looser players looser because they would be trying so hard to win the kill button.