Doyle's hands

In case you guys haven't stopped by the probability forum lately:

From Doyle Brunson's Super System:

"This is the hand I'm looking for when I play No-Limit Hold 'em. Small
connecting cards (suited) - the 7c6c, 8h7h, 5d4d. That's the kind of hand I
want. It's my favorite".

And a response:


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Re: hold'em Ev NO LIMIT [re: BruceZ]
11/07/02 10:58 AM
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bruce -

the way i read it, doyle was saying that since he was able to steal so
many pots by drowning his opponents with chips, he was essentially
gambling their money, not his. when he made longshot calls with these
kinds of hands, his implied odds in his mind went way up. if he drew
out, he was going to bust someone for all their chips. if not, it didn't
matter. he could simply steal some more pots to finance another
adventure. so putting in even money on a 3-1 shot, for instance, was
no big deal.


note that if you for some reason can't steal all those pots anymore, this
approach is a loser. which is why, i think, doyle later reported that he
regretted writing the book.


WEll, howabout it???

[thebroker]

I think it is safe to say the majority of people playing no-limit hold em today are playing short-stack No-limit hold em. All online no-limit that I've seen plays with buy-ins between 20 and 100 times the blind. Also tourneys are played with short stacks the majority of the time. The games Doyle played in were deeper stack games where he was getting huge implied odds making these types of hands profitable. I'm not saying that 76s is a bad hand in online NL. You just make as many moves with short stacks.

[Greg (FossilMan)]

Yes, that's a large factor.

With any speculative hand, you need lots of implied odds to make the hand worth playing preflop. When I play a cash game of PL, I usually buy in for about 1000x the big blind. Admittedly, my opponents usually have much less, but 100x and up is more common than less than 100x. And, if the pot is raised the max by somebody with only 50x or less, I don't call with those speculative hands anymore.

While it is true that in his book Doyle talks about stealing lots of pots, I do not believe it to be correct that he put that money in with speculative hands knowing it was a bad bet, just because he could steal it back later. I'm sure when the betting had gotten to be a large percentage of somebody's stack preflop, Doyle was not calling cold with those hands anymore (nor was he raising unless he thought he could steal the pot preflop).

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)