Are The Critics Right?

One of the criticisms of our book, "Middle Limit Holdem Poker", is that we are too loose in calling raises from the big blind. We advocate calling an early position raiser with any pair, any suited ace, or any two unsuited cards higher than a nine like jack-ten offsuit. We have been told by more than one expert that with only one or two players in the hand, this should prove expensive.


I used an all-in poker simulation tool similar to poker probe. I ran 3 cases. Case one was when you have a small pocket pair like deuces. Case two was when you had a suited ace like ace-deuce suited. Case three was when you had two decent unsuited cards like jack-ten offsuit. I assumed heads-up play between the big blind and an early raiser. I assumed the early raiser had a pocket pair higher than nines, ace-king, ace-queen, ace-jack suited, or king-queen suited. For each case I ran the simulation and used a weighted average based on the number of hands for the raiser to have. For example, consider the case with the pocket deuces. There are 16 ways for the early raise to have AK and only 6 ways for the early raiser to have AA. Obviously the AK situation got weighted proportionally more than AA. I came up with a weighted average for each. Here are the results:


For Case One (pocket deuces), you will win 38% of the time so your odds are 1.6-to-1 against.


For Case Two (ace-deuce suited), you will win 31% of the time so your odds are 2.2-to-1 against.


For Case Three (jack-ten offsuit), you will win 30% of the time so your odds are 2.3-to-1 against.


Now your current pot odds are 3.5-to-1. Of course, a skeptic would scream: "But your simulation assumes you get to see all 5 boardcards for free, so it is invalid!"


"BUT IF AN ALL-IN SIMULATION HEAVILY FAVORS CALLING OVER FOLDING, IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THE IMPACT OF ADDITIONAL BETTING ON THE LATER STREETS WOULD CHANGE THE INITIAL DECISION FROM A CALL TO A FOLD, IT WOULD SIMPLY MAKE IT CLOSER" according to one expert.


I believe there is a fairly large overlay when you compare your current pot odds with your "all-in" drawing odds. What does everyone else think?

"There are 16 ways for the early raise to have AK and only 6 ways for the early raiser to have AA. Obviously the AK situation got weighted proportionally more than AA"


no weight to all raising possibilities? how about KK to TT also. along with AQ..


i think you also should factor in the type of player. that narrows down a decision even more precisely.


is using an allin format really going to make the results accurate? i think this would differ quite a bit if you went street by street. again, i think you have to take the other player into consideration. against certain players, you can get trapped with a piece of the flop on a lesser hand. then you may wish you never called in the first place.


not sure if this was what you were looking for...


oh well... i tried [img]/images/smile.gif[/img]


b

I think the all-in sim is going to be totally useless here.


Just consider the 2-2 on the river only. I guess you advocate calling all the way to the river to find out if raiser has overcards. On the river AK is going to check and a big pair is going to bet. So you lose an extra big bet on the river when you lose compared to what you get when you win. That is quite a big difference when you calculated your pot odds based on only 1.75 big bets at the start.


When you win with the 22, it is going to be hard to get to the river, let alone win the same amount he will win with a solid pair.


Another big factor with these calls, is that a suited hand will frequently give you a big enough hand to semi-bluff back with, JTo won't connect enough for these plays.


I like the calls with the suited A generally, unless it is some kind of great player that you just don't want to mess with.


D.

>>There are 16 ways for the early raise to have AK and only 6 ways for the early raiser >>to have AA


I hope you made adjustments to this after looking at your own hand.

(e.g. Axs)


And after looking at the Flop

I haven't read your book yet so I'm basing my response soley on your post.


Case 1: Pocket 2's (or other small/medium pocket pairs).


I'm going to assume that the UTG raiser will bet when checked to regardless of whether he has a big pocket pair or a Big Ace/KQs. I think this is reasonable for most middle limit players in this situation.


When you don't make a set, you are going to have a difficult time playing this hand heads-up. Your current pot odds may be 3.5:1 but your effective odds aren't nearly as good. If you call on all streets, you are going to have to put in 3 big bets in order to win 4.25 big bets (1.75 big bets in pot pre-flop plus additional 2.5 from opponent post-flop). So, your effective odds are 1.42:1. You calculated that your odds of winning were 1.6:1 so the odds are somewhat close. Maybe it becomes close to even or profitable when you consider the times when you flop a set and don't have to call a river bet to someone who doesn't bet an unimproved big Ace.


Still, you clearly aren't getting the pot odds to flop a set. Your implied for flopping a set aren't great since you have only one opponent to pay you off. And, the effective odds make calling down with the unimproved pocket pair a losing play. Those all sound like reasons not to call with these hands.


Case 2: A2s or other Axs


I think this is a bigger mistake than calling with a pocket pair. What are you hoping to flop? If you flop top pair, you can be dominated by AK, AQ, or AJ and may feel compelled to pay off all the way to the river (or at least your readers will). If your opponent has KK or a smaller pocket pair, he may not pay you off with an Ace on the flop. So, it seems you will pay off with the worst hand but will not get paid when you have the best hand. If you are willing to fold top pair/weak kicker, then why play the hand in the first place? For the flush potential? The flush won't come often enough to make this call profitable.


Case 3: JTo and other big offsuit cards


I was surprised to read this in your post. I think folding AJo, ATo, KJo, KTo, QJo, QTo, and JTo to "legitimate" EP raises is very easy. AKo is a 3-bet. AQo is a call. KQo is a tough decision but it's probably best to fold it.


The possibility of making second best hands here is very high. I'm not sure what you're looking to flop. Top pair seems like a trap hand most of the time.


Overall


The biggest problem with the computer simulation isn't that it assumes you get to see all five board cards. The big problem is that it doesn't account for the extra bets your opponent will win from you when he is ahead since he has position on you. And, it doesn't account for the bets your opponent will save when you out-flop him.


I see players following your advice getting into trouble by paying off better hands but not getting paid themselves when they outdraw their opponent.

<BLOCKQUOTE>We advocate calling an early position raiser with any pair, any suited ace, or any two unsuited cards higher than a nine like jack-ten offsuit. </BLOCKQUOTE>


This is a big range of hands, and I thought that conventional wisdom says to avoid trap hands like KJ and QJ. My hunch is says JT is a safer hand to play.


Second, your UTG player is tighter than many. There are plenty of halfway decent players who will also play hands like AJo, KQo, and ATs for a raise. I'm not sure how including those hands will affect the value or JT (or QJ or KJ) in the blind.


I would be curious to see how much your values change when you adjust your playable hand upward (like for QJ and KJ), and how much they change when UTG gets looser. If they don't change much, then you will have a lot more confidence in the numbers.

There will also be times when your odds improve due to implied odds on future betting rounds.

AK is an underdog to any pair including 22 hot and cold, but you would certainly call with that. Your odds improve since you can get away from it easily when you miss the flop.

The biggest problem with the computer simulation isn't that it assumes you get to see all five board cards. The big problem is that it doesn't account for the extra bets your opponent will win from you when he is ahead since he has position on you. And, it doesn't account for the bets your opponent will save when you out-flop him.


I see players following your advice getting into trouble by paying off better hands but not getting paid themselves when they outdraw their opponent.


I think these are very good points. It takes a lot of skill to play marginal hands out of position.


If the EP player is predicatable, I think you could play the recommended hands. If he's a tricky player, it would be difficult.


"If your opponent has KK or a smaller pocket pair, he may not pay you off with an Ace on the flop"


If he doesn't pay you off on when an Ace flops with these hands, then all the recommended hands will beat these hands whenever an Ace flops (assuming BB bets them).

Yes, I did. To quote from my lead post: "For example, consider the case of pocket deuces. There are 16 ways for A-K and only 6 ways for AA."


Now in the case of ace-deuce suited there would only be 12 ways for AK and only 3 ways for AA.


The flop was not considered because this was run as a preflop "all-in" simulation.