A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

This may be a little premature, but I have been doing some pokerstove research and it appears at least at this point that:

Heads up against a preflop raiser, we should essentially never fold a pair prior to the river for one bet assuming he will autobet the flop and the turn

Am I crazy?


Thanks,
Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

Depends on the player, but with most aggressive players this is the case, depending on the board and how much paint is on it.

-Yarney

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

cartman,

Ummm...I really don't think so.

So, UTG+1 who is 20/14/4 raises and I call in the BB with T [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].

Flop comes A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

We're calling down with this? Just one example but you get the picture...

Edit: My point is just that we can usually narrow an opponents range down to a point where calling down with a pair, regardless of whether opponent auto-bets flop and turn, is incorrect in many instances.

___1___

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

I'm not sure I understand what you're positing.

If our opponent is autobetting, doesn't that mean, by definition, that he is often betting without a made hand? So are you just saying that the odds justify calling down because the chances are that the villain both started without a pair and failed to pair his hand?

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

Nevermind.

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

1 is right. Here is a simple counterexample:

Coolguy52 only raises AA and KK pf and always bets the flop and the turn. He raises, you get involved in the pot somehow. I should never fold a pair? The PFR's range has to be factored in somehow. This is an extreme example, but there is a tipping point somewhere - 1's example is still on the fold side. How can we can say this as an absolute?

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
Heads up against a preflop raiser with a sufficiently large range of hands, we should essentially never fold a pair prior to the river for one bet assuming he will autobet the flop and the turn

[/ QUOTE ]

the interesting question IMO is how large is 'sufficiently large' before never folding a pair becomes correct

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

An AK board is one of the only exceptions I think. Maybe my methodology is flawed. See if this makes sense:

Assume opponents raising range from his specific position this hand is 20%. From that I estimated his range to be:
A8+, KT+, QJ, A3s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, 55.

I have 23.

To estimate the chances that I am ahead on the turn when the board is AQ28 for instance, I just entered a river card of a 4 which I thought was the ultimate blank. Pokerstove claims that if I showed down my 23 on the final board of AQ284, I would have the winner 21.2% of the time. So I think that is a reasonable estimate of how often I am ahead on the turn. (This is the key assumption to the entire endeavor in my opinion. Is it valid?)

Assuming he open-raised preflop, only I call in the big blind, and I check call the flop, then after he bets the turn the pot will contain 4.25BB. So if he bets the river (of course he won't always) I am getting 5.25:2 odds to call down. If I estimate that I have 5 outs when I'm behind and that he has 6 outs when I'm ahead, then I need to be ahead on the turn 22.2% of the time.

That's awfully close to the 21.2% estimate that I get from pokerstove. Changing the Q to a K in my example, plunges this figure to 15.7% and makes it a clear fold, but on an AQ or AJ board it looks like a toss up (pokerstove gives 21.2% for both) and on an AT (28.4%) or a KQ (32.7%) board it is a very clear call.

Is there a flaw in my method?

Is my assumption above valid?

What do you guys think?


Thanks,
Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

We of course reserve the right to fold if he bets again on the river. My point is that the evidence seems to indicate that we should not fold on the TURN.

Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
An AK board is one of the only exceptions I think. Maybe my methodology is flawed. See if this makes sense:

Assume opponents raising range from his specific position this hand is 20%. From that I estimated his range to be:
A8+, KT+, QJ, A3s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, 55.

I have 23.

To estimate the chances that I am ahead on the turn when the board is AQ28 for instance, I just entered a river card of a 4 which I thought was the ultimate blank. Pokerstove claims that if I showed down my 23 on the final board of AQ284, I would have the winner 21.2% of the time. So I think that is a reasonable estimate of how often I am ahead on the turn. (This is the key assumption to the entire endeavor in my opinion. Is it valid?)

Assuming he open-raised preflop, only I call in the big blind, and I check call the flop, then after he bets the turn the pot will contain 4.25BB. So if he bets the river (of course he won't always) I am getting 5.25:2 odds to call down. If I estimate that I have 5 outs when I'm behind and that he has 6 outs when I'm ahead, then I need to be ahead on the turn 22.2% of the time.

That's awfully close to the 21.2% estimate that I get from pokerstove. Changing the Q to a K in my example, plunges this figure to 15.7% and makes it a clear fold, but on an AQ or AJ board it looks like a toss up (pokerstove gives 21.2% for both) and on an AT (28.4%) or a KQ (32.7%) board it is a very clear call.

Is there a flaw in my method?

Is my assumption above valid?

What do you guys think?



[/ QUOTE ]

I do think the method and assumptions look pretty accurate. I'm just not sure if or how you can translate this methodology into real-life situations. Honestly, in your 23 example, how many people can bring themselves to call down in such a situation? I don't know if I could.

The person to really as about this is Peter_Rus. He's done similar analysis with regard to calling an open-raise out of the BB heads-up...

___1___

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

Shouldnt we also consider how often the guy "fires the last barrel" ?

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
Shouldnt we also consider how often the guy "fires the last barrel" ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely we should. Some opponents will also not automatically bet the turn. On each street, we must re-estimate his hand range given that he bet. Against an opponent who will autobet the flop and the turn, his estimated hand range is the same as his estimated preflop range.

My indication that we are getting 5.25:2 odds on a call down is somewhat incorrect because of the "firing the third barrel" problem. If we always call the river when we call the turn (probably not a good idea) and he only bets the river when we are behind, then I guess we are actually only getting 4.25:2 on a call down, which would require us to be ahead far more often on the turn (27.8% instead of the 22.2% that getting 5.25:2 requires).

Of course he will not actually play perfectly on the river as he will sometimes bet with worse hands and check with better hands. But we will also sometimes fold a better hand. This is all very inexact and highly dependent on our continual assessment of his hand range on each street given that he bet.

My speculation is that most of the potential +EV that I miss by incorrectly folding weak pairs on the turn is from situations in which I would call the turn and then he would check behind on the river with nothing and I win. Against an opponent who always fires the third barrel, then the analysis above would be dead on in my opinion.

Even if he plays perfectly the river, though, I think the preliminary conclusions are still staggering. Unless I'm making a mistake in my reasoning, even if he plays perfectly on the river thereby reducing our odds to 4.25:2 to call down, we should call down with any hand that we estimate has at least 27.8% chance of being ahead on the turn. That means calling the turn bet with 23 on an AT28 board intending to also call a river bet against an opponent who will autobet the turn.

This is so astonishing to me that I feel like I must still be missing something. I suspect the correct move may be to call the turn bet and usually fold if he follows through on the river.

What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

If he will check behind on the river if he is behind aren't we getting 4.25:1? If we put in 2 than it has to be 5.25:2. Right?

Also, if you do a baysian analysis of the range of hands given I came up with 165 we are behind of the ~265 hands he could have (1325*.2). If he will always bet the flop and turn, thus giving zero information about his hand, than our hand looks better than your origanal estimate. This is with the hand range you gave and the board of AQ28.

WiteKnite

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

I'm interested in the critical technical analysis you're doing. Anecdotally / intuitively, I will call down a weak pair HU on all but the worst boards against opponent's range. The AQ2x board would probably find a fold from me if I somehow played with 32o; an AT73 board with me holding 78s will likely see a showdown. Pairs are big HU, even with an A on board and an open-raiser. Add in the times I see a SD without a river bet, and I feel pretty good about the approach.

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

regarding the 4 as a blank on the river and the result is you win 21.2% of the time your "key assumption" i have to believe this to be correct. the 4 didn't help you at all and has very little chance of improving him so i would have to say this is a great assumption. my next question is the flop call on a AQ2 board. does poker stove indicate that this should be called? if not then we wouldn't even get to the turn question. i do understand what you are getting at though. i think that heads up i too often underestimate the value of even the smallest pair on a board that is ace high. this could revolutionize my game quite a bit. i look forward to hearing how everyone else weighs in on this.

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

i assume you meant 55+?

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
i assume you meant 55+?

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. Thank you, I mistyped.

Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

First of all...I will never be heads-up against a PF raiser with 32o.

Second...if he is really an 'autobet flop' type of player then shouldn't you consider RAISING (or betting or C/R'ing depending on position) any pair on most flops?


After the flop raise then I think we can find hands where we can fold a pair on the more expensive streets.

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
First of all...I will never be heads-up against a PF raiser with 32o.

[/ QUOTE ]

True. I just used this because it is the worst possible one pair non-pocket pair hand.

[ QUOTE ]
Second...if he is really an 'autobet flop' type of player then shouldn't you consider RAISING (or betting or C/R'ing depending on position) any pair on most flops?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I typically checkraise the flop with any pair on a Q hi board or less, but I think sometimes a passive line is best against an opponent who will raise the turn frequently enough to put me in a position where I hate to call but I hate to fold also with a weak pair.

Am I wrong about this?

Thanks,
Cartman

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
Assume opponents raising range from his specific position this hand is 20%. From that I estimated his range to be:
A8+, KT+, QJ, A3s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, 55.

Is my assumption above valid?


[/ QUOTE ]

Close, but I think with the above range, if he's behind on that board he likely has likely 8 outs, for the times he has a gutshot, open ender, flush draw to go along with his overs

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

[ QUOTE ]
This may be a little premature, but I have been doing some pokerstove research and it appears at least at this point that:

Heads up against a preflop raiser, we should essentially never fold a pair prior to the river for one bet assuming he will autobet the flop and the turn

Am I crazy?


Thanks,
Cartman

[/ QUOTE ]

Essentially this is an all-in decision, with the 'all-in' amount = pflop + flop + turn bet.
So if a pair against his range is a >50% favorite, then you should be correct, especially if the blinds have folded.
It also implies you need to call the river as well I think.

The problem is that if you are making this decision on the flop or pflop, you can't get to the turn and use immediate pot odds to justify the decision. The board decides your equity at that point, but you made the decision before you saw the cards.

Unless I'm just totally missing it...

Re: A shocking discovery..... shocking to me at least
 

Against guys who will continue to autobet w/ hands we beat, I think at least some of the time you want to rope a dope & keep check/calling, to extract max value from them. Am I wrong?