Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

At the Biloxi Grand in MS, they have rotating promotions. Sometimes you win a jacket for a royal flush. Sometimes you get a gold spinny card-marker for a straight-flush. But sometimes they have "Aces Cracked, Win a Rack".

If you have pocket aces and lose, they'll hand you $100. It's immediately in play. My question is, how would this effect your strategy?

Certainly you always want to slow-play rockets preflop. The more the merrier. Besides, that'll help you win the jackpot when you lose AND increase your profit when you win.

But the thing is, I think you might even want to slow-play the TURN. If somebody has bottom pair, they probably have 5 outs to beat you. If you're playing $4/$8, is the $8 bet really worth it?

They spread $4/$8 through $20/$40. They'll give you a rack regardless of limit, but it's always a rack of white. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Clearly you're less effected by the bonus when you're playing higher stakes.

Whatcha think?
-Sam

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

I find situations like this to be pretty cool theoretical exercises.

If you think about this game-theoretically, what you should basically look to do is play in such a way that your expectation is never less than the size of the rack that you are going to win. If you are playing 20/40, you should probably play the hand as you normally would, with the exception that you will probably not be folding at any point considering that the rack will pay for your flop, turn, and river bets combined. Considering you do stand to win more by winning the whole pot than you do by losing and getting the rack, you should still play to win the hand.

At the smaller limits, the key is going to be to win a giant pot. The worst thing that can happen is that you win a pot that is smaller than the size of the rack. Hence, play as is necessary to get a ton of money in the pot; make giant pot-building moves like limp-reraising pre-flop (given it doesn't shut people out) and value-check-raising the flop. Notice that you'd like to keep a lot of people around to assure the pot gets big, but I would avoid slow-playing too long, because if you do a good job of building a monster pot on early streets there will be a point at which you actually want to shut people out and win the hand instead of taking the rack. At a limit like 4/8 this point will almost certainly come up by about the turn. At 3/6 it will be marginal, and you may find yourself in some big, multiway rivers if you play correctly at 3/6.

Anything about 4/8 you probably shouldn't worry too much about changing your play on early streets because you'll probably hit the $200 mark anyway. Obviously, again, though, you are never folding at any point ever.

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

[ QUOTE ]
you will probably not be folding at any point considering that the rack will pay for bets.

[/ QUOTE ]Good point. I assume you have to actually show-down to get the $100.
-Sam

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

They have this promo at my cardroom but there hase to be at least $30 in the pot to get the rack. This is supposed to discourage slow playing them.

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

[ QUOTE ]
They have this promo at my cardroom but there hase to be at least $30 in the pot to get the rack. This is supposed to discourage slow playing them.

[/ QUOTE ]I can't imagine this restriction changes your play at all.

You're not slow-playing the river. (Nobody's gonna fold two-pair to 1 bet.) In fact, we can assume that any hand that's beating AA will raise the river. Heads-up, smallest stakes they offer ($4/$8), that's already over $30.

What a silly rule.
-Sam

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They have this promo at my cardroom but there hase to be at least $30 in the pot to get the rack. This is supposed to discourage slow playing them.

[/ QUOTE ]I can't imagine this restriction changes your play at all.

You're not slow-playing the river. (Nobody's gonna fold two-pair to 1 bet.) In fact, we can assume that any hand that's beating AA will raise the river. Heads-up, smallest stakes they offer ($4/$8), that's already over $30.

What a silly rule.
-Sam

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree mainly 3/6 at this cardroom. I think after they started running the promo a bunch of people were check/calling with aces. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

very cool.

Excallibur had something like this going. If you get aces cracked you get to spin a wheel in back and you win whatever the wheel lands on (I think it was $30 to $200 and a few "prizes" . there was also a "double" on it).

FishNChips

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

I don't get it. If you keep trying to win the rack, but your Aces keep holding up, you win a small pot.

Why not just hedge your bet? Build a big pot and if you win the pot, yay money, and if you lose the pot, yay rack.

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

Shant,

Exactly. Best case scenario is that you always get the pot up to over $100. In some sense you should never be "playing for the rack," because, correctly played, at 3/6 and up you should be able to get the pot up to $100 or more anyway.

Re: Aces cracked, win a rack.
 

This is an interesting problem. Lets look at 2/4, since I agree that at larger limits the bonus is less meaningful.

Consider the HU situation of AA vs. a RH. AA is around a 4:1 favorite against any RH. So normally your EV for aces = (80% x bets won) - (20% x bets lost).

The bonus changes things. Now in those 20% of the time when your AA loses, you will get 20 BBs. So on the times that you lose, you will get (20BBs - bets lost getting to showdown).

Here's the question. Should you play your aces aggressively or passively? Say you are in the SB and you decide to bet the absolute minimum (complete the SB, check flop, check river). Your bets lost = .5BB (assuming the button/BB doesnt bet). Your amount won however, will also be lame: 1 BB (the value of the BB.)

So now your EV = (80% x 1BB) + (20% x 19BBs) = 4.6BBs

Now alternatively, suppose you played AA as aggressively as possible, capping every street. If you cap every street (and your opponent calls to the river), the most you can win or lose is 12 BBs. So your EV is going to be: (80% x 12BBs) + (20% x (20BBs - 12BBs)) = 11.2BBs

So clearly, the EV of aggressive play HU is greater than the EV of passive play.

Now as you add players, the 20% number should stay constant, but the 80% number should grow as a multiple of the number of players that you add. So as you add players, aggressive play becomes even more profitable for you.

But this was all hot/cold thinking. The question gets even more interesting as a Bayesian analysis. Suppose you raised AA, got called by one opponent, and the flop came 26J rainbow. At this point, your opponent flips over 66 and shows you a set. On this board, your only outs are the other 2 aces. Now what do you do?

Well the math has changed. There are 45 unknown cards in the deck (you know your AA, the flop, and your opponents cards). Only 2 cards help you. So the chances of you not improving are 1-[(43/45)x(42/44)] = 91.2% Call this 9:1 odds against.

Now your EV on new money in is (91.2% x bets lost getting to showdown + bonus) + (8.8% x bets won). (Obviously you have some pot equity on the money already in the pot, but Im going to disregard it because its not salient to my point.) If you went nutso on your opponent capping the F, T, and R, you're going to lose 10BBs, but win 10BBs. So the EV of aggressive play (on new money in) = [8.8% x 10BBs] - [91.2% x (20BBs-10BBs)] = -8.3BBs. Bad to put in money as a dog. Obviously, you're going to do best in this situation by putting in the minimum and getting to showdown as cheaply as possible, to maximize the value of your bonus.

But what about this situation. Suppose you have two opponents, and the flop comes 678 all spades. One opponent flips over AKs. The other guy flips over 9Ts. Youre drawing dead. Now begins the cap-o-rama.

Your EV from this point = (0% chance of winning) + 100% value of bonus, which is 20BBs - cost of showdown = 10BBs. So even if you know you are drawing dead, you should still call down.

So what does the Baysian analysis tell us? Well hand reading is still important even with the bonus. Where you think you are behind, you need to play your aces that way and get to showdown as cheaply as possible to maximize the value of your bonus. If you are ahead, you should play your hand normally and push your edge. Even if you are drawing dead, you should not fold.

Anyone agree?


EDIT: oops, Im a tard. I assumed a rack of rack of whites was worth 20BBs. It should be 25BBs obviously. Just read the post with this edit in mind.