Re: Premature Move?
I like this a lot more with 78s than with A4s. In either case, though, with 6BB UTG I am mucking here. A4s, even in late position, is pretty lousy. You are going to be HU almost always if you play a hand with no post flop play, so suitedness really goes down in value. (It adds about 2-3% to your equity against a random hand). The real problem with A4 from any position is that the 4 is a disfunctional card. The straight and flush value are very small, so if you are called you will be in one of four scenarios:
You are up against a bigger ace, so you will have about three outs (your flush outs are reduced by the fact that if you pair your four it is more easily counterfeited).
You are up against a pair bigger than 4, so you have just over three outs.
You are up against unpaired big cards like KQ, so your four is about worthless.
You are up against 22 or 33, which is very rare.
If you say "So what, I don't expect to be called and just want to steal the blinds" why wait for an ace to make the move? You are better off with something like middle suited connectors because those figure to be more live than A4s in the event you are called. Some quick poker stove numbers for 67s and a4s vs:
AJ:
A4s - 28% win (4% tie)
67s - 40%
TT:
A4s - 33% win
67s - 21% win
KQ:
A4s - 59%
67s - 40%
22:
A4s - 49%
67s - 52% win (1% tie)
Any pair, any Ace/Broadway, KQ:
A4s - 36% win (1% tie)
67s - 36% win
At a tight table, you are probably looking at TT-AA, AK, AQs calling, which actually favors pushing with A4s over 67s marginally (like 1%). This little excursion has changed my impression somewhat.
At any rate, you can calculate the chance that someone will have a calling hand behind you and do an EV calculation. I think you can find a better spot. You are about to give up 25% of your stack, but my impression is that you are better off taking that hit and pushing any two when it is folded to you in the next orbit (unless you double up in the blinds. Even if you end up even after the blinds, I think if you don't have a really laggy image you should try to steal the blinds at the first opportunity you are in good position.)
Some more quick math:
There are 42 combinations of calling hands in the range I gave I believe and 1225 total combinations. With 8 people left to act, that means that each has about a 3.4% chance of having a calling hand, so a 96.6% chance of not having a calling hand. That means there is just under a 25% chance someone will have a calling hand behind you.
For a random hand (let's say no T-A in it), there are 50 hands in the range (since you don't burn an ace). Here are the likelihoods of a "calling hand" for N opponents:
1 - 4%
2 - 8%
3 - 12%
4 - 15.4%
5 - 19%
6 - 22.2%
7 - 25.4%
8 - 28.4%
9 - 31.3%
Random hands (both cards <T) are about a 3:1 dog to that range. You can calculate the EV of open pushing from any position with any given stack size and get a good idea of what your best strategy is here. (In fact, I will do that and see where the open pushing line is from each position versus various calling standards at some point this week.)
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