[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Since it's a 6-handed pot, any equity above .166 means Hero is winning if it's an all-in. So at worst, hero is a small dog according to your calculations.

[/ QUOTE ]

If by "winning" you mean there's a positive expectation, then you'd be right...too bad it's not "all-in" on 3rd. If by "small dog" you mean there's a negative expectation, I would agree as well. I don't care how small the negative expectation, if its negative, you don't want to play it. I think you may be confusing the probably of winning the pot (i.e. whether or not you're a dog) with the profitability of trying to win the pot (i.e. whether or not its profitable to play despite being a dog.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with you here. I think the following statement is false: "If by "winning" you mean there's a positive expectation, then you'd be right." Your expectation is a function of how you play out your hand, not a hot-cold simulation. When I say he's "winning", I'm saying that he expects his hand to hold up often enough that if nothing else happens (no betting, no folding), he makes money.

The argument is more subtle than staring at EVs after 3 cards. There are two things that I'm saying:

1) There may be some cases that hero is a dog. But in those cases, he's not an overwhelming dog. If things go well in the hand (which is just an if), there are a number of favorable situations that hero can find himself in. In other words, the times that hero finds himself a small dog may be offset by the times he finds himself to be a minor favorite.

2) In a game with many streets of betting, it is not necessarity wrong to put your money in the pot with an equity deficit. Since my hold'em is much stronger than my stud, I'll pull an example from there. Suppose a player raises in early position. You know that his raise is almost certainly a big pocket pair. There are a couple coldcallers and you pick up 44 on the button. You can cold call in this spot even though your preflop equity is insufficient. The reason is that you have huge implied odds if you catch a set that will more than make up for whatever preflop deficit existed.

I'll concede that I don't have enough experience to know whether this spot ACTUALLY has enough implied odds to make the call. I'm saying that your EV argument feels very unconvincing. Hero knows he is getting 8:1 to see 4th street since he's closing the action. So the question is how often 4th street will put hero in a profitable position (proftiable when playing out his hand with betting on future streets), and how profitable it will be.

The way I see it, hero has 4 pretty good two pair/trips cards and 4 fives for 3-straight, 3-low. This means there are potentially 8 very good cards for hero to pick up. He's going to see such a card better than 1 in 9 times with a fairly large buffer for the times he picks up a good card and still needs to fold.

My bold conjecture is that Hero is getting odds to try to catch perfect on 4th, and that when he catches perfect on 4th, he's in a profitable position often enough to make money.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, I dislike this sort of analysis. I don't like it in Hold'em and I really don't think it's very good for stud. The reason is that you're playing a game with many streets of betting to come, and so the question of whether you should play is one of mostly implied odds.
A better analysis of this situation would seem to be to look at the equity on 4th street after various card combinations fall. If most of the time, equity goes down, then hero is in a situation of strong reverse implied odds (putting money in the pot leads to situations where hero is expected to continue to lose) and a fold is prudent. If it stays mostly constant except it goes up in a few special cases (perhaps any card 5-7), then it's a situation of strong implied odds and folding is wrong.

I don't have the time to play on twodimes right now, so hopefully I'll remember to look into it later if free time becomes available.

[/ QUOTE ]

I probably wasn't clear in my post about why I was posting the twodimes scenarios. I agree with you on the issues of implied and reverse impied odds. In my opinion, the implied odds are very poor because pairingthe door 6 early (which is what most people hope for when they peel one off here) would be a major scare card, and you'd probably get very little worthwhile action.

However, showdown simulations are nevertheless good for giving you a ballpark feel for the relative strength of the hands. This is why 7CSFAP has such simulations in the back - to give you a feel of how relatively good, bad, or marginal your hand is. And indeed, the closer to the river you run these type of simulations, the more valuable they become.

[/ QUOTE ]

7CSFAP has simulations in the back? Maybe I missed that when I read through it, but I don't remember that at all. Perhaps you have the wrong book?

Anyway, yes, I agree that these simulations give you a feeling for things. However, I believe that your true expectation of playing a hand is tends to be higher than the equity value given in a hot-cold simulation. The reason is that (supposedly) you can play well and put less money in the pot in losing situations and get more money into the pot in profitable ones. The more streets remaining, the farther off the hot-cold simulation will be because its increased failure to take skill into account.

The times when hot-cold runs hotter than playing out the hand is when villain has a well-hidden hand that hero can't see. I would guess that this happens more frequently in hold'em than in stud because of the shared board. Also, in stud you can "see" hands developing in stud, so it's harder to have well-hidden hands.

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, this hand is more accurately considered *five* way since the BI probably doesn't have a playable hand and won't be contributing any further money beyond the BI. That being said, you need a .20 equity in the pot for your "all-in" scenario to be profitable.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a good point in terms of future action. However, in considering the all-in equity, you must still include the presence of the bring-in because he is contributing money on that street and he will see 4th.

[ QUOTE ]
In the scenarios that I consider most likely, you have pretty poor EV of .171 at best. When you compare this EV to that of good starting hands (3 to lows with good str8 and/or flush possibilities or highest pairs), you realize it just isn't worth the money, even when your ante is high as scags' scenario that he asked for my opinion on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, I would dispute 'isn't worth the money' at least as far as to say that I'm not convinced by your argument that this hand is outright bad. It's certainly marginally profitable at best, but I'd need to see some other evidence to convince me that it actually loses money.