Massive odds... what to complete?

[Snoogins47]

This was posted at another forum, and I wanted to open it up here for discussion.

Paraphrased:

"Assume a 10 handed game of hold'em (and we'll say for the sake of argument, fixed limit hold'em with a 1/2 blind structure). Everybody limps, and you're on the small blind. What sort of range should you be completing here, getting 19 to 1? Any two cards? Any two suited? How much should you loosen up?"

[Colombo]

obviously any two.

[chopchoi]

Hey Snoogins. I'm krakajak from THP.

I don't have the software to run this, but how big of a dog is 72o against 9 random hands? I doubt 20:1, and if it is more than that, implied odds probably justify a call anyway.

I'm calling with any 2.

What would you need to raise with in this situation?

This brings up an even more interesting question. If you limp with 72 here, how much better is that than getting 14:1 against 6 oppponents?
But i fold it here.

[Schwartzy61]

I don't know that it changes it too much. Certainly any two suited and any two connecting cards looking for the big hand.

But I think I'm still leaving out weak offsuit hands like 72, T3, etc. When you are calculating odds in one of those calculators that includes the chances you win with a lowly pair of 3's. Do you really think you will be in a hand to the river against 10 opponents with a bottom pair? I wouldn't, You need to be looking at two pair, straights, flushes, and full houses as your method to win. So I think this still leaves out really weak offsuit hands with no intrinsic value other than making pairs.

Obviously if you show me the odds of hitting two pair, trips or a full house w/ 72 are better than 19-1 I will reconsider my stance on this subject.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Any 2 cards

[pzhon]

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Everybody limps, and you're on the small blind. What sort of range should you be completing here, getting 19 to 1?

[/ QUOTE ]
The 19:1 odds are quite misleading. If you are getting 19:1 odds against one opponent, you can call with any two. There is a good chance that your opponent won't even have a pair by the river. If you are getting 19:1 odds against 9 players, you should fold most hands. You need to make a hand that beats the best of 9 players, and that means you need to make solid hands like TPGK very frequently or monsters like two-card flushes, straights, and sets.

Hands like 98o and Q2s and 22 are playable, but Q6o should be mucked quickly.

[JoshuaMayes]

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Everybody limps, and you're on the small blind. What sort of range should you be completing here, getting 19 to 1?

[/ QUOTE ]
The 19:1 odds are quite misleading. If you are getting 19:1 odds against one opponent, you can call with any two. There is a good chance that your opponent won't even have a pair by the river. If you are getting 19:1 odds against 9 players, you should fold most hands. You need to make a hand that beats the best of 9 players, and that means you need to make solid hands like TPGK very frequently or monsters like two-card flushes, straights, and sets.

Hands like 98o and Q2s and 22 are playable, but Q6o should be mucked quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget how massive the implied odds are for completing the small blind. Every small bet you get on the flop is double your intitial investment, and every big bet on the last two rounds is quadruple the "1" you need to call preflop. If you flop a monster and get even three callers to the river (without any raising), the return on completing the small blind is 49:1.

[RiverDood]

The key question is: What hands have at least a 1 in 20 chance of being worth playing after the flop?

There's a whole lot more excitement ahead before we see the river, and completing the SB doesn't guarantee me a free ticket to the finish. I'll either need to fold to someone else's strength later on -- or call bets that might be worse propositions to me.

So let's think about the most dubious starting hand, 7-2. I'll gladly keep playing if the flop is 222, 777, 772 or 722. But that's way less than a 1% chance. If the flop is something a little more plausible, like 72x, I'm momentarily in the lead, but it's overwhelmingly likely that the turn and river will improve someone else's hand to the point that they overtake me.

So if I flop two pair, can I protect my hand? (Assuming this is limit.) Will a flop bet scare people away? No. All the pocket pairs stay. The strong overcards stay. The single pairs stay. Flush draws and straight draws may stay if the flop is friendly to them. Someone might already have trips. And by the time the hand is done, someone surely has left cleat marks all over my pitiful 2 pair.

So I don't play 2-7, 8-3, 8-5 or other lame hands. Probably I play 87. Surely I play 44, JTs, etc. Overall, I probably play 60% of possible hands. But not the kinds of hands where even if the flop hits me, I'm in trouble.

If this is NL and the stacks are 100x the blinds or deeper, then maybe it's worth playing anything. But if I'm at a table that's so amazingly loose passive, why not wait for similar crazy circumstances and a better hand?

[pzhon]

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You need to make a hand that beats the best of 9 players, and that means you need to make solid hands like TPGK very frequently or monsters like two-card flushes, straights, and sets.


[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget how massive the implied odds are for completing the small blind.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not forgetting the implied odds. They aren't in your favor.

With offsuit, disconnected cards, you outflop an overpair about 3.5% of the time. When you do, you don't own the whole pot, because it is very likely that other players have profitable draws to beat you.

When you flop a pair, you might have a profitable draw to continue. However, you will get charged to draw, making your equity lower than your pot equity. This is a much more likely scenario than flopping a monster and getting paid off.