40-80 hand

[Boris]

6 handed B&M game. I'm in the big blind with Q-9 not suited.

P1 opens for a raise. Two players call and I call.

Flop: Qh-6s-5s.

I check, P1 bets, fold, button calls and I call.

P1 is normally a very straight forward, by the book player. Except that I feel he has opened up too much for playing 6 handed. Button is relatively unknown to me. I know he plays lots of high limit poker on the Internet. I don't feel he's contributing any money to the game.

Turn: Qh-6s-5s (4c)

I check; P1 bets and Button calls.

What's my play? Any issues with previous streets?

[flawless_victory]

if the button had folded, i wouldnt mind the flop "just call," but w/ him in there i think you absolutely must raise the flop w/ TP.

as played, i raise turn unless MP is v solid and straightforward... then you might be able to let it go cheap.

[mike l.]

fold preflop. since you played it you might as well c/r the turn.

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
fold preflop. since you played it you might as well c/r the turn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Folding has an expectation of -.5 bb/hand. There is no way calling has this same negative expectation. It's very hard to wrap your mind around it unless you have looked at these things in a database, but having an expectation of -.5bb/hand is very, very difficult. Especially if you play well postflop.
-James

[HiatusOver]

Thats definitely a huge #...could u tell us how far down your range goes in this spot from the BB pre-flop?

[mike l.]

i had to email tommy because i dont know how else to repsond to your post. i have started rampantly folding the blind this year. and what i told him in my email is "i cant compromise what james says with my results this last half year since i started becoming a huge blind folding advocate."

[Lmn55d]

James, do you know of anyway to look at pokertracker to see the expectation of calling an utg raise (6 handed) with a hand like Q9o in a 3 handed pot? Obviously you'd probably need millions of hands to get any idea. I know not many hands have an expectation of less than -.5 overall. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see that many do in this specific spot. That said, I think the call is fine but I think you may be oversimplifying it a bit. Indeed, it is definitely possible (likely) that you can quantitatively assess EV more accurately than I can in spots like this.

[Catt]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fold preflop. since you played it you might as well c/r the turn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Folding has an expectation of -.5 bb/hand. There is no way calling has this same negative expectation. It's very hard to wrap your mind around it unless you have looked at these things in a database, but having an expectation of -.5bb/hand is very, very difficult. Especially if you play well postflop.
-James

[/ QUOTE ]

James - I don't understand this at all - could you please expand on this?

Here is how I am coming at the situation: my 0.5 BB is no longer mine as soon as my blind is posted; it is now the pot's 0.5 BB. The question to ask seems to me to be: does committing 0.5 BB preflop when faced with a raise result in winning, on average, more than 0.5 BB, i.e., does the call looked at in isolation as a discreet decision have +EV? We say that folding always has an EV of 0 no matter if we have already put money in the pot or not (blind or otherwise) since we risk nothing and can win nothing -- calling (or raising) may have +EV or -EV depending on circumstances, which of course determines whether it is better or worse than folding.

To take a different analogy: assume we bet a flop and are raised. The decision we're faced with is do we call or fold (put aside re-raise for this hypothetical). It doesn't make sense to me to think folding has an EV of -0.5 BBs (+ whatever we put in pre-flop to get there if you want to take it back farther) because that's money that we already committed -- it makes sense to me to determine the EV of a call when faced with the decision presented to us by the raise, and if it is positive, then we call, and if it is negative, then we fold (putting aside all metagame issues).

When we think of expected win rates with hands in the blinds and see that 76s is -0.15 against a steal (or whatever) we can conclude that calling is better than folding since PT will record a fold as -0.5 earn for that one hand -- but that doesn't mean that folding is -EV to the tune of -0.5; it means that calling is +EV because we expect to win 0.35 by calling (which produces an overall negative earn when offset against the 0.5 BB we had to pay to play the hand, producing a negative expected winrate, but not a -EV call).

Am I totally missing the point or off-base in some silly way?

[Lmn55d]

Catt this is what I was thinking as well. I think James might be conflating PT winrates with EV. I could be way off though. It is my understanding that the EV of folding cannot be anything other than 0.

[Jeff W]

Catt,

Here is the deal:

In Pokertracker, your winrate for a hand in the BB includes the BB you posted.

Thus, if you always folded your BB, you'd post a -.5 BB/hand net. So, if Q9o nets -.46 BB/hand, it is winning .04 BB/hand more than if you folded.

You could also say it has a winrate of .04 BB/hand and folding is an EV of 0, but you're just saying the same thing in a different way.