Pocket Eights Hypothetical Revisited

[nate1729]

Folks --

A while back there was a question about who would have the advantage in a heads-up match, a guy who had black eights faceup every hand or his opponent.

A friend of mine and I both thought his opponent would have the edge, but my friend thought the edge would be bigger, so he laid me 3:2 and we each started with 25 BB and I took the eights.

I won pretty easily. Now, this is just one data point, but it's better than nothing. I should note that I think my friend made some major errors in strategy (he almost never checkraised with hands that did or didn't beat the eights, and I don't think he bluffed the turn nearly enough.)

One minor point is that the contest was really really grueling. Lots of folding, lots of shuffling. Them two-undercard hands come around a lot.

Anyone care to guess what the proper strategy is for raising out of the BB with 88 when the SB completes? I was doing it like 50% of the time.

--Nate

Consider that completing makes sense if either:
a. he's slowplaying
or
b. he's got pot odds to call, but is an underdog

Pre-flop you're a favorite over all but overpairs, which will, in total, only occur 6/221 of the time, so (a) is unlikely.

Clearly, in situation (b), you want to put money in the pot.

The problem is that, if you raise all the time, your opponent will grow wise, and only complete with hands that provide 3/8 pot odds (assuming that BB=1 small bet).

Although they're only about 1/3 of the calling hands, the ones that have 1/4-3/8 showdown equity should represent about half of the profit. So, it's very likely that a mixed strategy is appropriate, but that the raise rate should be quite high since you're really only getting him for less than 1/8 of a big bet or so when you do catch him. Based on that, I woudld guess that raising most of the time, say, 3/4 to 7/8 is likely to be slightly more profitable.