not knowing your opponent, a 5/5 PLH hand

[Guy McSucker]

First of all, Art you are a clever so and so [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Right, now let me get my head around this. I don't think you need to be upset with yourself from an EV point of view.

Setting aside the fact that I don't believe he had two pair, and that if he did I doubt you'll get more out of him on the flop, your plan is to make a bet that is neutral for him with respect to calling or folding. This makes it easy to calculate the expected return on the play: let's assume he folds. You win the pot of $405.

So your EV on this play is +$405. And guess what? That's exactly what you got. You didn't lose anything.

The potential gain of your play is when he calls you with two pair I guess. But on a 9-5-2 flop, how often does a preflop raiser have two pair? I also don't think he'll call even a small reraise with a dead hand like an overpair with no flush card.

Also, a small reraise looks suspicious, making it more likely that he'll pass two pair.

Still there is a tiny chance that he has that hand and calls with it, or even gets excited and reraises, which the all-in raise certainly stamped out, and perhaps that's something worth lamenting.

Oh yeah, one more thing which may be too glib for its own good: if you put him in a game-theoretically neutral situation, he can't make a good decision, but he can't make a bad one either.

Guy.

[ArtVandelay]

Thanks Guy (; I guess I didn't make this clear, but my disgust over my own play is entirely independent of results. Of course I realize that if I had made the play I wish I had my results wouldn't have changed... and how upset can I honestly be about winning eight green chips with T6s. I am annoyed simply because I missed the chance to make what I think would have been a great play.

In terms of the game theory stuff, your point is correct that if he can't make a good decision, he can't make a bad one. However, I expect most people playing in a 5/5 PLH are good enough not to make a mistake in this spot, so if my opponent isn't going to make a bad decision anyway, I definitely want to deny him the chance to make a good one.

[Guy McSucker]

I wasn't being results oriented in my last post. I think we might be misunderstanding each other here. Forgive me for going on about this, but I am really intrigued by your thinking and want to get to the bottom of it.

If we assume that he's done with two pair but might play on with trips or a flush draw, then your play of reraising $150 has an EV of $405, whether he calls or folds, and whatever comes on the turn. Since it puts him in a neutral position, your theoretical win is $405 regardless. You can't get more.

Raising all-in on the other hand will usually net you the $405 straight away, and perhaps, just perhaps, he'll err and call. Raising all-in gives him a chance to make a mistake, which the play of raising $150 denies him.
I'm sleepy right now but didn't I calculate that his call would be worth $45 to you?

So with the game-theoretic play, you get $405 every time. With the all-in raise, you get $405 if he folds and $450 if he calls.

If you're absolutely sure he'll fold to the all-in raise every time, I still prefer it: it has the very same EV as the $150 raise, but zero variance.

I suppose what I'm confused about is what advantage you think you're getting from the small reraise. As I said before, the place it might gain is if he plays on with two pair, but I think that's no more likely than his calling your all-in with a set or nut flush draw.

It will be sad if I'm right and this intriguing play actually doesn't gain much.

Guy.

[ArtVandelay]

>> I suppose what I'm confused about is what advantage you think you're getting from the small reraise. As I said before, the place it might gain is if he plays on with two pair, but I think that's no more likely than his calling your all-in with a set or nut flush draw.
>> It will be sad if I'm right and this intriguing play actually doesn't gain much.

Sadly, I've concluded that you're correct. Assuming that two pair (or worse) will always fold and I will always get stacked by a better flush, I don't gain anything by giving him exact odds. Essentially, I get to offer him any odds I want from correct to terrible on a bet, and he either accepts or rejects them. Unless he will make a mistake at some odds but not others, I should just offer the worse possible odds to avoid variance.

However, although this is no longer the right play for the reasons that I stated, I still like a small raise more than all-in. First, I do think he might call my raise with two pair. Secondly, I am being deceptive in my raise (which I forgot to point out is one of my favorite parts about the play)... I am giving him exact odds to draw to a flush assuming that I don't already have one, so if he says "ah ha, I have the implied to call," he's actually making a mistake because he only has 7 flush cards left, not nine. Furthermore, if he calls my flop raise then he will probably make another mistake by calling for the rest of his chips on the turn even if he misses (he'll be getting 960:255 odds and again only have 7 outs). So here the money will still always go in no matter what (he'll call getting almost correct odds if he misses, and I'll (by assumption) get stacked if he hits), but he's more likely to let all the money go in this way then to call an all-in on the flop, which is clearly wrong given my hand. Finally, I've recently become a huge fan of stealing medium pots with underbets, because I feel like most players are not sensitive enough to bet size (ex. a full pot bluff might only work 45% of the time, making it wrong, but a half pot bluff still works 35% of the time, making it correct). Thus by making a small reraise with a flopped flush my opponents will be even more afraid of my small bets/raises, which I love.

[Guy McSucker]

I knew I'd lost sight of something.

The really clever part about your play is the fact that it looks like it gives him odds to draw to the flush, but in fact it does not, because you are holding two of his outs. (Stewart Reuben mentions this kind of play in the Omaha section of his book with Ciaffone.)

If he has a set, it does give him odds to draw to fill up, of course, but this neither helps nor hurts you from an EV point of view, as we've discussed.

There's the slight chance he'll call with two pair since your raise is small, and of course he doesn't have the odds to do that either.

The sum of all these makes it a winning play for you, and a clever one at that since it really ought to entice him along if he's on a flush draw, whereas he might work out what's going on when you move all-in.

Thanks for discussing this with me! I'm really glad to have got to the bottom of it.

Shame he had no pair and no draw in the actual hand, eh? (I still don't believe his claimed two pair.)

Guy.

[Ignatius]

Move it in. The money is not deep enough to get away from a made flush and you don't know if he raised with a made hand (flush, set, overpair), the nut flush draw or both (e.g. A9 w/ the ace of trump).

[ArtVandelay]

[ArtVandelay]

[Ulysses]