Never Called Down With King High Before

[noir]

I can honestly say that I've never envisioned Tai Chi while playing poker.

Have you seen the movie Hero?

Most scenes in the film resonate, especially the one where the nameless warrior fights Broken Sword.

I'm still trying to construct the analogy of calligraphy:swordplay::_______oker, which is in some ways relevant to your question.

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I can only imagine that the argument relates to this being a way to get a decent number of bets in the center.

I certainly don't think it's the best approach. The guy is willing to jam with air. Awesome. Let's go.

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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I think the best line is to raise flop. Previous play at the table would determine whether I'd cap or not. If he only calls your flop bet and donks turn, I raise.


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Only thing that makes sense in your post is what you just said. Are you trying to say he should be raising more or folding more in this sort of situation?

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Secondly, I'd don't know what your other opponents are like, but this is not so hot for your image. I'm trying to think of how I would react if I witnessed this. I'd peg you as weak. I'd probably call you a little girl (please don't take offense, I'm trying to be honest and constructive). I would then look for opportunities to stick you in between the maniac and myself, fattening my pots and making you fold winners.


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How is calling down a crazy player going to encourage people to take more shots at you? If anything, they'll try and run over you less. Encouraging others to show less aggression toward you in a shorthanded game is a great thing, especially if you're only playing passively against this player and not the rest of the folks at the table.

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In sum, I think you're costing yourself money in this hand and subsequent ones with this line. Also, competition is quite a motivational factor for me, and I fail to see how you can take any satisfaction in calling down each street. And I also think that if his inferior holding should hit while taking this line, it would be to your psychological detriment.

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We're playing against a maniac. When you have medium hands against a maniac, you call him down after finding out where you're at. You don't raise unless your hand has a bit more showdown value because maniacs make their money by playing awful hands and monsters the exact same way, inspiring otherwise good players to get overinvolved in gigantic pots with hands they would never have called with in the first place against halfway decent players.

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On the other hand, jamming this joint and being right solidifies your confidence and will make your other opponents shudder. They will not want to mess with you, and they will fear getting involved with you and him. And now, if they do, you know they have some serious goods.

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While I agree that being aggressive is a nice attribute in shorthanded, you don't take down a maniac by outagressing him, especially not on the turn and the river. You do it by picking your battles, or when your hand deserves it, calling down.

With king high decent kicker, I'm calling down lots of flops vs. this maniac unless something on the turn falls like 3 to a straight, etc. This hand was well played by Toss and I like it lots.

[noir]

KQ is the best hand here an overwhelming majority of the time.

If you choose to neglect this, that is fine with me. If you decide not to raise when your opponent has a worse hand and will call, so be it. Continue to look at your cards in a vacuum. It suits me well. Leaving money in the hands of the maniac means more for me.

Given that you do not appear to push your edges consistently, of course you do not understand how foregoing them can create an adverse subconscious condition.

The fact that you chose the words "go on tilt" and "if he draws out of you" portray both of my points.

noir,

if you wrote in the king's english instead of translated samurai, it might help get your points across better. I feel I finally understand what you're saying, and I actually agree with some of it now, heh.

[MicroBob]

I think the call-down is okay.
The number of times he shows UI 93o will be very high.

Calling-down is especially strong if you've laid down a few times to his aggression the past few hands...thus he's just trying to 'bluff you out' of every pot....this is how many hyper-aggressive fish think....and, in fact, many actually DO think, just badly.

On some of the AK call-downs I've made on boards like this I've been shown 32o or something similar.
In fact, even calling-down with middle-pair or something in the face of aggression I've been shown MUCH weaker than a busted-draw before. It happens.

If they think they can push you out they'll try it.



There are negatives however:
1. it's not THAT much +EV on this particular hand. There are certainly better spots where you can win more money against this guy.

2. successfully calling him down when he's showing a worse hand can have the dangerous effect of actually SLOWING HIM DOWN and getting him to play more correctly (particularly post-flop). I've seen this happen several times when I've made decent call-downs with 22 and unimproved AK or something.
He will try to bluff at you less often...although you can look at the positive side of this (that he will get out of the way to your aggression when you are only on a draw or something) I typically prefer for loose-ag players to keep on playing as loosely and aggressively as possible.



Overall I think it's a decent call-down...but I'm less and less sure about some of the meta-game ramifications these days.

[Monty Cantsin]

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calligraphy:swordplay::_______oker

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"posting on internet message boards"?

Also, I agree with Happydaz that you talk funny.

/mc

[noir]

My writing is a sketch of my mind's mirror of the game. Dig?

It is meant to be instructive for both myself and those that care to digest it.

I happily will elucidate when possible if there is genuine interest.

We're all on a path. I don't know where you are. I don't know where I am. I don't know what you've seen along the way. I don't know what I've missed. I do know that the path isn't a straight line; it appears to loop.

[Aaron W.]

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KQ is the best hand here an overwhelming majority of the time.

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I don't dispute this at all. Being ahead on the flop and being ahead at the showdown are very very different (this is very close to a showdown hand since villain is so loose and aggressive). You also need to consider the consequences of the raise. Is it still the best hand an overwhelming majority of the time when you raise and...

- Villain 3-bets the flop
- Villain calls the flop raise and check-raises the turn
- Villain calls the flop and donks the turn

More importantly, DO YOU WIN MORE MONEY in these cases (especially if villain was on a pure donk bluff and might fold to your raise)?

I don't claim to be the best poster nor the best player on this board. Being a much-less-than-part-time player, I know I have gaping holes in both my knowledge and experience. I've been hanging around this board for about 4 years now and it's starting to seem that there's no end to the escalation of aggression. In some places, it looks good. In other places, I have my doubts.

The Hyper-LAG vs Hyper-LAG game is very elastic (in the economics sense - small chances in the parameters causes large changes in outcome). Let's quantify the situation. Preflop pot: 5 SB.

Calling Down: We'll say hero wins CD% of the time when he Calls Down. Then we have

EV(CD) = 10*(CD%) - 5*(1 - CD%) = 15*(CD%) - 5

Raising the flop: The calculation becomes very complicated, but the idea is simple. Sometimes villain folds to the raise. Sometimes he 3-bets. Sometimes he peels the flop and folds the turn. Sometimes he goes nuts to the end. Rather than set up an equation with six or seven variables, we'll make a simplifying assumption that villain folds somewhere VF percent of the time. How much extra does hero win when villain folds (obviously the worst hand)? I'll say villain invests an average of 3 extra SB when he folds (1 SB when he calls and check-folds; 4 SB when he 3-bets the flop and bet-folds the turn). We can play with this number later. We'll also say that Hero wins RTF% of the time when he Raises The Flop and goes to showdown. We'll say that both hero and villain put in 8 SB postflop (cap flop, call turn, call river).

EV(RTF, VF) = (1 - VF%)*(13*(RTF%) - 8*(1 - RTF%)) + 8*(VF%) = 21*(RTF%) + 16(VF%) - 21(RTF%)*(VF%) - 8

Now all we need to do is compute the EVs for various ranges of percents and see what happens:

CD | EV(CD) = 15*(CD%) - 5
100%| 10
90% | 8.5
80% | 7
70% | 5.5
60% | 4
50% | 2.5
40% | 1
30% | -0.5
20% | -2
10% | -3.5
0% | -5

For the two variable system of raising the flop (RTF vertical, VF horizontal) -- Sorry that it's not perfectly aligned --

--- | 0% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 70% | 80% | 90% | 100%
100%| 13.0 | 12.5 | 12.0 | 11.5 | 11.0 | 10.5 | 10.0 | 9.5 | 9.0 | 8.5 | 8
90% | 10.9 | 10.6 | 10.3 | 10.0 | 9.7 | 9.5 | 9.1 | 8.9 | 8.6 | 8.2 | 8
80% | 8.8 | 8.7 | 8.6 | 8.5 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.3 | 8.2 | 8.1 | 8.1 | 8
70% | 6.7 | 6.9 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.4 | 7.5 | 7.6 | 7.7 | 7.9 | 8.0 | 8
60% | 4.6 | 5.0 | 5.3 | 5.6 | 6.0 | 6.3 | 6.6 | 7.0 | 7.3 | 7.7 | 8
50% | 2.5 | 3.0 | 3.6 | 4.2 | 4.7 | 5.3 | 5.8 | 6.4 | 6.9 | 7.5 | 8
40% | 0.4 | 1.2 | 1.9 | 2.7 | 3.4 | 4.2 | 5.0 | 5.7 | 6.5 | 7.2 | 8
30% | -1.7 | -0.7 | 0.2 | 1.2 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 4.1 | 5.1 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8
20% | -3.8 | -2.6 | -1.4 | -0.2 | 0.9 | 2.1 | 3.3 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 6.8 | 8
10% | -5.9 | -4.5 | -3.1 | -1.7 | -0.3 | 1.0 | 2.4 | 3.8 | 5.2 | 6.6 | 8
0% | -8.0 | -6.4 | -4.8 | -3.2 | -1.6 | 0.0 | 1.6 | 3.2 | 4.8 | 6.4 | 8

So what's the point?

Pokerstove says that against random hands, Hero is losing 49-51. We'll call that 50%. Calling down, hero expects to win 2.5 SB.

What happens if you raise? Things get sticky. If villain goes to showodwn, you expect hero to win slightly less often compared to when villain is allowed to try his bet-bet-bet bluff. Let's call it 40%. In order for hero to do better by raising, villain needs to fold his hand about 30% of the time, otherwise hero is doing WORSE by raising. In fact, because hero's hand has so little showdown value, he does BETTER when he's able to push villain off his hand more often. I'm not sure if this happens and only OP knows villain.

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If you choose to neglect this, that is fine with me. If you decide not to raise when your opponent has a worse hand and will call, so be it. Continue to look at your cards in a vacuum. It suits me well. Leaving money in the hands of the maniac means more for me.

Given that you do not appear to push your edges consistently, of course you do not understand how foregoing them can create an adverse subconscious condition.

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There's a difference between an immediate edge and a playing edge. One of the big mistakes that I see is that players refuse to think ahead to consider the future consequences of their play (especially hands where you're NOT going to fold). Here is a good example of this. Slowing down aggressive villains seems to be generally WRONG.

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The fact that you chose the words "go on tilt" and "if he draws out of you" portray both of my points.

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What's wrong with using the standard terminology? It's the same thing, regardless of what you call it. I'm not real big on the truth-is-what-you-perceive-it-to-be thing.

[toss]

When I called down I thought I would just let him bet with the worst hand. I didn't want to chase him away by raising or get punished when I'm behind. Whats more is that he's capable of 3-betting with a worse hand when I raise. I also bloat the pot this way which may make me calldown incorrectly. Maybe I called because it was easier to play that way. Don't know if it squeezes every ounce of EV that way though.