Unusual AKo hand, 30-60

[jogumon]

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True, when the river came, I would have called utg. But before I had the chance, I had new information presented to me. Namely, the other two both had aces.

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Putting the unknown on an A here is a HUGE assumption. You have no idea how loose/dumb he is. After the turn was checked, UTG bet, and he called. For all you know, he has a PP, and thinks he's calling UTG's bluff. Yes, he should think someone after him might have an A. Yes, if he's picking off UTG's bluff with less than an A, he should raise, to get the pair of A's behind him to fold. That's assuming he's a good player. Why are you doing that?

You are making a big laydown, in a really big pot, based on assumptions of how your opponents play. One opponent is a LAG, the other a complete unknown, the other loose passive. Your reading of their hands is based on how YOU (or another good player) would have played the hand. NOT how these players would play.

In the end, you have TPTK in a very large pot, needing to call 1 bet to close the action. The only player who's hand you're afraid of played in a very strange fasion. Checking this turn, with a flush draw out there, with any made hand does not make sense. There is no hand that he has where raising the flop to drive out those behind him, then checking the turn makes sense. Yet you're putting him on a good hand. Just call the one bet. This is NOT the spot for a good laydown.

[Josh W]

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If UTG bets the turn and a drawingdead opponent mucks, it's horrible. If he gives a free card, there's no guarantee that they call the river, but there's AT LEAST A CHANCE for post-turn profit to be made.

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This analysis is terrible. He raises his impossibly strong hand on the flop, then checks it on the turn?

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The analysis is terrible only if you dislike winning.

People who raise preflop don't like folding in huge pots on the flop. People never (or, more accurately, rarely) think of themselves as drawing dead on the flop. However, people with no pair and no draw often find themselves drawing dead on the turn. Hence, people like to call more on the flop than on the turn. I'm startled that this is new information to you.

Many people adopt the (when flopping a monster) BetFlopCheckTurnBetRiver philosophy. I know Andy Fox has said he does this when flopping quads. I know tons o' people who do it live and online, I do it, etc. When you consider all the possibilities, I think you'll see that this is how you maximize profit. Forcing drawing dead opponents out on the turn doesn't help the bottom line. See, people don't like calling the turn drawing dead.

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I'm sure you posted this hand to show us how brilliant you are, so why don't you post the results, because your arguements don't seem logical to me.

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Wow, get indignant.

As I've said in this thread, I often post hands like this to find the error in my thinking. So far, except for the one person who said "I think UTG bluffs more than 10% of the time on the river", nobody has really pointed out errors in my thinking (and as I told him, we agree to disagree). I recently posted a hand where I jammed w/ KK on a raggedy board against 3 opponents, then checked when a Jack hit the river, thinking it was likely an opponent had JJ. As it turns out, they had TT and QQ. When somebody presented the math to show me the error in my ways, I quickly admitted as so.

Similarly, there's a good chance I misplayed this. There's a good chance I layed down the winner in a 13BB pot. That would be horrible. But if it's the right thing to do, it would be acceptable.

I'm waiting for somebody to provide a compelling argument that either:

a.) UTG bluffs more than 10% of the time, or
b.) HJ and Button don't have an Ace (and even then it's sketchy, because that only allows that UTG has an ace, and that may mean two pair, so just because the late players don't have an ace doesn't mean I should always call).

If (a) or (b) doesn't get shown, I played it right (regardless of results).

Josh

[Josh W]

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Putting the unknown on an A here is a HUGE assumption. You have no idea how loose/dumb he is. After the turn was checked, UTG bet, and he called. For all you know, he has a PP, and thinks he's calling UTG's bluff. Yes, he should think someone after him might have an A. Yes, if he's picking off UTG's bluff with less than an A, he should raise, to get the pair of A's behind him to fold. That's assuming he's a good player. Why are you doing that?


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I'm just going to address this paragraph here, because I've addressed everything else already.

By "unknown", I assume you are referring to the HJ.

You think he may have a pocket pair. In order for that to be so, he:

1.) Raised preflop. Okay, people raise with any pocket pair, so that doesn't narrow down his hands that much. I lose if he has 22, 66, 99, TT, or AA.

2.) Called two cold on the flop. Okay, so he doesn't have 33, 44, 55, 77, 88. Yes, he MAY have those, but it's getting extremely unlikely.

3.) He checked the turn. He doesn't have AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 66, 22.

4.) He's an unknown. But we want to contend that he's aggressive enough to raise a small pair, but not threebet it on a raggedy flop with a preflop aggressor behind him (i.e. 77 would wanna three bet to get AK out, etc). Okay...fine. Maybe he's completely insane and just calls a bunch of bets and doesn't try to protect his hand, even though he's LAGGY enough to raise it preflop.

5.) He's CHECKING this pair on the turn??? He wants to give ANOTHER free card to AK/AQ on the button?????

6.) He's CALLING the river?

All of that is happening? At once? And he doesnt' have 2s, 6s, 9s, Ts, or A's? Hmmm, I don't buy it.

But let's keep playing this game where we aren't in touch with reality. Now...I have the HJ beat. So what?

And, yeah, I have the button beat (that's dang near a given).

I need all of those 6 things previously mentioned to be true AND beat UTG. He raised the flop, and bet the river when an ace came. He could have A5h, sure. But he could also have A2h, A6, A9, 87, T9, 96, 22, 66, 99, etc.

I say the highjack has an ace over 98% of the time, and that's being conservative. Now, I need to parlay that with the likelihood of me beating UTG. UTG has 5 potential hands that I beat (when he's not bluffing): A3h, A4h, A5h, A7h, A8h (and a lot of those, especially the last two, he probably bets the turn with).

UTG has at least 23 possibilities that I lose to:

3 A2s
3 A6s
3 A9s
3 ATs
3 22s
3 66s
3 99s
4 87s (only counting s00teds)

Hmm, that's 25, not sure how I came up with 23 earlier. Throw in a few T9s.

So there's like an 15% chance that I have UTG beat....couple that with a 2% HJ doesn't have an ace, and we have a whopping 0.3% chance I'm ahead.

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Guys, really. Play some poker. Quit thinking "TPTK Big Pot, I call". Look, you can beat soft games with that way of thinking, but people are whining on here every month about how much tougher the games are getting. You aren't going to be beating tougher games without doing some analysis.

Is this an easy fold? Absolutely not.

Is it a clear fold? No. It's not clear. I think it's a fold, but not a huge error by calling. The fact is, many of you are saying it is black and white. That is the only BIG mistake that can be made here...thinking situations like this are black and white. THAT'S THE ONLY BIG MISTAKE THAT CAN BE MADE.

And almost all of you are making it.

Josh

[jogumon]

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I think it's a fold, but not a huge error by calling

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This is the heart of the matter. If you call, it's not much of an error. EV wise, folding probably isn't either. It isn't black and white, and I don't think anyone here is saying it is. It's extremely close, but because of that, the size of the pot dictates a call. A one bet error is bad. A 13 bet error is catastrophic.

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Called two cold on the flop. Okay, so he doesn't have 33, 44, 55, 77, 88. Yes, he MAY have those, but it's getting extremely unlikely.

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This is where I'm saying you are using your playing standards to read the play of an unknown or a bad player. Would you cold call two on the flop with these hands? probably not. Would an average player or bad player? I've certainly seen it done, at these levels online, more times than I can count. Even by players who seem good, at least according to PT stats.

[JasonP530]

Josh,

You have the CO and Button beat the majority of the time. UTG has played his hand so strangely, and so incorrectly, that you cannot be sure what he has. Giving a free card in this big pot(to what can easily be a flush draw or now KQ/QJ if your analysis is correct), would be a horrendus play on his part. So bad, that you cannot assume that other horrendus plays(like bluffing the river) are not in his arsenal. This is the reason you must call.

Jason

[Josh W]

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I think it's a fold, but not a huge error by calling

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This is the heart of the matter. If you call, it's not much of an error. EV wise, folding probably isn't either. It isn't black and white, and I don't think anyone here is saying it is. It's extremely close, but because of that, the size of the pot dictates a call. A one bet error is bad. A 13 bet error is catastrophic.

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This isn't even logic. A close decision factors in all elements, not the least of which is pot size.

If all of these matters make it close one way or the other, it's close. Pot size has already been factored in. Don't say it's close, then say potsize dictates a call. No, if you want to use that logic, say "it's not close, but pot size makes it close".

And LOTS of people are saying that this is black and white. They say folding is terrible horrible no good very bad ridiculous, blah blah blah.
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Called two cold on the flop. Okay, so he doesn't have 33, 44, 55, 77, 88. Yes, he MAY have those, but it's getting extremely unlikely.

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This is where I'm saying you are using your playing standards to read the play of an unknown or a bad player. Would you cold call two on the flop with these hands? probably not. Would an average player or bad player? I've certainly seen it done, at these levels online, more times than I can count. Even by players who seem good, at least according to PT stats.

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Did you see the part where I say they MAY have those hands? It's just that **SIX** elements need to be satisfied before they can have those. Looking at any one street, yeah, it's possible. Factor in all of the action on all of the streets, and it's really close to a 0% chance for ANYBODY to have these small pairs.

Josh

[Josh W]

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Josh,

You have the CO and Button beat the majority of the time. UTG has played his hand so strangely, and so incorrectly, that you cannot be sure what he has. Giving a free card in this big pot(to what can easily be a flush draw or now KQ/QJ if your analysis is correct), would be a horrendus play on his part. So bad, that you cannot assume that other horrendus plays(like bluffing the river) are not in his arsenal. This is the reason you must call.

Jason

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I swear reading comprehension is at an all time low on this board.

I DO FACTOR in the naked bluff. I just think it's less than 10%.

The guy is 38/14. Of course he's a bad player. I'm the only winning player I know with stats remotely that close, and they are dropping a lot with less shorthanded play.

There's no doubt he's a bad player. Instead of stating the obvious, give me some reason why he may bluff more than 10% of the time into a field of 4 on the river.

Josh

[Ulysses]

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"then all of a sudden UTG has a better hand than he did."

I don't think this is so unusual. An ace comes, a guy bets, we figure the ace hit him. But now several other guys, who figure to have aces, call. If it's me, that decreases the possibility that the original bettor had an ace from what I figured were his chances of so having when he bet out. And since it's likely the others have aces, and it's likely he knows this, it's likelier that he can beat an ace.

Not saying it justifies folding, just saying changing the thinking about what the bettor might have in light of the two calls makes sense.

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Andy, I love you. No, not in that way.

See, you don't play online (I don't think). You rely on getting information the old fashioned way...throughout the hand. Too many people on here (and I'm not singling out anybody, least of all Duke), gather all their information before the hand, in the neat little VPIP and PFR numbers. They see those numbers, then act accordingly.

There are no stats that I've seen that take into account post flop play. The information you can gather via postflop play is soooo valuable, and people just aren't used to using that information anymore.

Josh

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Josh, I love Andy too, but his logic doesn't make sense. Read the bolded passage. He says UTG knows that the other two guys likely have Aces. Did they tell UTG they were calling before he bet the river? That statement makes no sense to me. When UTG bets, what would make him think those guys have Aces?

[Ulysses]

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True, when the river came, I would have called utg. But before I had the chance, I had new information presented to me. Namely, the other two both had aces. UTG still thought he could win the hand. UTG could beat an ace. I chose to use this new information, information I didn't have when I planned on calling UTG.

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I'm still trying to figure this out. Did you have a conversation with UTG after the two guys called and he told you he still thought he would win the hand? Or did those two guys tell UTG before he bet that they were both going to call?

[Josh W]

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"then all of a sudden UTG has a better hand than he did."

I don't think this is so unusual. An ace comes, a guy bets, we figure the ace hit him. But now several other guys, who figure to have aces, call. If it's me, that decreases the possibility that the original bettor had an ace from what I figured were his chances of so having when he bet out. And since it's likely the others have aces, and it's likely he knows this, it's likelier that he can beat an ace.

Not saying it justifies folding, just saying changing the thinking about what the bettor might have in light of the two calls makes sense.

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Andy, I love you. No, not in that way.

See, you don't play online (I don't think). You rely on getting information the old fashioned way...throughout the hand. Too many people on here (and I'm not singling out anybody, least of all Duke), gather all their information before the hand, in the neat little VPIP and PFR numbers. They see those numbers, then act accordingly.

There are no stats that I've seen that take into account post flop play. The information you can gather via postflop play is soooo valuable, and people just aren't used to using that information anymore.

Josh

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Josh, I love Andy too, but his logic doesn't make sense. Read the bolded passage. He says UTG knows that the other two guys likely have Aces. Did they tell UTG they were calling before he bet the river? That statement makes no sense to me. When UTG bets, what would make him think those guys have Aces?

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There is little that will prove to him that they BOTH have aces. But look at the action.

You have a preflop raiser and a preflop three bettor.

They both coldcalled on the flop.

They both checked through the turn.

As such, its very unlikely that they have a pair. Since they raised and threebet preflop, it's 'guaranteed' (i.e. over 99%) that at least one of them has an ace.

My love for Andy isn't so much for his analysis (which I don't have as much of a problem with as you do), but for the fact that he's willing to keep acquiring information throughout the hand, whereas most modern day internet players see a few stats preflop, and use that to dictate everything.

I clearly love Andy more. (No, Andy, still not in that way!)

Josh