HOH hand

[Komodo]

page 137
"Youre playing an online tournament and just 5 players remain. Blinds are 50/100, and you have 4300, a bit less than half the chips at the table. On the button, you pick up: A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

The two players in front of you both fold. You raise to 200. The small blind folds but the BB, a solid player with 1100 calls, putting in another 100.The pot is now 450.
Flop is
5 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 3 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

The BB checks, and you bet 250, a little over half the pot. The BB raises you to 500. What do you do? (pot is 1200 and it cost 250 to call."

This situation comes up frequently and Im never sure what to do. Harrington advocates a fold after some discussion. Does everyone agree?

[bobbyi]

What's with the preflop minraise? I was surprised in the book that he has hero doing this. I would always raise more than 200 here pf. Can someone explain to me why we would to make such a small raise? It seems that we are really pricing the BB in when we would perfer to pick up the blinds.

[Komodo]

I rarely play this way either, but Im not so surprised by the preflop miniraise, since Harrington likes to vary his bets somewhat (usually between 2xBB to 5xBB).

[jmillerdls]

its my understanding that this isn't what he did, but what actually happened. Many of his examples he explains what would be best in his opinion, only to reveal what was actually done.

[Beavis68]

He gave no pre-flop or flop recommendation, we come in to the hand at the check-raise.

[Shandrax]

[ QUOTE ]
page 137
"Youre playing an online tournament and just 5 players remain. Blinds are 50/100, and you have 4300, a bit less than half the chips at the table. On the button, you pick up: A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

The two players in front of you both fold. You raise to 200. The small blind folds but the BB, a solid player with 1100 calls, putting in another 100.The pot is now 450.
Flop is
5 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 3 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

The BB checks, and you bet 250, a little over half the pot. The BB raises you to 500. What do you do? (pot is 1200 and it cost 250 to call."

This situation comes up frequently and Im never sure what to do. Harrington advocates a fold after some discussion. Does everyone agree?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would say there is a bit of information missing, namely:
- stacksize of the BB
- number of payouts
- read on the BB

First of all your hand is pretty good for the button with just 5 players left, so you should play it aggressively. That is why the small pre-flop raise was probably not enough although deceptive since it looks like you are begging for a call.

Depending on your table image, there is a good chance that the BB just wants to defend his blinds and chose the check-raise as the appropriate method to do so. What sort of a player is he?

As Dan Harrington pointed out, the main problem of this hand is that you don't know the exact number of your outs, but is that so? Since you already got an ace, it is not impossible, but unlikely that the BB has an ace also. So we can say that it is pretty likely that you got at least 6 outs here. In case the BB has a pair you would be a 3.16:1 underdog for 4.8:1 pot-odds which looks like a clear call. You can't put him on one single hand only though. He could have trips in which case you would be reduced to 3 outs (for the straight) and so on. Now all of a sudden it doesn't look like a clear call anymore.

The other problem of this hand are the effective odds, because your opponent could put you all-in on the turn. That is where his stacksize comes into focus and that is what probably forces the fold. Also you don't want to bust out of the tourney just out of the bubble.

[Komodo]

BB stack is 1100. He is a solid player. Prize structure is not given, but I assume it is the normal SNG 1 (500) 2 (300) 3 (200). Its not possible to bust out, since you have almost half the chips at the table.

[Shandrax]

Oops, I overlooked the 1100. So he is pot-committed. In this case your options are either to fold or to go all-in.

Actually this is one of the cases where I don't know if it is better to go with Bayes Theorem and check possible card combinations and your chances to beat them or if it is better to put the opponent on certain hands and guess the percentages he has these.

In the latter case it would go like this:
He has a pair lower than aces in 50% of the cases. Being a 5:2 underdog you would win 20%. To make it simple, let's say you are drawing dead in 40% of the cases and last but not least there is Harrington's 10% rule where you beat 10% bluffs. This would add up for 30% overall wins which would make you a 2.3:1 underdog. It would cost you 750 to put him all-in for a pot of 1700 which equals 2.2:1 pot-odds. Close decision, but looks like a fold.

If you assume that his chances for trips are better than 40% and he bluffs less than 10% your chances are even worse and the fold becomes even clearer.

P.S.: All-in pre-flop would have had a positive EV [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Shandrax]

SSH p.108f covers the Bayes part under the header: Finding hidden outs.

Bayes Theorem is an approximation if you don't know anything about your opponent. Here you know that he is a "solid" player though which points towards the educated guess method.

[KramerTM]

[ QUOTE ]
Bayes Theorem is an approximation if you don't know anything about your opponent.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not true.