Why you never slow play aces.

[wtfsvi]

I'm not crazy about the result-oriented-accounting-method, but one can of course have a discussion while knowing what cards are to come. It just won't be very useful for figuring the right play.


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Perhaps the player with 33 would have folded, but it's ok to play for sets out of position. It is much more important to have good position with a suited connector or a hand that often makes one high pair.

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That is true. Position is not as important when playing for set value. It still matters though, but my point is that unless hero can put villain on AA-QQ everytime he makes a raise preflop, calling 10% of stack for set value way out of position is no good. He will just fold his unimproved AK (or K10 for that matter) when you start showing aggression on a J73 flop.


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And if I'm hero in SB on 33 I will often reraise a loose button raiser, obviously planning to fold to a push.

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I think that is a bad line against players who call too much, particularly compared with playing for set value. Too frequently, you end up out of position with a weak hand and a large chunk of your stack in the pot, and you fold with the odds to call when your opponent pushes with AK. You are also not last to act.

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I don't expect it to be a +EV play in itself, but I expect him to lay off my blinds. I can't play 10% of my stack for set value if he raises 20% of his button hands. Not 5% either for that matter. (I don't know if villain in this hand is a loose button raiser of course.)

I'm not saying a preflop raise would change the outcome every time, but I'm saying it could.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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I'm not crazy about the result-oriented-accounting-method, but one can of course have a discussion while knowing what cards are to come. It just won't be very useful for figuring the right play.

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Exactly. Excellent, excellent point, that deserves to be read again by most of the people posting "but not slowplaying them wouldnt' have done anything", so I'll quote it again:

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I'm not crazy about the result-oriented-accounting-method, but one can of course have a discussion while knowing what cards are to come. It just won't be very useful for figuring the right play.

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Results-oriented accounting is silly. If you buy a lottery ticket and then miraculously win the jackpot, results-oriented accounting says you made the correct play. Hogwash.

It doesn't matter if the 33 would fold to a raise and the aces wouldn't get any action - you don't limp in with aces or make baby-raises just to get action. You have a strong hand, and you raise to give other players the worst of it. In this case, the aces wanted action so he let the 33 get a fantastic price to see a flop (about 10-to-1 by my math) and not only lost the pot, but lost a big one due to the stealth ways of the set [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

If he had raised 4-5xBb preflop, the 33 would have been getting less than 2-to-1, and not getting the correct odds to see a flop and hit a set in most cases (it depends on how deep your opponents stacks are and how much you think you'll get paid off if you do hit the set).

I think this is an excellent example of why you shouldn't slowplay aces, because regardless of whether a three was going to come on the flop or not, the button could've given the threes the opportunity to make a mistake, but he didn't.

[pzhon]

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Exactly. Excellent, excellent point, that deserves to be read again by most of the people posting "but not slowplaying them wouldnt' have done anything",

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You are emphasizing trivial points (AA is strong! Focus on making the right play!) we didn't mention, not because we don't understand, but because there were more novel things to discuss.

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Results-oriented accounting is silly.


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Perhaps you have confused results-based accounting with assuming that you made the right/wrong play based on what happened in a particular hand. You want to make the right play on average. What you average varies from accounting system to accounting system, but you should get the same answer on average.

The results-based accounting method is very useful even if you don't see the point of it. It is often easier to analyze decisions using this method than using other methods.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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You are emphasizing trivial points (AA is strong! Focus on making the right play!) we didn't mention, not because we don't understand, but because there were more novel things to discuss.

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Are you sure they're trivial? Because, in your earlier post you said that raising wouldn't have done anything. I beg to differ. Raising a decent amount not only makes calling with 33 an error, but there's also a very good chance he'll fold in the first place.

Also I'm afraid I must be missing something here, because I don't see how discussing why making the right play wouldn't have changed anything (and therefore making the right play was futile and equal to making the wrong play) is "novel". Well, in the sense of "novelty", maybe...

So it certainly wouldn't have "done nothing" in this case. Since several people have said that raising before the flop would have accomplished nothing, I don't think they're trivial points at all. Rather, I think they need reinforcing.

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The results-based accounting method is very useful even if you don't see the point of it. It is often easier to analyze decisions using this method than using other methods.

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I've never heard of this method other than in the posts in this thread, but like I said, if it lives up to its name (that is, a method of accounting that focuses on the specific results of hands than on whether you got your money in with the best of it and made profitable plays), then it would seem to me that it's almost useless except in measuring your short-term variance. You'll never see a casino executive tell his floor manager "Watson! Did you see what happened over at Table 3! Seat 2 just got dealt three blackjacks in a row! SHUT DOWN THE TABLES AT ONCE!"

But like I said, all I know about it is what you wrote here, so maybe I'm missing something.

[pzhon]

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You are emphasizing trivial points (AA is strong! Focus on making the right play!) we didn't mention, not because we don't understand, but because there were more novel things to discuss.

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Are you sure they're trivial?

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Yes. It looks like you are new, and repeating things you learned yesterday. It's silly for you to presume that because we aren't saying exactly what you would say, that we must not have learned what you know.

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I beg to differ. Raising a decent amount not only makes calling with 33 an error,

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Raising with AA makes calling with 33 an error, unless there are implied odds, which there are.

Yawn.

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Also I'm afraid I must be missing something here,

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Yes. Maybe you should think about it more.

[edge]

It's not always bad to limp Aces preflop. You just have to be able to let them go easily if you don't raise to clear the field.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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Yes. It looks like you are new, and repeating things you learned yesterday. It's silly for you to presume that because we aren't saying exactly what you would say, that we must not have learned what you know.

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Wow. You are a total douchebag.

I'm new here, yes (bonus points for doing the hard work of looking to the left of my post to see my registration date: you get extra credit if this caused you to think about todays date and subtract one from the other to figure out that I haven't been posting on this forum long).

Also, for the record, the vast majority of the statements you've made have been logical fallacies, devoid of argumental evidence and thus information. (I don't know if you know anything about logic or rhetoric, but it may surprise you to know that you can't just say "you're wrong" and hope to have that accepted as a valid rebuttal. It isn't . [it may further surprise you to know that "you're new here and just repeating things" is also a logical fallacy (it's called an "appeal to authority" - its the same logical fallacy people make when they back up their arguments by saying "But Sklansky said so!!!")]

Yeah, you're right, I'm just repeating things I read yesterday. Please keep calling huge raises from AA with 33. I need someone new to mow my lawn.

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Raising with AA makes calling with 33 an error, unless there are implied odds, which there are.

Yawn.


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Which of course, makes limping in with AA and giving the threes the correct odds to hit a set even if there were no implied odds correct, naturally.

Yawn. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]



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Yes. Maybe you should think about it more.

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Yeah, I've thought about it, and here's what I've concluded: you are just like members of the other group of people that discuss things for the sole reason that they are "novel": idiotic post-modern literature professors who bag on poets and writers who are popular (without specifying in an intelligible way why they are bad), and who promote opinions which are Against the Grain for no other reason than to carve out a niche for themselves. (That's not to say they can't be funny - if you're looking for a laugh, look up the "Sokal Affair" on google sometime; the rather sophisticated prank this guy pulls is very amusing).

So in short, your posts are perhaps the most concentrated collection of logical fallacies ("you're getting implied odds, therefore raising with AA won't make the 33 fold, therefore limping in is correct! You must be new here, which means you're wrong, and you don't understand why results-oriented accounting is useful, even though I won't tell you why. So we can do without your clearly incorrect opinions ('AA is a good hand!' 'The goal of poker is to make correct decisions and win money!') and let the pros discuss something novel.)

Well, I must say, this whole exchange with you has been quite a novelty, if nothing else. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[kurto]

I hate to get in the middle of the battle going on between you two that seems to go well beyond the merits of this hand... I will restrict my comments to the card play.

The SB would have been correct in calling any raise up to about $2. Especially if he thought the villain had a high pocket pair and would be willing to lose a lot of money on it.

If the aces wanted it to be make the play of others bad, he would have to raise it to around $3. Though he would then have to make all his raises to that amount or fear giving away the strength of his hand.

That being said, "Aces" played it terribly all around. He let everyone in cheap, gave everyone a chance to catch up, then called an all in bet with just a pair to someone who smoothcalled others bets and raises.

[MLerra]

I agree that AA was doomed here. If AA made a reasonable raise (say 4-6 times the BB), then the 33 would have called for set value.

If AA raised much more than this, like 8-10BB, he would have gotten no callers at all and won some blinds. If all you're winning with AA is 4 big blinds, you're playing them horribly and missing out on a lot of money.

I agree that getting money in the pot when ahead is a good thing. However, I would contend that preflop, AA was actually, in a sense, BEHIND 33. Clearly he was willing to give away his stack to a flopped set of 333 - odds of which are about 7.5 to 1. Let's say 9 to 1 to account a little for the possibility of an A and a 3 on the flop. Imagine 10 runs of this hand then, assuming two things: 33 will fold on the flop to any bet without a set. And AA will eventually put all his money in the pot.

In these 10 scenarios, one time the 33 will hit his set without AA hitting his set or outdrawing him to an A. In this case, 33 wins $19.25. In the 9 other cases, no 3 comes on the flop and AA takes whatever 33 put in preflop. If AA limped in, he wins the $.25 x 9 = $2.25 for every $19.25 he loses. Thus he loses $17 every two hands with AA. Awful.

Say AA raises to 4BB preflop. Thus he still loses $19.25 once in every 10 hands, and he wins a total of $1 x 9 for the rest; thus he loses $10.25 every 10 hands. Still awful.

Say he raises to 6BB preflop - this is about what most people would suggest here I'd think. He will lose $19.25 every 10 hands, and win $1.5 x 9 = $13.50. STILL -EV!!!

The point of all of this is twofold:

1) analyzing hands by dollar$ Put In Pot while Ahead ($PIPA as I call it) is good, but you've still got to take into account the implied odds. Limping here with AA is still putting money in the pot while ahead, but it is a -EV play overall...

2) You're making a -EV play if you're seeing flops with AA against another pair for less than 10% of your stack, and are unwilling to concede the pot when you suspect a set.

Disclaimer: this doesn't include a number of things, like seeing a flop against K10 with your AA, nor does it factor in someone with JJ-KK having an overpair and putting all their money in against you anyways. But I hope the theory here makes sense.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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That being said, "Aces" played it terribly all around. He let everyone in cheap, gave everyone a chance to catch up, then called an all in bet with just a pair to someone who smoothcalled others bets and raises.

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Very well summed up - I agree.