unbeatable game?

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
You're friend tried to bluff a person who calls with anything? sounds like he needs to adjust his game

[/ QUOTE ]

I would agree, but it sounds like you were responding to someone else's post.

[Blarg]

Yup. Pairs plunge in value. The people saying simple tight play will get the money in these games, and that so much value is gained and the outcome is so influenced by what goes on preflop, are wrong, when so many people go to the flop and then past it. Your hand establishes much more of its value on the flop and post flop than it does in regular games. You're not going to clean up in these games waiting to triumph with big pairs. Even two pairs will often become the bottom hand at show down, not the winner. To win in multi-way pots, you need multi-way friendly, not multi-way vulnerable, cards. Draws become the order of the day, and you'll be competing against many of them almost every hand.

[MrX]

Drawing hands in late position are the key. Pot equity/odds for pumping a draw and capping your draw on the flop (when apropriate) are the key to this. you will win some monster pots, but have extreme variance. these games piss you off b/c your AA you were so patiently waiting for does not hold up. Well AA is not the key to these games. The key is position and getting money in the pot when you have high pot equity. These games are great. these posts are comical.

[A_PLUS]

I think there is a lot of misinformation being thrown about this thread, so I wanted to clear some things up with actual numbers.

Big pairs are still the best hands in a game where you have 6-7 people playing to the river with anything. Suited connectors go up in relative value, but they are still fairly far down the list.

I used Wilson's software to test the following. 6 random hands, all show down.

AA - 48.43% (win rate)
KK - 41.9
QQ - 36.82
JJ - 32.45
AKs - 31.09
AQs - 29.6

87s was above the cut-off (win% > 16.66%) but not by much.


Before I get slammed, I realize that this doesnt factor that 87s, will only cost you pre-flop when you miss the flop, and AA, will cost you the whole way without knowing if you are drawing dead. I also, know that you are against better than the pure average hand (top 60% hand).

But it doesnt change the fact that you should still cap the betting with AA, and still get tremendous value for it. If AA was getting broke 80% of the time, Id listen, but 50/50 against 6 players sounds like my kind of deal.

[Lucky Clubs]

A PLUS, thanks for checking that out on the software... I had no idea what the actual numbers would project with high pocket pairs against random hands, because I've seldom had to show down against that many. Point well taken.

Just curious, in light of those numbers, what hand would be your cutoff for capping action preflop? Do you cap with Kings, knowing that the majority of the time an ace won't hit the board?

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The table consists of 9 people (other than you), all of which know the basics to playing poker, but just don't follow them, including one 80 year old man who plays EVERY hand and calls them all down to the river(no joke, he loses $2500-$5000 a night at best.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Stonecold, I feel your pain. My problem is that my style and knowledge is suited to No-Limit, but my bankroll puts me right at that $2/4 table, between the 80-year-old man and the blue-haired woman who's decided to gamble away her social security check at the poker tables rather than the slot machines.

I've decided to stay away from these games where there are at least seven showdowns at the river. I've been adding to my bankroll by playing sit-n-go tourneys online, but obviously, as a recent college grad with a 9-5er getting in the way, it's slow-going.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a couple bad beat stories that happened at Foxwoods in the very same day, at the very same table... maybe it's just for morbid amusement; maybe there's something to be learned from it. I don't know.

Anyway, I was playing at Foxwoods for the very first time, so I decided to start small. I bought in for $120 in the $2/4 limit game, and found myself up about $60 playing with young folks, like myself. All of a sudden it was like a changing of the guard. As the whippersnappers shuffled off one by one, they were replaced by retirees, apparently waking up from their afternoon naps. Apparently they were so refreshed, that all eight felt alert enough to play EVERY hand down to the river. After losing with trips or top two pair to straights and flushes at the river no less than six or seven times, my original $120 was whittled to about $70. After losing with pocket aces to (get this) a 2 7 offsuit in middle position who had called my raise (neither of us hit the flop, but she saw fit to call my bets all the way to a 2 on the turn and a 7 on the river), I decided I would play my last hand. Down to about $40 after the last tragedy, I look down at pocket 9s. Miraculously, only 5 opted to see the flop, even without a raise to scare them off their monster 3 6s and 4 8s. Flop comes 10 10 9. Bingo. Now I can only imagine that three of the old-timers must have had hands that even THEY couldn't mathematically draw to, because it was down to me and a particularly ornery-looking fellow with hair sprouting from his ears. I had flopped a full boat, and only two hands beat me at this point: 10 10 or 10 9. Guessing he had neither, I bet into him.

Now Foxwoods has a rule in limit games that when it gets heads-up, instead of capping the betting, each player may keep raising in turn until one is all-in, if they so choose. as he kept pushing me, I knew he had a 10, but figured his kicker wasn't a 9, and he would have to outdraw me to win. Eventually I was all-in... he still had a mountain of retirement chips in front of him. He stood up and flipped over A 10, pretty much what I had expected. When I flipped my hand over, he guffawed and said, "You was raisin' me with that, sonny. You ain't even got a 10!" He didn't realize that I had a full house until the dealer pointed it out. Long story short, after catching running 4s to pair the board and give him a higher full house, he had the nerve to pull a Josh Arieh and tell me that I stupid for betting against him and I got what I deserved.

Anyway, I did what they tell you to never do. Instead of walking away and cooling off, I bought back in for $100. Almost immediately, I found myself in the big blind with A 3 suited. Who should join the pot but Old Man River himself? He raised and everyone else, probably remembering the tension from the last showdown, folded in turn. I called. Flop came A A 3, giving me nuts. At that point nothing could beat me. So I bet. The old-timer just scowled at me and grumbled "Back for more, eh?" Same exact thing happened. We raised back and forth until my $100 was all in the pot. I expected that I was at least up against an Ace with a high kicker, meaning I was at least risking that he would draw once again to a higher full house. Much to my surprise, he turned over pocket 8s. When I flipped over my A 3, he didn't even blink. He had put in $100 with two aces on board with only a pair of 8s! I didn't even look up to watch his face as the turn and river came 8 8 to give him 4-of-a-kind.

The dealer just shook her head and looked almost as sorry as I did. As I got up and walked away without a word, I heard the old man say quite loudly, "That ought to put him in his place."

Again, I'm not sure what the lesson here is, but I think it's something like this:

I was devastated to lose $220, particularly since I was between jobs and didn't have much more than that $220 to my name. I was so confident in my ability to be patient and take the swings that I thought I was sure to come out ahead. In terms of solid poker, I think I was right to put all my money in the pot in both those instances. But in terms of financial responsibility, I probably shouldn't have been putting up my entire stake in a single hand unless there was NO WAY that the nuts wouldn't hold up the whole way (basically by flopping a royal flush). For some people, it would be just another bad beat story and a minor swing. For me, it meant eating Ramen noodles for a month. Now I make sure to ask myself before I sit down to play if all the money in front of me is money that I could lose and still get sleep at night.

Sorry for the long read... just thought I'd share the story to let you know: a) that I know exactly what it's like to play with happy callers and how bad it feels to give your money to people who make terrible plays; and b) just to get it off my chest, because I still have nightmares about that old man and his smugness over what can only be described as the dumbest of luck.

My advice: unless you're the savviest and most patient of players, and unless you can calculate the odds of your hand holding up against any range of hands with flawless efficiency, don't play a game in which the only strategy is holding the best hand at the end. Basically, don't play $2/4 at Foxwoods.

- Mike -

[/ QUOTE ]

I wish I could count on 1 hand how many of the "bad beat" hands in this thread are made up. Hand 1 probably happened, I would be confident in making a bet that instead of just flopping the nuts and losing it all again, you actually tilted off your last 100$. Why you would play any poker game with money you can't afford to lose while you were between jobs is beyond me.
-James

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
A PLUS, thanks for checking that out on the software... I had no idea what the actual numbers would project with high pocket pairs against random hands, because I've seldom had to show down against that many. Point well taken.

Just curious, in light of those numbers, what hand would be your cutoff for capping action preflop? Do you cap with Kings, knowing that the majority of the time an ace won't hit the board?

[/ QUOTE ]

You would cap all of those hands preflop. And more.
-James

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
feast or famine, i agree. But after 3 long sessions and 3 different very solid players losing a lot of money its hard to believe that the game is anything more than a very expensive slot machine.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't sound like a slot machine to me. It sounds like those players lost a lot more money than that. So the obvious answer is to play like the winners are playing, right?

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
Online almost never gets even remotely near that loose.

[/ QUOTE ]

4-7 players per game? Are you crazy? There are definitely games like that.

[ QUOTE ]
A good player loses a lot of the tools that make him a winning player when he joins those games. You can't bluff anyone, reads don't really matter, you can't manipulate anyone's perceptions or behavior if they don't really care. wbat you do or even pay attention. It becomes like playing a game of "War," where the highest cards dealt out win.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh my. Ed Miller put it best. These players take away one of your tools (OK, they take away a couple, but take this in context.) However, while defending themselves perfectly against the bluff, they expose themselves quite seriously to other tools. If you don't know what they are, you need to read up a little more! There is only 1 problem a good player faces in these games - bankroll and variance problems. That does not change the fact that you have a bigger edge in this game than just about any I can think of.

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
Until those who fantasize or praise these games to the sky actually spend any serious amount of time playing them, which they usually haven't, they'll never know why so many people successful at much tougher games can't stand playing this type of game.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is precisely one reason - there's a huge hole in their poker knowledge. There is no fantasy. If you want to find one at 2/4, you'll have to look a bit online. If you don't want to wait, simply sit down at a .02/.04 game at PokerStars that has a 70% flop. If you can't beat that game, you're not much of a poker player in my book. Same goes for free money games, which are even easier to beat.