1/2 holdem at caribbean- Did i make the right play?

[fulltilt]

no reads on the table really...everyone is playing tight-passive to loose-pasive.

here is teh hand. I want to know whether i made the right move by capping teh pre flop with pocket 10.

***my name is jack***

eat 10: tbaseball (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

------HAND 5------
Game #598251503: Texas Hold'em Limit ($1/$2) - 2005/04/21 - 21:14:59 (ET)
Table "Amethysts" Seat 1 is the button.
Seat 1: MainEvent ($47.50 in chips)
Seat 2: EricY ($60.50 in chips)
Seat 3: Deck4U2 ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 4: Gordo73 ($66 in chips)
Seat 5: Snaull ($101.76 in chips)
Seat 6: ian79 ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 7: MD2020 ($42.50 in chips)
Seat 8: evans075 ($39.25 in chips)
Seat 9: jack ($56.25 in chips)
Seat 10: tbaseball ($17 in chips)
EricY: posts small blind $0.50
Deck4U2: posts big blind $1
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to jack [Tc Th]
Gordo73: folds
Snaull: raises $2
ian79: folds
MD2020: raises $3
jack: raises $4
tbaseball: folds
MainEvent: folds
EricY: folds
Deck4U2: calls $3
Snaull: calls $2
MD2020: calls $1
----- FLOP ----- [9c 5h 4s]
Deck4U2: checks
Snaull: checks
MD2020: checks
jack: bets $1
Deck4U2: calls $1
Snaull: calls $1
MD2020: calls $1

[Pokey]

When a passive player REraises, that should send off warning bells in your head. BEST case scenario, someone has two overcards on you, and you're facing a coin-flip situation. More likely, the raiser and reraiser BOTH have at LEAST overcards on you. Furthermore, it's entirely possible that one of them has a higher pocket pair than your 10s, meaning you're drawing to two outs.

Preflop, I'm saying you basically win this hand only when you spike your 10. Now, that's not impossible, but the odds of hitting on the flop are about 1 in 7.5. The last thing you want to do here is chase out the callers who could be giving you pot odds to keep going. I don't really like this cap. In fact, I think I'd be strongly tempted to fold my 10s here: the reraise is going to knock out so many players that I'm just about guaranteed to lose money on this deal in the long run, forced to fold when I don't spike a 10 and unable to catch up (three small bets each) x (six and a half losers) = almost 10 big bets when I DO spike my 10.

Given your preflop play, however, I like your flop bet. It continues with the aggression and forces the players to make a decision. Also, it gives them a chance to check-raise you if they have you beaten, so that you know it's time to flee.

[fulltilt]

thank u for the prompt response. I see what ur saying about the warning bells when a passive-tight player raises, then another re-raises. The thing about the table though is a lot of them were raising and reraising with A7o and K10s, so i thought they were just being loose.

But i never thought about passive players raising and the warning bells i should be hearing.

The other thing i had a question about was when u said my cap was no good becasue people following would not call? So it would be bettor to just call the re-raise, thinking that poeple behind me will cold-call 3 bets? Or did i misinterpret what u are saying?

The last thing is, what were the calulation u did, with the 3 small bets x 6.5? was that how much I lose if I were to call and i don't spike my 10?

thanks.

[Pokey]

[ QUOTE ]
The thing about the table though is a lot of them were raising and reraising with A7o and K10s, so i thought they were just being loose.

But i never thought about passive players raising and the warning bells i should be hearing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, now that's different; if they were raising and reraising with nothing, then they weren't passive. I think you might be mixing up your definitions.

"Passive" is an indicator of a lack of aggression. Mathematically, we typically think of a player's aggression as:

(Bet + raise) / Call,

in other words, the frequency with which the player increases the size of the wager vs. the frequency with which they simply match the wager. In most cases, a "passive" player will have an aggression measure of something less than 2, and an "aggressive" player will be in the 3+ range.

This measurement of a player is different from the "loose/tight" measure, which looks at the frequency with which a player pays money to see the flop (either cold-calling the blind bets, raising the blinds, calling a raise, or calling a raise out of the blinds). A "loose" player is generally thought of as one who pays to see about 30% or more of the flops, whereas a "tight" player is one who pays to see under 20% of the flops.

Are you sure you had passive players? It sounds like they might have been loose but aggressive. If so, that changes things quite a bit.

[ QUOTE ]
The other thing i had a question about was when u said my cap was no good becasue people following would not call? So it would be bettor to just call the re-raise, thinking that poeple behind me will cold-call 3 bets? Or did i misinterpret what u are saying?

[/ QUOTE ]

If these folks are truly passive players, their raising and reraising preflop is decidedly out of character; that means you're probably going to have to improve to win. Given that you're on the draw, and to only two outs at that, you're going to need lots of other people's money in the pot to justify sticking around. Capping the bet yourself gets more of the opponents' money in the pot, but at the cost of getting more of YOUR money in there as well. Since the blinds have yet to act, there's at least a chance that they might call 2 (or 2.5 for the small blind) cold, but fold 3 (or 3.5). If so, then betting actually shoots you in the foot by reducing the number of potential customers you're getting. Remember, you're in a quirky situation where other chasers don't really affect you very much: if you hit your 10, you almost surely win, but if you miss it, you almost surely lose. That's going to be true here if you're against two opponents or five, but the odds that you'll be collecting from the pot are far sweeter with five opponents than with two.

[ QUOTE ]
The last thing is, what were the calulation u did, with the 3 small bets x 6.5? was that how much I lose if I were to call and i don't spike my 10?

[/ QUOTE ]

The odds of you hitting a 10 on the flop are about 1 in 7.5. Given that, you're going to miss your hand about 6.5 times for every one time you hit it. Assuming you're not going to continue when you miss (because one of those preflop bettors is going to slap another buck on the table and you don't want to throw good money after bad), you're looking at a situation here where you'd have to pay three small bets 6.5 times and lose to see the one time where your three small bets will (likely) win. Total cost of seeing your one winning hand: three small bets times 6.5 occurances, or 19.5 small bets. What do you win on the one time you hit? The 3x3 = 9 small bets in the pot right now (that aren't your own), plus whatever extra you can suck out of them on the flop, turn, and river, where you'd have to pull out an average of 5+ big bets from your opponents to break even.

NOTE: raising makes it even harder to come out with a profit. With four small bets in the pot preflop, you're going to walk away from 4 x 6.5 = 26 small bets for each time you see a third 10 on the flop. When there's a 10 on the flop, you've got 3x4 = 12 small bets in the pot already, with another 14 small bets = 7 big bets to recover on the flop, turn, and river.

Note also that I'm assuming that hitting a 10 = winning the hand. That's certainly not the case; there will be times when the flop will be quite vicious to you, despite the 10, like a flop with another 10, but only one suit (which you clearly won't have a match to in your hand). Now, you've hit your 10, but you could still lose the hand.

I'm also ignoring the possibility that your 10s will hold up unimproved on the river, because (frankly) I don't see it as likely enough to warrant discussion. If you miss your flop completely, you still have to worry about a pocket overpair (unlikely) or an A, K, Q, or J hitting on the turn or river and giving someone else a win (far more likely).

I hope this makes it clearer what you should do in this kind of situation, and I hope it clears some things up for you.