Bet AA preflop to reduce the number of callers?

[mustmuck]

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What if you play against 5 opponents, each of whom pays 15% of their stack preflop?

My point is this: You raise preflop so that your opponent is -EV if he calls (including implied odds). If you make the necessary raise, you're happy if he calls. And this is separately true for each player. If calling is -EV for one opponent, it's -EV for all opponents. The number of people calling is irrelevant - in fact each call makes you more $ on average.


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Well, the the last ops paying this 15% raise would easily have the odds to call with 45% of their stack already in the pot and 4 or five players with more behind.

Besides which, you can't bet out 15% of your stack with AA unless you're at a crazy table and make this sort of bet all the time ... unless you want to flip your cards face up that is.


I also don't want the entire table calling my aces. While my EV may go up with more callers (to a point) so does the variance. While this may not matter in the long run, the EV you're gaining per caller isn't enough for me to justify it.

That said, even the examples given aren't adaquate, as I'm probably pushing most of these holdings out on the flop. I'd be interested in seeing an application that could gauge likely confidence on the flop. This is a little undefined, so I can see why it hasn't been done ... or has it?

[spaminator101]

yes but your AA will rarely improve
you might be a favorite over every single individual opponent but as the feild grows large AA still loses value
i am mostly a tournament player please dont tell me you want to go in with aces pre flop and have everyone call you in a tournament

[silvershade]

AA does best against 8 opponents over the long term, so I guess that 8 callers in a raised pot is in a sense the ideal situation.

Personally I'd sooner lower the variance and play against fewer opponents though even if that isnt +ev.

In a tournament managing variance is probably more important than maximising ev so you definitely dont want your raises called by 8 others there.

[pudley4]

There is so much bad advice in this thread it makes my head hurt. Let's take this one:

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yes but your AA will rarely improve

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It doesn't need to improve. The other players do.

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you might be a favorite over every single individual opponent but as the feild grows large AA still loses value

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No, it doesn't. It's winning percentage drops, but the money it makes from each additional player increases by more than enough to offset the increase in losses. Translation - you win more money vs more opponents.

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i am mostly a tournament player please dont tell me you want to go in with aces pre flop and have everyone call you in a tournament

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I have a 31% chance of increasing my stack by 9x. I'll take that. Do the math: start with 1000 in chips. .31*T10,000 + .69*T0 = T3100. Find me another situation that is this high in value. (Hint: The only ones close are AA vs 8 players all-in and AA vs 10 players all-in)

[Rudbaeck]

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yes but your AA will rarely improve

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It doesn't need to improve. The other players do.


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Oh but they will. Out of 9 players, assuming 6 of them have pocket pairs and two have AK, AQ, let's give them KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88 and 67s just for the heck of it.

There are 32 unveilled cards and 5 more to come. There are no aces left in the deck. The odds of the next five cards to be all amongs the 22 that don't make a set are:

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There are 10 cards making a set in your example, not the 28 (!!!) cards you erroneously had making a set... (And another 6 cards which are dangerous only if two of them come on the board.)

Run Pokerstove, put people on a likely distribution of hands instead of arranging them so that your outs are gone but theirs aren't. You'll see that your overlay against a full table of callers in an all-in situation with aces is still somewhere from good to amazing.

[bernie]

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There are 10 cards making a set in your example, not the 28 (!!!) cards you erroneously had making a set... (And another 6 cards which are dangerous only if two of them come on the board.)

Run Pokerstove, put people on a likely distribution of hands instead of arranging them so that your outs are gone but theirs aren't. You'll see that your overlay against a full table of callers in an all-in situation with aces is still somewhere from good to amazing.

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Oh sure if you assume the 9 other players all respectively have KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55. In which case there would be 20 cards that could make a set, NOT 10 (two of each still in). And you better hope you hit your Ace if you're gonna win that hand because a flop with just 4's, 3's and 2's is highly unlikely.

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If everyone has high cards, it's less likely that 4s, 3s and 2s will hit the flop? ooo k

naw, there's usually one guy in with Q4s. Sooooted. Funny, he seems to be the one that usually drags the pot. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

b

[willmay3]

Dear All:

I have a few comments of the thinking out loud variety. I have found this discussion very interesting. I'm going to throw out some ideas I have and would love criticism of them. I think I think thaty are right [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img], but I could be wrong and want to know.

Post Flop Game

I think the real question with Aces is how good is your post flop game. If you are a generally poor player who makes questionable decisions after the flop, I'd say you want to raise coming in to limit the field. The reason being that the less people participating in the pot, the easier, I think, the analysis of the play is, if only it is bet, bet, bet.

However, if you are a strong post flop player, you have no need to limit the field as you thrive on the mistakes of everyone else. The are limping in with garbage or low ev hands trying to hit big and take advantage of the implied odds, but you refuse to pay them off. Sounds like having a good many players, for you, with AA is a good idea.

NL v. Limit

I think you should be more willing to let the competition in in NL than Limit. The reason being, that in NL if a two flush hits you can make a pot sized raise and make that flush pay to see the turn. However, in Limit, your peashooter small bet isn't scaring anyone, especially in an 8 hand pot! You want to raise coming in in limit to absolutely destroy the pot odds, and by limiting the field, the implied of odds of the small pairs and suited connectors preflop, where you can do that. But, in NL you can do that anytime, so you can affford to do let some people in.

Limping

1. The way people lose money with AA limping is when they do and get 5 callers with NO raise and then they completely overplay their hand post-flop. The object of limping, I think, is to be able to reraise a raise, create dead money, and get a whole pile of money in the pot PREFLOP, where your hand is UNDOUBTEDLY the best. However, if that doesn't work, then you have a whole field chasing you while you are out of position, so tread carefully!

2. If the goal is to win more money, in NL I'm speaking of, I think, generally, the best play is to raise coming in and hope someone has TT or QQ or AKs so that they will raise and then you can RERAISE them. That's the way to get mor money than limp/raising.

Just some thoughts,

Will

[KenProspero]

I have a standard raise of 2-3x big blind if few callers, or 3-5x big blind if there are many callers, I try to randomly vary within this range. (If blinds are small to the betting unit of the game, I raise these bets proportionately to the betting unit).

As a general rule, I make my standard pre-flop bet with AA. Though I'm sure a situation exists where I'd fold to a raise, it's never happened, and I can't think of one off hand.