When to play marginal hands

[Student]

Thanks for the nice analysis!

SSS has provision for all sorts of cases preflop, involving whether someone had raised before betting came around to one, whether a reraise happened before betting came around etc. I've codeified all this, but since I'm just beginning to use this strategy it's hard to adapt to everything.

Frankly, I'm so excited about having a little bit of action that I'm taking some chances I shouldn't be taking. I've analyzed basic SSS, and find one will meet requirements for going in, with only limpers in front of your bet, just 6.58% of the time. That's about 1 hand in 15.

To get some more excitement I even tried 2-tabling, Monday!

But the fact is I need to stop and analyze hands I've played, and using the Bison Hand Converter is just part of that process. Can you tell me how to take the HTML output of the converter and view it on my machine? I think I could then make a printer copy, and then I'd have something useful to compare with GSiH, so I can isolate my leaks a little faster.

Thanks!

Dave

PS: Technically 88AAJ dominates 88AAT, but I suspect not even an expert could know that he was dominated in this circumstance. As hole cards playing against 7 opponents, the hand strength of 98o is greater than that for Q8o, but few would be able to actually pick up on the distinction between these hands enough to say the connectors 98o dominate the 3-gap Q8o.

ATo is a strong hand. It's listed as OK for someone to proceed into SSS in late position, provided everyone has limped to that point. But betting didn't conform to the Ed model, and I didn't notice that. I could have gotten off that horse after my raise by 6 cents was reraised, and foolishly I didn't.

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
As hole cards playing against 7 opponents, the hand strength of 98o is greater than that for Q8o, but few would be able to actually pick up on the distinction between these hands enough to say the connectors 98o dominate the 3-gap Q8o.

[/ QUOTE ] (emphasis added)

Have you skipped the limit chapters of GSIH? If so, go back an read them now. Especially the hand that's KJo (IIRC). Ed discusses domination in detail there. In the immortal Princess Bride quote: "I do not think it means what you think it means." (Q8 in fact dominates 98, regardless of straight potential.)

[ QUOTE ]
ATo is a strong hand. It's listed as OK for someone to proceed into SSS in late position, provided everyone has limped to that point. But betting didn't conform to the Ed model, and I didn't notice that. I could have gotten off that horse after my raise by 6 cents was reraised, and foolishly I didn't.

[/ QUOTE ]

No crime -- chalk it up to experience. But you did have the clue that ATo would not be profitable.

Once at Foxwoods NL I got an ATo to call my raise with AJo (a dubious raise, btw). He flopped T-A-T and took the rest of my stack. He had three outs in the deck and hit two of them. But that doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't have been calling raises with ATo. He got lucky.

Oh, as for the HTML - you could paste it into a file (via Notepad or any text editor) then view it in your browser. I don't think it's really HTML, though, is it?

[PuckNPoker]

Student,

Play like this when starting out.

"Believe people", dont think they are making moves, etc. When someone raises (it doesnt matter if they are loose or wild or whatever, or that it is a min raise, etc) , just say "it was raised in front of me, what hands would I play against a raise". ATo should not be one of those hands.

The value of Ace-<other card> goes down dramatically in a raised situation. Think of it like a logarithmic scale like decibels. AK is a factor of 10 better than AQ which is a factor of 10 better than AJ which is a factor of 10 better than AT.. etc..

Since Aces and broadway cards are played most often by players the chance of being dominated rises dramatically. In NL it is even worse because your kicker mistakes can be magnified to take your whole stack.

When you've gotten to the point in your playing career where it is raised and you toss AT, AJ, KJ, etc EASILY and think very very hard about AQ, you'll have made a great advance.