Another Marked Cards Hypothetical Question

[David Sklansky]

Again, these questions are posed purely to help you think. Sort of like posing a chess question where you stipulate that rooks and bishops can move no more than three squares at a time.

You are playing 10-20 heads up holdem against a player who normally plays well. Except you know his cards. Assuming 100 hands per hour what is your hourly EV in the following four scenarios.

A. He somehow is incapable of realizing what is happening to him as if he has amnesia from one hand to the next. Thus you take maximum advantage.

B. He IS capable of catching on so you must play in a way that keeps him from getting too suspicious.

C. This is a proposition game where his cards are face up.

D. He knows you know his cards but YOU DON'T REALIZE that. Futhermore you are the one who now has amnesia and will not catch on regardless of how he played his previous hands.

[karlson]

Geez. Not even one taker?

I'll bite.

A) Something ridiculous. 100 BB/hr seems in the right ballpark.

B) I should still be able to save or gain a bet once every hand or two, no? I'll go with 50BB/hr

C) An expert won't do terribly. I won't win any big pots, either. Maybe 20-30 bets/hr.

D) He'll be able to trap me occasionally, but the situation has to be perfect. My guess is I should still be able to beat him for ~10 bets/hr.

[jaytorr]

Hmmm...

My intuition says a true expert should be able to exploit situation (D) to his advantage. If he knows you know his cards, he will be able to gain valuable information about your hand that he can then exploit.

Example: Expert has QQ, the flop comes AK6 rainbow. Let's say you bet, QQ raises, and you re-raise. Now, since he knows you know his cards, he can determine that he most likely has the best hand. If you had an Ace or a King, you probably would have just called to let him hang himself or get another bet from him on the river.

These situations can come up fairly often and since you have amnesia, he can exploit them over and over again without you knowing it.

[paland]

[ QUOTE ]
Assuming 100 hands per hour what is your hourly EV in the following four scenarios.

[/ QUOTE ]

You ask this as if you want a mathematical or precise answer . The problem is that there are just too many unknown variables. So any answer couldn't be measured accurately and therefore would be opinion rather than fact.

[ZeeJustin]

Rough Guesses:

A) 40 BB / hr
B) 30-35 BB / hr
C) 15 BB / hr
D) 0 BB / hr

[karlson]

Right, so I was assuming that while I don't catch on to the fact that he knows I know his cards, I can catch on to the fact that he keeps going 5 bets with QQ on an AK6 board.

I think that your interpretation is better though. In that case, we're in a bit of trouble. On the other hand, the expert will have to invest quite a few bets before he figures out our probable hands, and he'll still never be able to bluff us out of a pot. So the big pots he'll win are when we try to push him off a mediocre hand (he can't just keep calling us down with J-high because we'll still have him beat too often. We won't be constantly slowplaying.). Since mediocre hands (even the QQ on the AK6 board) go to showdown fairly often HU, I don't think we'll be trying to push him off these hands all the time. So I'll lower my answer to say, 5-10 bb/hr, but I think we should still have an advantage.

[MEbenhoe]

A. 100-120 BB/hr
B. 50-60 BB/hr
C. 25-35 BB/hr
D. 0-10 BB/hr

My way of figuring it out may have been a little off but ahh well, just my guess.

[Stefan Prodan]

Are we assuming that there is a big and small blind and that you switch off?

Anyway, I wonder for the case of A, how much of an underdog can your hand be in order to still make it worth playing against him on the flop? Since he's a relatively good hold 'em player, you would know when he didn't hit the flop and could possibly routinely raise pre-flop and then bet out on the flop if any scare card hits that didn't help him.

This is assuming he has amnesia, and you could keep stealing from him like that, and I'm going to say that you could stand to make over 100 BB/hour in situations like these, just because you could also include the hands that actually go to the showdown which might bring you even more money.

I'll think about the other 3 later.

[Cosimo]

Another excellent question. Thx David. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

A. I can bluff him off weak holdings that beat me, I can call his bluffs down, I know when to drop a thin draw, and I can maximize profit in my weak holdings when he has even less. I only pump when I'm ahead and I can check-call (or fold) when behind, which is where my edge comes in. I'll have a far better idea of when he'll bet behind me, so I can check-raise in the right spots. I'll know when to slowplay and when to bet it fast. I won't win every hand--probably about half of them. For every time I would have won but dropped on the flop because my draw was too thin, there's a successful bluff. Maximizing my wins probably means the pots I win are 4 BB larger than the ones I lose. I'll get a chance to win huge pots on occasion though. 2BB/hand on average, or 200 BB/hr.

B. I've got to start letting him win some of the bluffs, bluff into him when he has me beat, push mediocre hands less, etc. Optimal bluff percent depends on the exact hand, so I can't give an accurate figure for that. The shorter the session, the more I can exploit the situation, though. I run away from small pots where I might have called in a real game, so my win % is going to be less than 50%. But, again, I can really pump hands when I'm ahead. 100 BB/hr.

C. Ugh. Brain hurt. More later.

[blackaces13]

I'm no expert by any means but just from looking at the problem it seems that you would be able to kill this guy in all scenarios. I don't see why most people have scenario D that much lower than A or at barely break even, IMO you'd completely destroy the other guy in all cases.

They all go down in decending order in terms of EV but it seems only slightly, nothing drastic. In terms or % here's how I'd list it with A as the control of 100%.

A. 100 B. 98 C. 95 D. 90.

There just aren't many hands where your play should vary too much in the scenarios IMO.