Help with Ace 4 hands in Limit O8

Buzz · #11 10-19-2005, 08:55 AM

Dave - The interactions involved between players in a poker game can be very complex.

There are some individual opponents whose playing style makes it difficult for me to cope. And there are combinations of players that can make a game difficult for me. They might not even be very good players, and it still might be difficult for me to cope.

And then there’s the luck factor. You can be dealt a premium starting hand, catch a nice flop and a favorable turn - only to have it all turn sour on the river. Even worse, you can have a nice hand beaten by a better hand, for example aces full beaten by quads. And you’re just going to take a bath when that happens.

It’s always safer to play more tightly. You can wait for premium starting hands, but you’re simply not going to be dealt many premium starting hands in a typical playing session. In a typical $3-$6 game, if you don’t play a hand for an hour, and if there are three rounds of the table in an hour, then it costs you $12 an hour to sit there folding hand after hand.

But someone will be winning all those pots - and usually without a premium starting hand.

And even when you do get dealt one, premium hands are not guaranteed to win.

So you open up your game a bit, playing hands that are less than premium.

But how much should you open up your game? That is the question.

And I don’t have an answer for you.

I don’t even have an exact answer for me. For me, how much to open up my game seems to depend on my opponents. The answer is different (and never clear) for each particular group of opponents.

I think whether or not you should play a hand depends on various factors, including how many opponents were dealt hands, how many opponents have not yet folded, how your opponents probably feel about you and the other players who are active in the hand, how your opponents are playing and your position.

That written, I wanted to know how all hands fared relative to each other. To find that out, I ran simulations. How a hand actually fares in a real game depends on how your opponents are playing (tight/loose, aggressive/passive, tenacious/”weak, ” etc.). It’s even more complex than that because those and other factors are different for each betting round and are interactive, depending on who exactly is involved in a hand.

At any rate, to get an idea of how various hands fare, I ran the sims against eight non-folding random hands. 10,000 times each. As you might expect, double-suited-AA23 fared the best. (I’m not interested in the worst. Probably 2222 would be the worst. Well... O.K. I ran all the hands with quads, just to see, and they were the worst.)

I haven’t simulated all the distinctly different A4XY hands, just enough to give me a pretty good idea of how good they are relative to various other starting hands in a nine player game. For example, for A45K, I ran a lot of the distinctly different possibilities (but not all of them):

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Kn)

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Kd)

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks)

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks”’)

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks””)

A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks-)

A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks-”’)

A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Ks=)

A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (I label that as A45Kd=)

That’s not all the distinctly different possibilities for A45K, just all the sims I ran for the A45K family of hands. I at least ran the “n”, “s”, and “d” distinctly different categories for each of the possible families of A4XY hands.

There’s no sharp distinction in the simulations between some starting hands I’m calling playable and some hands I’m calling marginal. The same is true for the dividing line between what i’m calling marginal starting hands and what I’m calling trash hands - no sharp distinction. If I redid any of the sims, I’d expect the numbers to turn out a bit differently, possibly shifting from one category to another. It’s a matter of arbitrarily drawing the line somewhere.

I have somewhat arbitraily chosen to label
hands of 1251 and below as “trash,”
hands in the 1252-1399 range as “marginal,” and
hands of 1400 and above as “playable.”

My thinking is for the most part, I should only play the marginal hands on the button or small blind in an unraised pot. You hate to limp with one of these and then have the pot raised behind you. But if a targeted opponent (a fish) has entered or is expected to enter the action, I might relax my standards so as to be involved in the same hand as the fish. You can’t win money from somebody who is throwing it away if you have already folded. Similarly, if everybody actively involved is tough, I might choose not to play a particular hand I’ve deemed “playable.”

If X and Y can be anything, then the very best A4XY hand is AA24d (ace, ace, deuce, four, double suited) - and the very worst A4XY hand is A444n.
hand.....high.....low.....scoop.....total
AA24d.....405.....1364.....1279.....3048 .....(double suited)
A444n.....97.....729.....163.....989 .....(rainbow) 

You’re obviously going to be playing AA24d and folding A444n. But what about the hands in between these two extremes?

Well... based mainly on simulations,

A4XY Hands in a nine player game.

• All AA4X hands are playable, double-suited, suited, or rainbow.
• All A24X hands are playable, double-suited, suited, or rainbow.
• All A34X hands are playable, double-suited, suited, or rainbow.

But you probably already knew that. What about hands where the A4 two-card combo is not in association with a AA, A2, or A3 two-card combo?

• A444 hands, A448n, and A449n are trash.
• All other A44X hands are playable, double-suited, suited, or rainbow.
• All A45X hands are playable, double-suited, suited, or rainbow, except A45Mn. key: “M” means middle card (6, 7, 8, 9), “n” means non-suited (rainbow).
• All A45Mn hands are marginal.
• A4 + middle cards suited hands are marginal. 
• A4 + middle cards rainbows are trash.
• A4 + one middle card + one high card rainbow is marginal. 
• All other A4XY hands are playable. (Mostly, A4XY hands are very playable).

I want to emphasize the above relative generalizations as to “playable,” “marginal,” and “trash” are for my own usage.

I’ll post the simulation data on which I based the above generalizations in a supplemental post.

Buzz