What’s Your Play? Kings Pre-Flop Results

On behalf of myself and TaddisvonBaddis, the Hero in this week’s hand, thanks to everyone who commented on this week’s What’s Your Play?. I really wasn’t sure what to tell him about the hand, and the comments here were a big help.

On the face of it, this is a complicated hand with a lot of variables. Three players, all of whom have shown some level of strength, still hold cards. There’s so much to determine: if BTN has AA we lose less than if BB has AA and BTN is more likely to call with QQ and what if HJ wakes up with a hand and blahblahblah…. Ian is right that this would be a good project for the Cardrunners-EV Calculator, but I’m too stupid to use that thing.

For the less mechanically inclined, Eddie offers an easy way of framing the problem: “We need their ranges to be wide enough so that if they are only ever calling with AA, we will get enough fold equity to win the 27k right away.” In other words, what if we turned our cards face up and shoved? Could we show a profit? If not, we can at least see how close we get and then decide how much slack there is in our assumptions and how likely various players are to make a mistake (ie call with AK or QQ). Of course we still have a bit of work to do putting people on ranges.

Although HJ is calling off more than 10% of his stack, I agree with the many commenters who say that he’s more likely a weak player than a sneaky slowplaying shark. For the moment I’m going to assume he never has a calling hand of any sort, including Aces. Later we can decide whether that’s an assumption worth revisiting.

As for the BTN, Kelley knows what he’s talking about when it comes to old nits. (Just kidding, buddy! But seriously let’s get that button 3-bet % up a bit!):  “The vast majority of 50+ men that like to play this price point are rocks. They know the concepts of squeezing and light 3Bs, but don’t usually work them into their games. In short, they always have it when they 3B, and by it I mean AA, KK, AK and sometimes QQ.” Hero has made if anything a suspiciously strong raise from early position (more on that in a moment), so I don’t see much reason to think BTN is anything but strong here. I’m not prepared to read much into the exact size of his 3-bet, but I think he likes his hand quite a bit.

Likewise, BB is extremely strong. We know he’s tight, he probably doesn’t expect BTN to be light, and he needs a hand to do this. Still, it’s hard for me to see him mucking QQ or AK, so I’m going to put those into his range.

For the moment, I’m putting both BTN and BB on {QQ+,AK}. Considering that Hero holds two of the Kings, BTN will wake up with AA 28.5% of the time.  If he folds, that actually increases the likelihood of BB having AA because it removes at least one if not two non-Aces from the deck. 71.5% (the chance of BTN folding) times 71.5% (the chance of BB folding ignoring the card removal effect of BTN’s fold) is 51%, so let’s say that Hero wins the pot of 28,400 uncontested.

The other half of the time, Hero is called by someone with Aces (we’re ignoring the case where both Villains have AA because it’s rare and doesn’t have a big effect on Hero’s equity since it’s already counted as a call from a single AA). If it’s BTN, which it will be about half the time, Hero has an 18% chance of winning 50K and an 82% chance of losing 25K. If it’s BB, Hero has an 18% chance of winning 63K and an 82% chance of losing 46K. That’s .5 ((.18*50000 – .82 * 25000) + .5 ((.18*63000) – (.82 * 46000)) ~ -19K, more than enough to outweigh Hero’s upside of 14,200.

Before we mess around too much with the BTN’s range, notice that Hero’s losses to BB alone are 13,190. Even if we give BTN a slightly wider range for his first raise, thus increasing Hero’s odds of winning without showdown, it’s not going to make a big dent in that number. The thing to see is that BB has Aces a lot, and Hero has a lot to lose when he runs into them. If you think both Villains have ranges somewhat wider than this, then Hero’s equity probably improves to the point where a face-up shove becomes slightly +EV, though when it comes to BB I think it’s optimistic to put JJ into his range.

The only way to increase Hero’s equity in a big way to have someone call a shove with a hand worse than KK. Personally, I agree with Ian that it sounds like, “the BTN is liable to shrug and make a bad ‘standard’ call, but that BB might be able to make a really tight fold preflop.” Even if BB does get away from QQ, Hero will show a profit as long as BTN does not. Considering that our assumptions on ranges were also a bit conservative, I’d shove here, although as you can tell from this wall of text it’s close.

What About Calling?

I’m not a fan. As Heffmike explains,

If you flat the BB’s 4-bet, what range are the Hijack/Button really continuing with? AA and maybe KK? They’re too shallow to do anything else otherwise. I can see where there’s an argument for cold-calling the 14K, if you think it’ll induce a shove from the short stacks and isolate you from the BB, who can really hurt you. But I just don’t see them doing that – plus, that kind of allows the BB to never put another chip in postflop unless he improves, and that’s not good for you – If BB is making a play with something worse than KK, will he give you more chips if he doesn’t hit one of his 2-3 outs on the flop?

This is a textbook case of reverse implied odds. Once you call the 4-bet, any more money that goes into the pot will go in bad for you. I don’t buy that a call will show weakness and induce any kind of shove. There’s nothing weak about putting that kind of money into the pot with no fold equity. If anything, a call may look even stronger than a shove. I discuss this concept in greater detail in an article entitled “No Such Thing as a Free Hunch.”

Hero’s Open Raise Size

Tyler3 over on the Cardplayer blog expresses my sentiments exactly: ” You made a raise that was a littler bit larger than the table standard which should send off an alarm right away. Not neccessarily that you always have a monster, just that something is different right away.” You’re not exactly broadcasting the strength of your hand, but you’re sending out a little signal that something is up. Particularly given that you’re an early position raiser, I think this could result in people being a little more cautious about raising you, which is just the opposite of what you want.

Results

This comes from Taddis himself. I spent like three hours writing all this up so I think I’ve earned the right to include his little plug at the bottom!

My feeling on the hand was that it was 50-50 as to whether BB had aces or not with only AK QQ and the last two KK as the only other possible holdings. I decided that because I had the biggest stack and because winning the pot would make me an overwhelming chip leader, to shove and pray that BB didn’t have the AA. The HJ folded, BTN called the all-in for less and, to my dismay, so did the BB. BTN had JJ and BB had AA. Board ran clean and AA held up and I was decimated and later shoved with JJ and lost to AA to eliminate me. Really interesting spot though and thanks for taking the time to post it and generate the discussion that has ensued on your site.

By the way, I played two other events in the wpt parx open classic series since the one discussed here. min-cashed (27th out 278) in one and made final table in another where a chop was negotiated and somehow I ended up with 4th place money even though I had the second shortest stack of the 9 final tablers. That one drew 242 runners. Your site has definitely made a marked impact on my results so thanks again!

It’s unfortunate that he ran into the AA but BTN’s call confirms our suspicion that he at least could make some bad calls with worse. Against a player capable of folding QQ here, this is a fold, even if his 3-betting range includes JJ!

Thanks for the kind words, Taddis, and for participating in the conversation about your hand. Thanks to all the commenters as well – have a great weekend!