SCOOP Day 15: The Final Sunday

29 thoughts on “SCOOP Day 15: The Final Sunday”

1. Good luck in the WSOP.

2. First hand:

   Pre-flop I think this is probably a fold with 30 BB unless you have a read. Yes, you are getting good odds but low suited two-gappers suck. This exact hand is an example of how you don’t get paid enough even when you flop gin. You are going to have to steal an awful lot to justify putting in the call pre.

   On the flop this seems like a very good spot to donk. You are at the top of your range. Your perceived range hits this board better than Villain’s so you can bluff a lot (implying that you should value bet as well). Villain will have lots of check-backs with overs, backdoors, etc.

   I think Villain will call a bet more often than he’ll bet himself and he’ll check back too often for check-raising to be better than bet-calling.

   As played on the turn I think you want to bet bigger so you can get stacks in. I think you should be something like 7-8 BB so you can shove the river. I’m betting bigger for value and so we can semi-bluff more often, not to price out draws or for protection.

   As played on the river this is a terrible card for you IMO. It is hard to get value. What is Villain calling with?!? Maybe you could argue Ax but too many of those are AXcc or AXdd that either don’t get here like this (cc bets flop) or beat you.

   Yes, Villain has a lot of showdown value that he’ll check back. But he also has a decent number of diamond flushes, 6X, and some 5X. Pairs and backdoors probably make up a lot of his checking-back range on the flop.

   I think this is a check-and-guess. Betting is bad because Villain doesn’t have enough worse calling hands. It only serves to prevent a bluff and you just argued that Villain probably won’t bluff too often. 8)

   • Thanks for the feedback, Rant. I don’t see how this can be a fold pre-flop, though. Having a shorter stack is actually a plus IMO, makes it easier to realize equity. The results of this hand are pretty aberrant, don’t think they prove a broader point like “even when you hit you don’t get paid”.

     I’d be more inclined to donk flop if I didn’t also have a backdoor flush draw. Letting V check back flop isn’t that big of a problem, he’s often drawing dead, and because we are shallow and I can build a big if not all-in pot against his stronger hands just by bombing turn and river or check-raising turn. This just happens not to be a good turn to bomb.

     Why do you think V has a decent amount of 6x? I doubt he opens that much pre, think he bets flop more often than not, and also there are two of them on the board. I mean, I nearly called river because I thought 6x was so implausible. It’s just that bluffs are really implausible too.

     • I posted my analysis because you (foucault) and I think of this type of hand very differently. I usually understand and agree with your analysis — with this exception of how to play smaller cards. Thanks for engaging because I’d really like to understand where I’m wrong.

       I’ll try to find some time soon to be more thorough and mathy.

     • I agree that this exact hand isn’t ‘proof’ that we won’t get paid. It is an example of several types of problems that make it harder to get paid than one might think.

       You may realize more of your equity when shorter-stacked but that equity is lower. Hand like low suited gappers make hands that can benefit from a higher SPR.

       I want to do some math and some database work on an appropriate completion range from the BB. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to it soon.

       Unfortunately I don’t play tournament so my DB doesn’t have precisely applicable examples.

       I encourage you to check your DB for this kind of situation — small completions in the BB against non-button opens with low suited gappers.

     • Donking flop:
       I agree that we don’t need to bet for protection.

       My favorite arguments for donking are

       The SPR — you see what happens with stack sizes when Villain checks back the flop.

       There will be too many scare cards on the turn that will make Villain less inclined to pay us off.

       There are plenty of weak hands in our perceived donking range. In other words, Villian will continue against the donk often.

       —

       Why are you checking? To profit from bluffs and value bets? Do you think villain c-bets more often than he continues against a donk? I assume you agree that you should bet the turn if Villain checks back flop?

     • If Hero goes bet-bet-bet to get all-in and bets equal proportions of the pot on each street each bet is:
       0.6x pot

       That’s a pretty comfortable bet size. Skipping one bet is going to require
       1.16x pot over-bets

       So, Hero can:

       1) Bet all three for a reasonable size.

       2) Check-raise once and bet once.

       3) Over-bet twice.

       4) Vary the bet size some other way — maybe 75%, 75%, small river?

       I think you’ll get too little action with check-raises or over-bets — another reason I prefer a donk that results in bet-bet-bet with reasonable sizes.

     • “Why do you think V has a decent amount of 6x? I doubt he opens that much pre, think he bets flop more often than not, and also there are two of them on the board. I mean, I nearly called river because I thought 6x was so implausible. It’s just that bluffs are really implausible too.”

       Villain’s range on the river will be pretty narrow. I think he has a decent number of 6X only because he has so few other reasonable holdings and 6X would play this way.

       That’s one interesting thing that sometimes happens when we end up in a ‘strange’ place. Ranges can be so narrow that unusual holdings aren’t so unusual. 8)

       By the end of the turn I’m heavily discounting club draws, overpairs, and bare overcards. What else can he have?

       I assume he checks back the flop with weak to moderate showdown value and some give-ups.

       At the start of the river Villain probably has more diamond flushes than anything else but there aren’t very many of those so 6X can start to be a decent amount of his range.

       What else does Villain get to the start of the river with?

3. “Pre-flop I think this is probably a fold with 30 BB unless you have a read. Yes, you are getting good odds but low suited two-gappers suck. This exact hand is an example of how you don’t get paid enough even when you flop gin. You are going to have to steal an awful lot to justify putting in the call pre.”

   Most of this is false. Certainly taking the fact that this hand did not result in a won pot for the big blind as indicative of the whole spectrum of possible outcomes is at best a rhetorical device. Andrew is not going to have to steal an awful lot to justify putting in the call pre. Having a read is not going to tip the scales here. And low suited two-gappers do not suck in this situation.

   • I thought about making the pre-flop paragraph longer to make it more clear but hoped people would understand as-is. I guess the longer version is necessary:

     A lot of people have the idea that hands like low suited gappers will be able to get stacks in frequently when they hit. I think this is often over-estimated.

     This hand exemplifies some of the miss-estimations.

     1) The flop is as good as it can get and Hero ends up on the turn needing to overbet to get stacks in.

     2) The board often turns out scary for Villain and/or Hero — more often than one might expect.

     3) Even though effective stacks are modest it isn’t so easy to get stacks in.

     This hand shows several of the problems that come up — a rare occurrence for one hand — but one problem or another that makes it hard to get paid will come up relatively frequently.

     • I don’t think that’s really addressing the issue though. I’m just grunching (haven’t read the above correpondence yet) but

       1) But why would being able to get stacks in be the determining factor of whether we should call getting over 4 to 1 preflop? The question is how much of our equity do we realize versus our opponent’s range. Sure 47s has enough raw equity. Then we have to think, to what extent might that equity realization be impaired by virtue of being out of position against a strong range? Then we have to think, are the plurality of big blinds we dip into to realize our equity sufficiently often to make this preflop call going to dip into the bottom 2/3ths of a 29bb stack such that we should no longer be calculating in chip EV and start factoring with $EV in mind?

       I think against a strong range we can imagine ourselves to have 30% equity raw quite easily. vs 66+ AJ+ KQ QJs JTs, ie a really strong range, we have over 30% raw equity.

       But, let’s imagine, whatever range we assign villain we have 30% raw equity.

       We are calling 1 to win 4.5 here, so to make a break even chip EV call, assuming we realize 100% of our equity, we would need 18% equity.

       But we aren’t going to realize 100% of our equity. We are going to get punished for playing OOP. That’s fine. I think we will be able to realize at least 66% of our equity. That means villain is taking away pots postflop at a pretty high clip, outplaying us and so forth. We should still call.

       I think the third issue, the issue of dipping into the bottom 2/3 of our stack such that we should start factoring $EV and not just pure chip EV, is not going to be much of a factor. First of all Andrew is playing a 2k tournament, surely where his edge is the lowest and he should value his survival the least. More saliently, the times we are going to be dipping into that bottom 2/3 of our stack are likely to be the times when we are more than effectively realizing our equity, check-raising all in nut draws and putting in money with two pair + etc.

       When we talk about big blind defense we are talking about accepting an offer. We close the action, we are given a price. The natural of a minimum raise from the opener necessitates that we take the preflop price offered to us seriously and don’t rely on blanketing ideas like “low suited two gapper” and “having a read” — there is a mathematical reality that has to be addressed first and foremost.

       • Gareth-
         I think you are over-estimating how much of our equity we get to realize.

         There are lots of flops where Hero has 20-30% equity with virtually no chance of realizing it (Hero’s two unders vs. Villain’s two overs for example).

         There are other flops where Hero has 60%+ equity that is still going to be hard to realize (Hero’s bottom pair vs. Villain’s two overs for example).

         That’s the problem with the cards being so low — lots of our hot/cold equity comes in spots where it is very hard to realize.

       • I should be more detailed and precise than saying ‘getting stacks in’ because, as you pointed out, that’s not the correct way to think about it.

         Small suited gappers flop strong hands infrequently.

         It is hard to realize small suited gappers’ equity when they don’t flop strong.

         Thus, we need good implied odds.

         I think I fell into the trap of calling this ‘getting stacks in’ because 30BB is about how much I intuit that we need to make on average when we hit the flop hard in order to justify putting in the 1 BB pre…

       • I agree that ICM probably doesn’t matter very much.

       • “and don’t rely on blanketing ideas like “low suited two gapper” and “having a read” — there is a mathematical reality that has to be addressed first and foremost.”

         I don’t intend those as blanketing ideas.

         By ‘low suited two gapper’ I mean hands that don’t have much high hand equity, hands that flop strong straight draws only infrequently, and hands that are sometimes over-flushed. Those, in combination, are hands that don’t mathematically get to realize their equity. Again, I’ll try to find some time for some math. Hopefully tonight. 8)

         By “having a read” I don’t mean something generic. I mean having a reasonable expectation that we’ll have above average profitability from bluffing. I don’t think low suited two gappers have enough value equity to call based on that alone. I think their theoretical bluffing profitability is probably near break-even. If we have a read that Villain will fold too often post-flop then we can possibly justify a call.

4. I think Andrew is going to have to steal more than he’s theoretically entitled to to make the pre-flop call correct.

   A low suited gapper’s ‘value’ profits aren’t going to be large enough to justify the call. Hero won’t be ahead very often and when he is he won’t make enough to overcome that infrequency.

   I think Andrew needs a read that there will be above theoretically average stealing potential. I’m guessing that in theory stealing should roughly break even with a low suited gapper.

   Are y’all arguing that a low suited gapper will be profitable on value alone, that stealing post-flop is theoretically +EV, or that there’s a pupulation tendency that makes stealing +EV?

   • population !

     Where’s the edit button? 8)

5. Snowie:
   In a cash game with 30 BB stacks and an EP raise to 2 BB
   Snowie calls with all of the suited two-tappers (but not three-gappers).

   Snowie isn’t particularly useful for this but it is interesting IMO and makes me doubt my pre-flop opinion here. 8)

   The antes will certainly make it more of a call than a cash game.

6. Flopzilla:

   74s flops:
   4.95% two pair+
   2.27% top pair+
   14.9% 8+ out draws

   So, about 5% of the time we’ll have two pair+ and we’re going to win maybe 1.5x the flop pot for and EV of +0.4125

   We’ll maybe break even the 2.27% of the time we have top pair? for an EV of +0.12485

   With the 8+ out draws we’ll win maybe 1.4x the flop pot when we end up hitting for an EV of +0.381

   We’ll also flop pair+gutshot, turn some draws when Villain checks back flop, etc.

   So, I think I’m no convinced that this is a marginal call if played correctly post-flop.

   • If Villain had raised to 2.4 BB I think it would probably be a fold.

   • I know this isn’t very applicable to this situation but I think it is interesting:

     Using data from Bovada fast-fold poker.

     One raiser in position (not the button).

     When the BB calls with suited two-gappers J8s-

     I have 86 hands like this (LOL sample size).

     The big blind lost at about -65 bb/100 when calling, semi-excluding rake.

     The big blind won about 1/3 of the time so the 1 bb of dead money may help by 33 bb/100.

     So, in practice the average small stakes fast-fold player on Bovada would probably be better off folding here.

     • I think these types of hands are going to be on the more difficult side to play correctly.

       I would err on the cautious side because I don’t trust myself to play them well.

     • The sample size issue isn’t one you can gloss over here. It takes tens of thousands of hands to get reasonable win rate data, 86 is literally nothing. Also I imagine in most of your data the BB is facing a larger than minimum raise?

     • Derp, I forgot the most important argument of all. If the BB’s true winrate when calling with suited connectors were -65BB/100 (again, LOL sample size) that would make calling substantially better than folding, which produces a -100BB/100 win rate. Calling from the BB isn’t about showing some huge profit, it’s about clawing back some of the money you are forced to put up blind.

       • Can’t believe I missed that. Doh!

         I am always careful to track changes to my stack when calculating stuff. Of course the poker databases don’t report things that way. Duh.

     • I’m most convinced by the back of the envelope Flopzilla math and I now agree that the pre-flop call is probably correct.

       I still think the flop is probably a donk and the turn bet should be bigger as played.

       I never know if people don’t have energy for this kind of detail or if I’m talking crazy. 8)

       I guess I’ll go back to the occasional terse comments instead of the firehose…

   • Correction on the Flopzilla math:

     I assumed we’d win the pot on average with top-pair, not ‘break even’.

     This is possibly aggressive but scaling it down to 0.8x pot probably doesn’t change the result.

7. hi excellent blog Im a poker fan from Switzerland

8. Lots of ranting Goin on! Have a blast in Vegas.

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