Monthly Archives: September 2015

Is limping Ever Good? (Q & A)

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Q: I’ve gotten myself in more trouble being the aggressor OOP than I should. Is OOP aggression overrated? Should I start limping instead? 
   
A: It’s not aggression OOP which is overrated but rather playing OOP which is overrated. In other words, folding is very often the correct move even if you have seemingly decent hands like KJo or JTs.
   
And before we start digging any deeper let me mention something else first. Raising OOP is much harder to play than limping OOP, that’s for sure. Still if you play correctly it is more profitable than limping. (That of course assumes that Raising is better than Folding to begin with).
Q: What happens if I have AJ or AQ and then I miss the flop? Wouldn’t it better had I just limped? 
 
A: No. Missing the flop OOP is pretty tough and requires some elegant maneuvering on your part in order to maximize your value but WITHOUT going too far. That’s not easy and it comes down to the concept of using the aggression correctly. But this is not a reason to limp. It’s a reason to play better post flop.
  
This is where your hand-reading skills as well as your understanding of the board textures become invaluable. For example, say that you hold AJo and you deem your opponent somewhat fit-or-fold. Then the board comes Q62r (r = rainbow). That’s a very easy “single-stab-and-then-give-up” cbet. That’s because, if your read is right, that particular villain will only call with a decent pair (say A6 or 77+) or better. This means that if we get called we shut down immediately unless we improve. Conversely, if he never calls unless he has a pair, it means that he folds a ton of hands to our cbet which makes the latter very profitable, all by itself. (Let’s call this Hand #1)
  
Now change the above texture to QT7hh (h = heart, hh=two hearts etc) and all of a sudden you can CHECK. Yes you read this right. I said “check”. Reason being, this board is scary not just for you but also for him. And if he is fit or fold then he’s probably NOT betting all those hands that we beat (like A8o or 56s for example). On top of that he’s probably not betting weak show down value hands either (AT, 88-99 etc). Heck, he may not even bet his draws here. This of course means that if he bets we are very happy to fold because we are likely beat (and we saved a cbet), This also gives us a great chance to see a turn (while keeping the pot relatively small) and potentially make a delayed cbet since we know now that his range is weak. If on the other hand we bet that flop, all his weak SD (SD = showdown) hands will call us and now we have to play two more streets OOP with a speculative hand.  (Let’s call this Hand #2)
Q: I’ve been limping a little from early position lately wth playable hands…like KJ or SC. Is that bad? 
  
A: Have you considered flat out folding these hands? The problem with speculative hands (especially suited connectors) is that you REALLY need the initiative and position to be profitable with them. Otherwise you are just buying your cheap lottery ticket (aka ‘limp’) and then you wait to hit a big hand (not a draw mind you – that’s not going to be enough without having control of the pot). But how is that different than what everyone else is already doing at the table?
  
Speaking of which, if you instead open-fold you essentially reject the offer for the “lottery ticket” which immediately puts you ahead of the curve.
Q: How about a low pair like 22-66?
  
A: This is the only group of hands you can maybe limp with. Problem is, after a while it becomes too transparent (it’s usually not advisable to take a line based on private information – in this case the strength of your hand – rather than public information like your position or your stack size).
Q: What if I have a hand like KJ, I raise from OOP and get reraised? I can’t call now, can I?
  
A: We need to look at the big picture here:
  
1) First of all, from Early Position we shouldn’t have too many hands that fold to a reraise. That’s why open-folding a hand like KJo or even KQo (we reduce the size of the “raise-and-then-fold-to-a-reraise” hands)
  
2) Secondly, they will not reraise us all that often. And the value of our raise should have been realized already from:
  
 – All the times everyone folds and we pick up the blinds
 – All the times only the blinds call, and so we have position on them.
 – All the times we take it down with a cbet
 – All the times we transform our initiative into value (for example in hand #2 above, they check their AT hand after we miss a cbet – because we showed aggression preflop – and then we hit our gutshot on the turn)
  
3) If we get reraised we should be HAPPY to fold because we are certain we are beat. But if we limp and then we call a raise, we have no idea how far behind we could be. (Imagine for example, that we hold KQ and we limp and then call a raise. Then a K comes and we reluctantly check/call 2-3 streets only to lose to AA)
Q: But if I raise and then get reraised I have to fold. I am now down a raise and I have no chance to catch bc I’m out. If I limp and get raised, I can either call (and I’m in for just a raise…same as if I raised wth no 3-bet) or I can fold and only I’m out a blind.
  
A:You are correct if you limp and you get raised you are screwed either way!
  
– If you call, then you might as well have raised yourself (so you at least have the initiative and all the other perks I described above)
– If you fold then you might as well have folded to begin with, to save your blind.
  
That’s why limping is so bad and it is widely considered to be one of the major “sins” of poker. Raising or folding are usually much better. (Again, let’s not forget folding. Playing OOP sucks so you might as well fold a ton!)
Q: If I am the raiser from oop and the flop comes with a bad texture but I miss it, should I feel compelled to cbet?
  
A: You shouldn’t be. Just because you have the initiative, it doesn’t mean you have to utilize it right away (or at all). This is what I meant above when I said that using your aggression correctly is hard. So you can check a decent amount here.
Q: Let’s say that I decided to cbet anyway. Maybe that cbet will work, but let’s say it won’t because I’m up against someone who is willing to play his position and see the turn. Now I’m stuck being the aggressor in a decent pot that I’m totally invested in.
  
A: You are not really “invested” in anything. The money in the pot is not really yours anymore and you play to maximize your profit from that point onward. This means that even if you decided to cbet the flop, you can still give up on the turn if you objectively think that this is the most profitable line (i.e. you cut your losses short, because every other action would lose you even more money!)
  
And that’s the key. Let’s go back to hand #1 where you had AJo and the flop was Q62o. You cbet that flop knowing very well that your opponent will fold a good 50%+ of the time. That’s your profit right there! If he folds that much, then it really doesn’t matter what happens on the turn. So if we do this experiment 1000 times and he folds 500 times and calls 500 times, you could even insta-fold when he calls (without even seeing the turn) and you would still be making money!
Q:  Ok, let’s say the turn gives me 2nd pair and a gutter, it’s gonna be hard to fold right? 
  
A: Hard and Correct are two different things. We are not in this business to make the easy choices. We are in this business to make the correct choices. So if you poker analysis tells you, that you should fold, then you should fold even if you hold the 2nd nuts! Again, it all comes down to how difficult it is to use our aggression correctly. But once you learn how to not “fall in love” with your hand, it’s not as hard anymore.
In closing, a wise man once said: “I don’t care about defending by blinds, I care about defending my button instead“. This principle is applicable to all other bad positions like the early and the middle ones. So you shouldn’t worry too much about getting involved there (just fold but very strong hands). Instead, you should concentrate on maximizing value from the BTN and the CO.

Running it twice

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The concept of “running it twice” is well known especially among the high-rollers. The concept is simple: Say two people are ALL-IN on the flop. Now, instead of “running” the turn and the river once, to determine a single winner, they run them twice. And each time the winner gets half the pot. Similarly, they can run them 4 times, each time for a quarter of the pot.
I am often asked the question if “running it twice” affects your odds of success. Especially, if the same deck is used and the cards are not reshuffled (which is usually the case). The answer is of course: It doesn’t! The only thing it does, is reducing your overall variance while maintaining your Expected Value (EV) intact. In other words, by “running it twice” (or more times) not only you will make the same amount of money in the long run, but also your bankroll will fluctuate less.
But WHY is it that our EV stays intact? Well let’s look at a simplified example, where we have a Flush Draw (FD) with only 8 cards left in the deck, only 2 of which will complete our draw.
The assumptions:
  1. Hero has a spade draw on the flop and he will win if and only if he hits his FD
  2. The deck has only 8 cards, 2 of which are spades.
Question 1: What are the chances of Hero winning the hand? 
 
Probably the easiest way to compute this is by computing the 3 disjoint winning scenarios for Hero. Namely:
  • He hits the turn and misses the river: (2/8)*(6/7) = 0.214 or 21.4%
  • He misses the turn but hits the river: (6/8)*(2/7) = 0.214 or 21.4% (no surprise there: We switched the “2” with the “6”, plus the two scenarios are symmetrical)
  • He hits both turn and river: (2/8)*(1/7) = 0.036 or 3.6%
Total chance of winning the hand is: 21.4 + 21.4 + 3.6 = 46.4% (not too shabby! – This result is skewed from the typical
FD because 9/44 is closer to 1/5 than to 1/4 – but who cares? :-D)
Question 2: What happens if we run the entire deck? (a total of 4 runs)
 
Well, since there are 2 spades there are two cases:
  • Case 1: Hero wins 2 out of the 4 runs, or 50% of the pot (if the spades are spread)
  • Case 2: Hero wins 1 out of the 4 runs, or 25% of the pot (if both spades come in a single run)
Final Question: What is the EV of hero if we run it 4 times?
 
In order to answer this we need to know how frequently each case happens.
It is easier to compute the frequency of the second case. The chance is simply 4 times 3.6% = 14.4%, where 3.6 is the chance of hitting both turn and river. (This is because, the chance of hitting it on the first run is the same as hitting it on any other run)
Therefore, we have that case 2 happens 14.4% (which nets Hero 0.25 of the pot) while case 1 happens the remaining 85.6% of the time (which nets Hero 0.5 of the pot). Now a simple EV calc shows that:
EV(hero, run it 4 times) = 0.856*(0.5) + 0.144(0.25) = 0.464 = 46.4% which is EXACTLY what we found above!
Conclusion: Hero’s and Villain’s EV ware not affected by the multiple runs!
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A few things to notice:
  1. Hero runs below EV only 14.4% of the time but his realized losses are huge (46.4 – 25 = 21.4%)
  2. Hero runs above EV a whooping 85.6% of the time but his realized gains are tiny (50 – 46.4 = 3.6%) (This is where a lot of people think that when they have a draw, they should run it twice. They think that because  they have a higher chance to chop the pot, they are golden. They don’t realize how much value they lose, when they don’t. As a matter of fact, if anything they help villain who now has nothing to lose – see next point)
  3. This is essentially a risk-free situation for villain who in reality they CAN never lose more than half the pot. Sure they do sacrifice a bit of EV the majority of the time (85.6%), but they get to keep 3/4 of the pot once in a while (14.4%) making a huge profit! And all that, without having to risk a single penny!
  4. The above point also shows the benefits of running-it-multiple-times in the form of reduced variance and consistent earnings. In other words, villain is perfectly hedged!

 

Playing Suited Connectors from the Blinds

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This is an interesting hand played by Bruno. My comments are in Italics. Bruno holds J♦T♦

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Preflop – Very loose call, but the original raiser was a 39/30 VPIP/PFR (i.e. he gets involved in the pot 39% of the time, 30% of which is with a raise). The CO who called was a fish, playing 75% of hands. I felt like it was a good multiway hand, so I called.

Given your read, that’s fine, although in the long run, 3bet squeezing is probably way better, and here’s why:

1) MP is loose and thus he has a lot of junk in his range (so we have decent Fold Equity (FE) preflop)

2) If MP folds, the fish will likely follow suit

3) Our hand plays exceptionally well in 3b pots because it flops really well (much better than a hand like TT or JJ for example. The key here, is that even when behind, we can apply pressure on favorable boards (and we can get a ton of these favorable boards with this hand)

4) Without the initiative, we often need to make a hand (not just flop a draw) to be profitable and that’s really hard

All in all, I like a raise to something like $0.35.  

Flop – He bets less than half. I have top pair, very likely to be ahead, no need to raise.

Sure, check calling here is fine, since we keep all of his bluffs in. Also, if we raise here, the problem is that if he doesn’t fold, we are not very happy (which essentially means that we are somewhat turning our hand into a bluff):

  • If he calls he probably has a better jack or a straight draw
  • If he raises he almost definitely beats our hand unless he again has a straight draw

And since there are not that many reasonable straight draws (QTs , T8s and maybe KQ are the only ones that make sense), we should probably just call instead, like you did. 

I take the same line as yours.

Turn – Half pot again. I dont see a need to raise, since I fold all worst hands. I have enough equity to continue tho, since if I’m behind I have 15 likely outs (and I might even be ahead here).

You are correct again.

By betting again, villain’s range becomes significantly stronger, so we should be worried about him having (at least) a better Jack or an overpair. We still beat a few draws and bluffs of his, but we are behind more often that not. And since we have a ton of outs (15) we can stay in the pot by just calling.  

I take the same line as yours.

River – Slight overbet shove. This guy is very loose, but I feel like my river call was a mistake. This card doesn’t improve anything thats behind of me OTT, and he suddely showed more strength. I just have a hard time folding broadway 2 card flushes.

You should never fold in that spot. Not only villain could be easily bluffing overcards or value-betting with overpairs, but your range is weak and very underepped. So that’s an easy call.

As a matter of fact, I prefer you shoving instead, to get value from all Jx, and overpairs. I expect him to check back a lot on that river, since you already called twice, so you seem likely to have some sort of a strong pair.

I like going all-in here. 

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What do you guys think of this hand? Feel free to leave your comments below!