1/3 Hijack 55 - no fish this time

Just because a "better" player won't stack off as light as a less-better player doesn't mean we won't get any value for our hand when we hit. We could use your logic to fold KK here because he "he won't pay off".

No, though at 30BB's stack depth the villain would be bringing a range that we're healthily ahead of on most flops. We're also not in bad shape if we jam over his raise.

Yes.

Absolutely yes

You've broken the question now by taking it to an absurd place that has no relevance to the question at hand. First, yes you could play PP's for implied odds. You don't have to win the whole stack for it to be profitable. Can you win 20% of that stack when you make a very strong hand? I would hope so!! Also, this is an unrealistic premise because you'd most likely be 3-betting small pp's out of the blinds when you're that deep.

I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree at this point.

GgoodluckG

I will think of this thread often
A bad play OOP (one hand of poker) and I’m told I can’t range anyone, play scared poker, and apparently not as good as the rest of you.

I will continue to look for help with decisions on this forum, but just because you go on and on writing, doesn’t mean you’re helpful.

Talk down to me and I lose respect
I can take criticism, but some of you are better to ignore. It’s kinda like playing poker; you sit down and start observing to find out the ability of the other players. You read the advice and assess the ability of posters.

Sometimes you’re wrong, but after a while, it all starts to become clear. There are some very helpful people here that keep me coming back, but there’s still a few I haven’t got a read on yet.

I had 2 players behind me, but I thought they would both fold. I got caught in bad position and flopped a set. It was weird, because I fold this OOP, but I didn’t expect that here. With better players there were less multiway pots

I could have made a better effort to look left and see if they looked like they were going to play. I consider all advice and am thankful for it
Discussion is certainly helpful.

Every poker player thinks they are great, much as every poster thinks they have the answers.
Discernment is always necessary.

I respect all of you
You’re my kind of people who love talking poker. I don’t mind you being blunt, because I certainly won’t hold back from giving my opinion. I know that nobody cares, but I am trying to do better.

Grunch:

I fold pre except on a really soft table. This is an awful spot to overcall with, we have decent players everywhere including two guys who are likely to squeeze and make us fold. I don't think there's a single hand I would overcall with unless I'm doing it to backraise but I guess if you made me "value overcall" anything it would be with a sliver of hands around the 99/TT/AQs area.

As played I rip it in OTF once they start re-raising. This is a really good flop to get paid off with a set, there's draws everywhere along with overpairs.

Turn's a meh situation, I probably get it in but I hate life.

I'd love it if one of the people espousing this advice could support it with logic and reasoning instead of vibes and feel.

Folding is EV = 0

Can anyone explain, mathematically, how calling is less than 0 EV?

Late to the party, but geez, the way you played this is sadly very passive/bad. It reminds me of what some young reg-kid said to me at Bellagio 15 years ago when I was new to poker and cash games: "You don't like money?".

(I had trips with ATo on an A-A-x-x-x board and only called his $30 bet on turn and $30 river, and I beat his A6s)

---

Pre is obviously fine, unless you expect someone to squeeze with high frequency behind you (like the 'studied, very aggressive LAG'). Also, against a good player opening from UTG you might not always get to double up when you hit, simply because he is likely adept at hand-reading and will be able to get away from some hands post.

On the flop, this seems like the easiest jam in the world. CO is aggressive, so even though he can have 99 on a few occasions there are way more draws in his range. And if UTG is a studied player, he could have a lot of overpairs here that originally checked out of respect for the board. But he likely knows that CO is a laggy player, and thus is not ready to release his overpair just yet. There is simply no way he plays JJ like this on a draw heavy board, by letting both you and CO see a cheap turn like this.

Probably a lot of cards you need to dodge here, but even if CO have QsTs for the megadraw you are still a 57% favorite as per an odds calculator. So unless you run into one of the three 99-combos, you should be a massive favorite here in a big pot.

I hear you BW
I spent too much time was wondering why UTG checked, then with raise and cold call, but you’re right the natural play was to jam

The same question could be posed to you to explain how calling is greater than 0 EV.

Gshowyourmath,imoG

Assuming that there are hands that you are folding in this exact spot, kindly demonstrate the mathematics you used to establish the 0 EV cut-off point with an example hand.

I'll take a stab at it. With low PP setmining candidates from EP, in the game Free was describing (tough, plenty of 3!, some 4!s) our cost to see a flop is often going to be more than the cost of calling an opening bet.

My guess at the relevant math: P = (1-3!%N1) * (1-3!%N2) and so on for all N, 4 in this case. If H's call is 3!, they must fold. It costs 5bb to call. H flops a set and wins (ignoring what actually happened here AP) a stack of 100bb, 1 time in 10.

Make the 3!% for each player 10%(?). 34.4% of the time, H gets 3! and folds. Then 65.6% of the time, H spends 5 and sees a flop. 9 of those times, they lose just their 5bb; 1 time, they win 100bb.

(.344 * -5) + (.656 * ((.9 * -5)+(.1 * 100)) = +1.889 bb. Hmmm.

Let's make it 1/15 times H gets a stack, same 3! %'s. I get -0.4073 bb.

My algebra sucks, but doing this iteratively in Excel, each remaining player needs to be 3! around 8% for this toy setmine to break even.

I'm not sure if this proves the point I wanted to make---LDO! Free's gonna' get squeezed!---or not, lol.

It would be silly to ask me that question since I've given an explicit and detailed answer, with supporting equations, twice already.

See posts #36 and #49

I'm not sure I even understand the question. You want me to give you a list of +EV hands for this exact spot? No, I'm not going to do that.

For the hand in question, we have 55, in position, facing a single 5x raise against an opponent more than 150BB's deep. There is massive +EV in this hand even if all you do is set mine. You'll make a set 1 in 8 times. You need to make 7x the bet size when you hit, on average, to break even. That's $105. That's less than 2x the preflop potsize. And we don't have to make that every time, just on average. That should be LOL-easy when we're in position against an aggressor with a strong range. The presence of other players in the hand only makes things easier.

I actually can't believe this is in dispute.

Kinda hilarious you're so knowledgeable yet can't answer this yourself. Weird.

Agreed, with 2 aggressive players who have position on us this is even more of a fold. Good for you!

I'd stick to 2nl if I was you, with all due respect.

Enlighten me then.

Everybody's got plenty of insults. Nobody's bringing any facts. Show me how the math is -EV

If you can't make money with 30 to 1 implied odds, in position, with a pocket pair, at 1/3, then you need to quit poker. Period.

You've made a lot of assumptions in here that I don't necessarily agree with. But let's start with your assessment that we see a flop 65.6% of the time and get 3-bet off of our hand 34.4% of the time. Can we just round that to 2/3 and 1/3? Close enough, right? V's raise is to 5x, and we're getting raised off of one out of every three calls. That means we pay 15BB for every two flops that we see. The average cost of seeing the flop is 7.5BB

We flop a set one in 8 times. We need villain to put in 7 x 7.5BB or 52.5BB post flop on average whenever we make a set. That's the break even point. So the question becomes "Can we expect villain to pay off our sets for at least 52.5BB?". If Villain is sitting with 3x that amount, then the answer ought to be overwhelmingly "YES"

If other players join the hand, it's even better for us. You've already accounted for the chance they'll raise us off our hand and we've included that cost in our 7.5BB initial expense estimate. So if they're in the hand, their contributions only make it easier for us to realize the odds we need. Their calls put more money in the pot. And the remainder that we need to win becomes a smaller proportion of the pre-flop pot.

I'd also like to point out that a lot of people in this thread want to have it both ways.

if you're telling me that villain is some kind of super-nit post-flop and will never pay off when we hit, then pocket 5's is a slam dunk 3-bet hand. Not a fold.

Don’t think anyone needs to insult you, you’re insulting yourself by creating threads about how good you are at 2nl.

Thanks for knowing my name. And keep reading the blog. Maybe you'll learn something. If you're mucking pocket pairs in single raised pots 150BB's deep against minstakes fish, then you need all the help you can get.

Yep, yep, yep.

I started the exercise thinking it was a no-brainer not to get involved, and Math Will Show It, then I actually did the math, and, huh, it's actually a lot closer than I thought. Toy game, but even so, if we can pull insights from it, and stay away from boundary conditions, maybe I can learn something.

Even if our V has AKo??? ducks...

I am much more friendly towards PPs than most here. They're just not that difficult to play. Set over set happens; oh well, that's why we come with a couple of bullets.

If there were tough aggressive players who would 3! and 4!, then fold 55 in ep. What OP considers tough aggressive players in a 1/3 game will probably flat call a lot. If when you call, it is likely to go 4 or 5-ways, then flat calling with 55 is very profitable.

No, I'm asking what's an example cut off point hand (singular not plural) and why, with maths? I ask, because I don't believe that you have a strong mathematical basis for whatever your calling range is in this set up. My guess is that you use heuristics, but call it "vibes" when someone else does it.

I love the subtle cracks by some of you. Let me join in as I’m pretty sure I would not describe you as tough or aggressive, just a lot of noise.

Slowly, I’m finding the troubled people with more insults than advice. Maybe you’re helpful to someone else

That's still the same question. You want me to evaluate the EV of a bunch of borderline hands and then tell you which one is closest to zero. I'm not going to do that.

If you want a general answer, I'd say that because poker bets are usually proportional to the size of the pot, we'll be getting somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1 odds a great majority of the time. So I'd be looking for hands that have 30-35-ish percent equity or better against villain's perceived range. Though that can obviously change depending on if we have a plan for bluffing future streets and can win without showdown. There's really too many variables for me to answer your question for a villain I've never met in a game I wasn't in.

Something like 87s has about 35% equity against a strong EP open range. That's probably a good jumping off point. If I think I can over-realize my equity by winning sometimes without showdown, then I might move the threshold down a bit. (maybe 75s) If I expect to under-realize because we might fold to V's aggression, then I might move the threshold up a bit. T9s sounds like a better cutoff.

I'd also need to ensure that my range isn't so wide that I can't meet a minimum defense frequency against V's likely c-bet. That's a lot more math I could show you, but I won't because your question is not sincere, asked in good faith, or even on-topic.

The claim that I made is: Given this exact set of conditions, 55 is a +EV hand. I also provided an OBSCENE amount of maths to support that claim.

Your claim seems to be: "Ha ha, no it isn't you donkey"

That doesn't make you right. It makes you a douche.

Kindly show your math for how 55 is -EV

Don’t worry about it though
I probably got the wrong read

Kid never seen an aggressive player take a passive action I guess