1/3 Hijack 55 - no fish this time

Just some helpful advice which you can take or leave, but these types of responses kinda give you pretty much NIL credibility, imo. I'm coming up on 7000 hours of live 1/3 NL, doing alright (though certainly not a crusher), and yet I should "quit poker" ("Period." no less?) since I've decided this is probably a folding spot for me? Not sure if this is how you wanted to enter the forum discussions in your first 100 posts, but you may want to tone down your hyperbole / doucheness.

BTW, your "math" completely ignores the times we flop a set and lose (apparently our only concern is how much of our opponents stack we get when we flop one). The RIO on small pairs, especially against the better players in the pool (OP doesn't describe any of the opponents involved in this hand as poorer players in the pool), are a real thing that need to be factored in. A big percentage of hugenormous pots involve small sets that lose.

Anyhoo, since neither side is going to be able to show a simple EV result of the situation to two decimal places due to all the assumptions we'd have to grab out of our ass for each particular situation (even away from the table with all the tools at our disposal, let alone at the table in real time with a few seconds to make a decision), I'll take one last crack at things using simple heuristic steps. It doesn't involve any math at all (so yeah, I'm guessing it will be ignored).

We can all identify situations that look to probably be pretty good setmining spots (ex. 5 terrible players with decent effective stacks limp to us on the Button with 55 and the blinds are OMCs who literally have a 0% raising range) versus pretty bad setmining spots (ex. at just 100bb effective stacks we see a large raise, a 3bet and then a 4bet before it gets to us in the SB with 55). Those good setmining spots are probably profitable. Those bad setmining spots probably ain't profitable. But a lot of situations fall somewhere in-between. So, what to do?

I think we can simply start with an indifferent slider halfway between calling and folding, and then move that slider towards calling versus folding based on various pieces of information. Good stack sizes versus bad stack sizes relative to money being put in preflop? Some real terrible fish involved versus some decent players? Already multiple players in the pot or are we the just the first/second one getting involved and it could end up HU? Are we in position versus out of position versus most of the field? Very unlikely we get raised behind or is it more likely? In OP's situation, the slider is pretty much always moved towards the folding end of the spectrum, so folding is a perfectly reasonable play.

GcluelessNLnoobG

It's not an insult. It is just when people here see tough and aggressive players, they think there will be a lot of 3!s, which just doesn't happen at 1/3, where 5-way single-raised pots or more likely

Same

No it absolutely doesn't. I am absolutely dumbfounded at your repeated claims about missing math despite my posting an exhaustive and voluminous amount of it. I'm literally stunned.

I find this to be an absolutely bizarre exercise in confirmation bias. You invented this mechanism out of thin air with no mathematical basis and then fed it the exact conditions that produce your preferred answer.

I'll walk you through this one more time.

Instead of starting with arbitrary sliders that we imagined, let's start with the real numbers. We're calling a bet of X to flop a set. Seven out of 8 times we miss and fold. That's -7x. One in 8 times we do hit a set. We still have to pay the bet preflop. So -1x. Assuming we win, we'll get our bet back, plus Villains bet, or +2x. So together that's -7x -1x + 2x = -6X. We need villain to put in another 6x post flop when we hit, on average, to make this a break even call. In this particular hand X = $15, so we need Villain to put in another $90 to make this a profitable call.

Villain is sitting on more than five times that amount. If we get his stack even 20% of the time, we're winning.

Assuming he C-bets half pot, that's $15 we can expect almost every time. If we raise to $45, then villain will have to call $30 into a pot of $90. He needs 25% equity. Do you really expect him to fold very often? He's allegedly a "good player" making a modest raise from early position. He can't magically know we have a set. He'll have to evaluate his hand against our range, and I'm betting he'll find 25% equity a hell of a lot of the time. We just need V to call another 1/3 pot bet on either of the next two streets to make our minimum average result threshold.

From there, I can imagine a slider full of alternate hypothetical scenarios where a hell of a lot more money goes in the pot. Villain is sitting on nearly $500 and is gonna have a ton of top-pair, overpair, and big 2pair hands in his range on a huge % of flops. He's never gonna be one-and-done bet/folding AK on AT5. We're going to realize an above-average result in those spots. You're telling me you have 7k hours at the table but you don't think you can get value, in position, with a supremely strong and well disguised hand against an aggressive villain whose range is stuffed with second-best holdings??? Why are you even playing at all if not to experience that exact situation???

And sure, sometimes we'll lose our stack. But how often does that really happen? We can quantify this with maths and not some imaginary slider we made up. On any given flop where we make a set, villain can have at most...6 combos of bigger sets in his range which probably includes around 100 hands. So we get cracked 1 in 15 times. Pocket Aces get cracked three times as often. Are you folding those too? But ok, we can say 6% of the time we blow a stack. That's worth roughly -$30 of EV on a $500 stack. (It's actually less because he won't always have 6 combos depending on the ranks of the flop cards) So add that to our $90 from above and we need villain to put in $120 on average post flop when we hit a set to cover all of our expenses. Again, he's sitting on nearly $500.

If you want a simple heuristic, then just say you need 7x the bet every time to make money. Villain has 30x the bet. The gap between 7 and 30 accounts for your RIO, set over set, and the times you don't get paid. The bigger that gap is, the more profitable set mining will be. The presence of other players only benefits us. I've already showed you in two other posts in this thread how to account for the cost of potentially getting 3-bet and having to fold. I'm not going to go through that again, but it suffices to say that the EV from their potential flats far far far far outweighs the EV lost when we get raised off our hand. By a lot.

And finally, you can't have it both ways. If you're telling me that villain won't ever put in as little as 2x the pre-flop pot to pay us off when we make a well-disguised hand, then he's the most bluffable drooler of all time. If that's really how you feel about it, then we don't need to flop a set at all. Pocket 5's are a calling hand, so is 52off. It doesn't matter, if our Villain is gonna crap his pants and fold whenever we breath on the pot, then we can play any two cards with total impunity.

You could be. Just stop throwing EV in the muck

I don't mean to get in the middle of your debate, and I don't intend to respond with a bunch of back and forth, but I just wanted to say you're missing some key considerations here.

1. How likely are you to see a flop without getting raised off your hand by someone behind? This needs to be factored into your math. This is the number one reason small pocket pairs aren't profitable from early position in higher stakes games where opponents are sufficiently aggressive.

2. It's not enough to hit your set. You need to hit a set and simultaneously have an opponent make a hand that's strong enough to pay you off (and that you beat). If your opponent has AK you need to both hit a 5 and have an Ace or King high flop. When you hit a 5 that's one flop card accounted for so it's less likely your opponent also hits. Otherwise you will only win a small pot from unpaired overcards. Likewise if your opponent has QQ you need to both hit a 5 and have a flop that looks sufficiently safe for QQ to pay you off. You aren't usually going to win much on a King or Ace high flop.

Now all that being said, I tend to agree with you that it's likely profitable here to put in 1/30 of your stack at 1/3 to set mine. Actually I suspect 1/30 of your stack could be close to an optimal ratio. The implied odds don't get better and better the deeper you are. As you get 400 or 500 bb deep the odds shift again as the reverse implied odds of running set over set start to become a real issue. People aren't typically stacking off that deep with one pair hands.

Anyway, like I said I actually tend to agree with you about calling with the 5s here. Remember though that the GTO range is something like this: Pocket 5s are indifferent and mostly folding if opponents are sufficiently skilled.

It is definitely a GTO fold. It is a call at most 1/3 tables, because you aren't getting 3! that much, and it is likely to go multiway. Plus 1/3 players will pay off big with 2 pair or even top pair. It is totally an exploit.

I painstakingly re-read every single one of your prior posts, and *not once* do you mention anything regarding RIO / factoring in the amount of times we lose when we flop a set with regards to whether preflop is profitable (bold a quote if you believe otherwise). The closest you come is implicitly in post#26 when you are computing the turn EV and factoring in better hands / hands that can beat us on the river... and computing a positive turn EV in a particular example obviously has no bearing whatsoever on whether previous streets were played profitably in the particular example (let alone preflop in the general case).

GIwillsufferfoolsgladly...butnotimpoliteones,sowelcometomyIgnoreListG

Holy Macaroni. I'm literally in clown world right now.

I can't believe you need your hand held this much.

GforthefifthdamntimenowgeezG

Anyone saying flatting pre is an awful poker player, there's no debate to be had, it's a punt. "But I win at the lowest live stakes", yeah and you'd win more in these games which are 100% whales and no challenge whatsoever if you had an ounce of preflop fundamentals

Did your AI poker coach tell you to say that?

"FoLd DuH pEaRZ aNd ReRaZe AyCe FoR SoOTeD"

If you are playing 100% whales, you need to make adjustments, like flatting small pps.

No being good enough to make $700k playing poker in the last 4-5 years did

Playing like a loose passive fish is not the way to make more money, no

If you don't play 1/3, how do you know the optimal plays at 1/3? You play for the conditions of the game. Making plays that looks pro-style is not the best way of winning.

1. Because I used to and graduated
2. Because I'm better than you and any other 1/3 player. I make 16bb/hr at 2/5, it just shows how stupid you are if you don't think I know how to exploit bad players

Arrogant jerk.

This the maths portion of your answer. Then you move into non-maths. I think you have to move into non-maths because you're not going to be able to use maths to support hand selection on the basis of playability, board coverage, position or the danger of getting squeezed. You can demonstrate 'we need to make x' on this call, cool no-one disagrees with that, proving you're going to make x though is not something you can do.

Also raw equity is pretty dodgy as a selection criteria since we can include K9o as favourably as 87s and then A2o of course is superior to both, my guess is that you're snap folding both of these hands though in this situation.

Anyway what it comes down to is that you don't have a maths-based position for what hands you're calling here and what you're not. You're starting with a dubious proposition (select on raw equity) and then excluding hands on heuristics, or maybe "vibes" is your preferred term.

Calm down, reminding everyone how set-mining works isn't rocket science, although I do enjoy the callback to 2005. Happier times.

I haven't called you any names. Interesting that you believe the act of name-calling makes someone "a douche" though.

I'm not using maths for this, I'm using heuristics. We're out of position on half the table which includes 2 decent players, one of which is described as particularly aggressive. We're providing a bunch of information by overcalling, other than giving away the fact that we likely call in bad positions. We are heavily incentivising good/aggressive opponents, who we are explicitly told are playing on this table, to squeeze us. We're flatting a large raise, which further tilts us towards either 3betting or folding.

This is a bad call. If I had to develop a calling range here, I would either include hands which can withstand a squeeze (in which case I'd just 3bet now) or I'd be putting in hands to backraise (which should be 3bet now in a vaccuum). I guess I can get behind someone having a calling range here, especially for meta-reasons, but your claim of basically "everyone calls 55 here unless they are a terrible poker player" is just a ludicrous assertion, yes even if you want to explain how set mining works.

@Prez

Lol, you seriously cannot be this ****ing stoopid? (ETA: regarding post#83)

You insult me in your post#78 saying you’ve clearly stated how you’ve factored in RIO to the profitability of preflop, and yet when I then ask you to post one single instance of you doing so prior, you quote from… post#78 (the same ****ing post you throw the insult in).

Gobviuoslydealingwithageenyusthatdoesn’tquiteyethaveagrasponlineartimeG

I think you not listening and instead being offended and arguing is reflective of why you are stuck at 1/2 for at least 7 years. Also reflective of why nearly zero actually decent poker players want to post here

By all means keep using your brilliant 1/2 shitreg strats

Weird, i just recently added Prez to my Ignore List and noticed kvnd is already on it.

GthejerkstoreismostdefinitelylowonjerksG

Why not win arguments with authority and insults when you can't explain why it is bad to get a 5-way single-raised pot with 55?

1. You get exploited hard by their 5x open - the big opens exact purpose is to exploit people having flats when you should play 3b or fold. It's just strictly unprofitable to call except in outrageously optimistic assumptions. Equity realization is poor in practice too which is important for these low pairs post

2. I wasn't aware you could see the future- going 5 ways or even seeing a flop isn't guaranteed, especially in the presence of a loose aggressive player and stated solid reg among the 4 left to act, it's not as dreamy a spot to see a flop 5 ways with a low pair as you make it out to be anyway

The 5x open may be fairly standard at a lot of 1/3 tables. If not, it may give you a read on the ep raiser's hand, which may help you extract more if you hit.

The description of loose aggressive and solid reg may not mean they are 3-betting a lot. There aren't many 1/3 tables where 3!s are that common. Whether the flat call is playable is dependent on how the table is playing whatever the stakes.

The call in ep with 55 is certainly not GTO and is generally not good in a tough game.

Settle in Pres2…

When I first got here, I ran into this kind of thing - this crowd can make you angry sometimes.

It’s best to ‘pick your battles’ carefully and if a lot of people disagree, think about what they’re saying.

You don’t have to change your mind, but you also don’t have to get in a war defending your position.

Personally I came out of this (it was my hand) thinking that it was 3bet or fold pre-flop. I didn’t expect the calls behind and I should have. You’re kinda defending what I came to believe was a mistake.

Bottom line: please keep posting; you’ll get used to this crowd. Kinda got to pick your battles. There’s some smart people here and you can learn from them. We can learn from you too.

I think your frustration was that you thought you had clearly laid out your position, which couldn’t be the case if several people questioned it.

The forum is similar to poker in that you have to separate the good posters from the bad. They can tell you they make 100k a year, just like seat 3 can say he’s not bluffing. But after awhile, it becomes more clear who has strong advice.

Also remember, everyone has good ideas sometimes.

You want to play to exploit the players and the table. Automatically playing according to some chart of what hands to play in what position and rules about 3! or fold preflop is not the best approach.

It is better for the caller with 55 that the raise was large in ep. The raiser may be exploiting with the large sizing, but we are exploiting him by knowing he likely has a strong range. You prefer to play 55 against a strong hand, and it is better if you know it is a strong hand. Then a likely multiway pot getting good immediate pot odds and more players who can make 2 pair or something further improves your EV.

Yeah, beginners play by GTO ranges and rules about not flat calling preflop.