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Vanishing Point
Mar. 9th, 2006 12:14 pmThere was a news item today which claimed that 600 people went missing every day. What I would like to know is, if that's the case, why is that some people have a staggering ability to keep turning up like a bad penny?
I won $7.62 in a 750-hand session on Party last night, and I ranked it one of my better achievements. Twice I was in excess of $100 down, and in those 750 hands I got Aces no times, Kings twice and Queens twice. It was an epic struggle, I tell ya.
Of some concern might be the fact that I made my final recovery after reducing my workload from three tables to two. Perhaps I'm missing some pot-stealing situations when three-tabling.
I also deliberately (in some cases) went for a greater_risk/greater_reward strategy. A typical hand might have gone like this:-
I pick up 66 in the Big blind. UTG+1 limps, MP2 limps, button raises, Small blind calls, I call, UTG+1 calls, MP2 calls.
$20 in pot
Flop comes 6-8-J, two hearts.
Small blind bets.
Now in the past, I would bash in a raise here in order to thin the field and to reduce the chance of being sucked out on. But, thinking about it, this is not necessarily the right play. So, I flat-called. But, what's the typical (good) scenario if I raise?
The two weak players behind me fold and button probably folds if he has AK, or reraises with a big pair. Let's make those two scenarios equally likely.
If pre-flop raiser folds, small blind (almost certainly on some kind of draw) calls. $28 in pot.
I reckon to win this hand about 75% of the time, sometimes on turn, sometimes on river, sometimes on showdown. That averages out at $30*.75, or an expected gain of $22.50.
Now, suppose I flat call on the flop. UTG+1 and MP2 now call. If button has a big pair, he may raise (it's debatable whether the raise is right here, because you are setting up your opponents for getting odds on their call on the turn). Let's say he raises half the time. It then gets called round again. Now we have $48 in the pot. Turn is a scare card. Checked round to the button, who bets. SB calls and now you raise. If you take it down there and then, you have achieved exactly what you would have achieved by raising the flop, but you have won more money. But what happens if you don't take it down?
Multiplying all this out in my head I get something like a $72 pot of which I have put in about $16. I only need to win this pot more than 37% of the time to be better off than I am by pullling the trigger on the turn. On the downside, I'm going to win this pot less often. But it looks to me as if, playing this way, I'm getting an EV of about $28 rather than $22.50.
The trick, of course, is to play at lower levels, levels where the result of an individual hand is not of that much importance. If you shift this up to $15-$30, my numbers are a 75% chance of winning $220 or a 45% chance of winning $450. The first has an EV of $165 while the second has an EV of $202.50. But in the second case you are more likely to lose the hand than to win it.
I might extend this practice a bit at $2-$4, experimenting a little. I know that it worked very well a couple of times last night, where I didn't "pull the trigger" until the river. Of course, it failed another time, and then I was cursing myself for not raising on the flop. Go back and read some Caro, Birks.
I won $7.62 in a 750-hand session on Party last night, and I ranked it one of my better achievements. Twice I was in excess of $100 down, and in those 750 hands I got Aces no times, Kings twice and Queens twice. It was an epic struggle, I tell ya.
Of some concern might be the fact that I made my final recovery after reducing my workload from three tables to two. Perhaps I'm missing some pot-stealing situations when three-tabling.
I also deliberately (in some cases) went for a greater_risk/greater_reward strategy. A typical hand might have gone like this:-
I pick up 66 in the Big blind. UTG+1 limps, MP2 limps, button raises, Small blind calls, I call, UTG+1 calls, MP2 calls.
$20 in pot
Flop comes 6-8-J, two hearts.
Small blind bets.
Now in the past, I would bash in a raise here in order to thin the field and to reduce the chance of being sucked out on. But, thinking about it, this is not necessarily the right play. So, I flat-called. But, what's the typical (good) scenario if I raise?
The two weak players behind me fold and button probably folds if he has AK, or reraises with a big pair. Let's make those two scenarios equally likely.
If pre-flop raiser folds, small blind (almost certainly on some kind of draw) calls. $28 in pot.
I reckon to win this hand about 75% of the time, sometimes on turn, sometimes on river, sometimes on showdown. That averages out at $30*.75, or an expected gain of $22.50.
Now, suppose I flat call on the flop. UTG+1 and MP2 now call. If button has a big pair, he may raise (it's debatable whether the raise is right here, because you are setting up your opponents for getting odds on their call on the turn). Let's say he raises half the time. It then gets called round again. Now we have $48 in the pot. Turn is a scare card. Checked round to the button, who bets. SB calls and now you raise. If you take it down there and then, you have achieved exactly what you would have achieved by raising the flop, but you have won more money. But what happens if you don't take it down?
Multiplying all this out in my head I get something like a $72 pot of which I have put in about $16. I only need to win this pot more than 37% of the time to be better off than I am by pullling the trigger on the turn. On the downside, I'm going to win this pot less often. But it looks to me as if, playing this way, I'm getting an EV of about $28 rather than $22.50.
The trick, of course, is to play at lower levels, levels where the result of an individual hand is not of that much importance. If you shift this up to $15-$30, my numbers are a 75% chance of winning $220 or a 45% chance of winning $450. The first has an EV of $165 while the second has an EV of $202.50. But in the second case you are more likely to lose the hand than to win it.
I might extend this practice a bit at $2-$4, experimenting a little. I know that it worked very well a couple of times last night, where I didn't "pull the trigger" until the river. Of course, it failed another time, and then I was cursing myself for not raising on the flop. Go back and read some Caro, Birks.
