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Sites for Sore Eyes
Aug. 28th, 2007 11:55 amI played a couple of hundred hands on Stars yesterday morning, since the $1-$2 games on the IP network don't really get going before 11am.
One thing that struck me was that the blinds are far more willing to check-raise on a variety of flops, if you have raised first in from either the cut-off or the button. It happened to me three times out of a possible six, I think. Two of the flops were raggish and one of them was Ace-rag-rag. All three were rainbow flops.
It's quite likely that at least one of these check-raises, and quite possibly two of them, were with air. Unfortunately, since I had missed my flops on all three occasions, I had to lay all three hands down (I could have bluffed a repop, but I suspect that needs saving for the $400 buy-in games). This wasn't much of a problem, since this aggression on the part of my OOP opponents transferred itself to other places and I ended the shortish session comfortably in front.
But it's interesting how the style varies from site to site, and I'll have a little think about my likely counterplays.
I had a chat with Matt a few posts ago about repopping with KK pre-flop. A similar (but different) situation arose yesterday on the IP Network.
Sitting in MP2 holding KK I raised an MP1 limper to 5xBB. All passed round to the BB who, somewhat to my surprise, mini-three-bet it to $20. Limper folded. I repopped him another $35 (I think he was sitting on about $170) and he folded.
So, I win $23, which is definitely better than the average I would expect from KK, but is it necessarily the maximum EV from this hand?
I really don't know the answer to this, but I do have the feeling that a flat-call here (i.e., a kind of slow-play) might win more money on average. It all depends on oppponent's range and how he will play that range preflop once you repop (and how well he plays post-flop).
However, it did lead me down one interesting line of thought, where KK can be better than AA. That line is, while KK might well stack off AA if a K flops, AA is not going to stack off KK if an A flops. So, if in this scenario opponent has AA, he is in a bit of a tough spot. I would guess that he has to reraise all-in, and I have to fold. But if the stacks were significantly deeper, does he still reraise all-in?
More interestingly, suppose I flat call rather than four-bet him. Do I get stacked off on a rag flop (if he holds AA).
Probably. Depends how opponent plays it.
Do I get stacked off if a high pair (Qs or Js) appears? Probably not.
Do I get stacked off if an Ace appears? No.
Does he get stacked off if a King appears? Quite possibly. Probably, even.
Other scenarios include opponent holding JJ, TT or AQ(s/o) where he may fold to the repop preflop. Most of the time I have his hand in big trouble on the flop, and he is OOP. The one hand where the reraise is probably right is AQ, but there are 16 combinations of that, while there are only 12 of JJ or TT. However, even if he has AQ, I'm winning the pot most of the time.
I'm not saying that the repop is wrong, and in my heart of hearts I quite like it because it reduces volatility. But against certain players I wonder if flat-calling the check-raise might not be better EV.
+++++++++++++++
The Financial Times on Saturday referred to "Bahrein", an interesting, if non-existent, country. (It's Bahrain, guys.). This came a while after The Guardian referred to that well-known English city of Sailsbury.
Does no-one employ sub-editors any more? In fact, does no-one even run a spell-checker? Typos in blogs are one thing, but newspaper articles and illustrations, that's something else.
++++++++++++++++
One of the interesting fall-outs of the subprime crisis has been that, at last, we are beginning to see the inner workings of where the risk actually went, and what the financial institutions were doing with their money. Barclays, for instance, turns out to have provided back-up financing to one of its structured investment vehicles. There are four of these SIVs that were set up by Barclays Capital. Was this public knowledge? Not really. Perhaps you could have found a passing reference to it. Edward Cahill, who has left Barclays Capital to find further success elsewhere, thought up the marvellous SIV-lite, a structure that reminds one irresistibly of LTCM. I think that the SIV-lites worked on gearings in the high double-digits. This is a fantastically efficient use of capital when things work well. It's also a recipe for disaster when they don't. Some more seasoned observers would call this "gambling".
One of the greatest lines on LTCM was the observation was that it didn't matter if LTCM (and remember, the first two words of that initialism stand for "long-term") was right at the end of the term of its investments. because its gearing got to such a high level that it had to be right at the end of every day. It had started out making money via a system that worked well when it was a small player. It failed to realize that, as it got more and more money, it ceased to be an observer and started to be an influencer. It further failed to spot that the opposition doesn't stand still. Other players see what you are doing. Some of them start doing it too. The opportunities disappear.
Well, LTCM did notice this, actually. But, instead of saying "there ya go lads .. it was a good system, but the plots blown now", it said "fuck, we've got all this money, where shall we put it now?"
In the US subprime crisis, the financial institutions lent the money. Then they packaged it up and sold it on. The investors said "this is great! Give us some more!" And so the lenders went after more and more risky and riskier loans. The market got to big for the borrowers available. So, they sought out new borrowers.
++++++++++++
There was another interesting snippet this morning, about the growth in credit card defaults in the US. In itself, this isn't sensationally intersting. It may or may not be linked to the subprime crisis, but my hunch is that it is not -- it's a fall-out from the excessive growth in credit in the past few years. But the interesting comment (from the US journalist) was that some borrowers "may choose to default on a mortgage before losing their credit cards".
Huh? At first glance, this looks insane. Conventional wisdom dictates that borrowers will always default on unsecuritized loans before they default on a securitized loan. Hell, that's why lenders ask for security in the first place.
But, as the journalist points out, this is not so Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass as it seems. First, these might be highly leveraged (for which, read "100%") borrowers on their homes. Although "handing in the keys" has serious long-term effects (as borrowers in the UK discovered after the growth in defaults of the early 1990s), it had less of a long-term effect on the average consumer these days than does defaulting on credit cards.
Indeed, you need credit cards these days, just to do ordinary stuff. So, far from being an unsecuritized loan, the credit card companies have you by the balls, because their "security" is that you can't function in the real world without a credit card. If you walk away from your mortgaged home, you will still be able to rent an apartment (although you will probably need your credit card), but if you default on your credit cards and keep your home? Well, just try ordering something from Amazon and offering to pay cash, or try hiring a car, or paying for a plane ticket. In the lands of terrorism fear and money-laundering mania, cash just does't cut it any more.
_______________
One thing that struck me was that the blinds are far more willing to check-raise on a variety of flops, if you have raised first in from either the cut-off or the button. It happened to me three times out of a possible six, I think. Two of the flops were raggish and one of them was Ace-rag-rag. All three were rainbow flops.
It's quite likely that at least one of these check-raises, and quite possibly two of them, were with air. Unfortunately, since I had missed my flops on all three occasions, I had to lay all three hands down (I could have bluffed a repop, but I suspect that needs saving for the $400 buy-in games). This wasn't much of a problem, since this aggression on the part of my OOP opponents transferred itself to other places and I ended the shortish session comfortably in front.
But it's interesting how the style varies from site to site, and I'll have a little think about my likely counterplays.
I had a chat with Matt a few posts ago about repopping with KK pre-flop. A similar (but different) situation arose yesterday on the IP Network.
Sitting in MP2 holding KK I raised an MP1 limper to 5xBB. All passed round to the BB who, somewhat to my surprise, mini-three-bet it to $20. Limper folded. I repopped him another $35 (I think he was sitting on about $170) and he folded.
So, I win $23, which is definitely better than the average I would expect from KK, but is it necessarily the maximum EV from this hand?
I really don't know the answer to this, but I do have the feeling that a flat-call here (i.e., a kind of slow-play) might win more money on average. It all depends on oppponent's range and how he will play that range preflop once you repop (and how well he plays post-flop).
However, it did lead me down one interesting line of thought, where KK can be better than AA. That line is, while KK might well stack off AA if a K flops, AA is not going to stack off KK if an A flops. So, if in this scenario opponent has AA, he is in a bit of a tough spot. I would guess that he has to reraise all-in, and I have to fold. But if the stacks were significantly deeper, does he still reraise all-in?
More interestingly, suppose I flat call rather than four-bet him. Do I get stacked off on a rag flop (if he holds AA).
Probably. Depends how opponent plays it.
Do I get stacked off if a high pair (Qs or Js) appears? Probably not.
Do I get stacked off if an Ace appears? No.
Does he get stacked off if a King appears? Quite possibly. Probably, even.
Other scenarios include opponent holding JJ, TT or AQ(s/o) where he may fold to the repop preflop. Most of the time I have his hand in big trouble on the flop, and he is OOP. The one hand where the reraise is probably right is AQ, but there are 16 combinations of that, while there are only 12 of JJ or TT. However, even if he has AQ, I'm winning the pot most of the time.
I'm not saying that the repop is wrong, and in my heart of hearts I quite like it because it reduces volatility. But against certain players I wonder if flat-calling the check-raise might not be better EV.
+++++++++++++++
The Financial Times on Saturday referred to "Bahrein", an interesting, if non-existent, country. (It's Bahrain, guys.). This came a while after The Guardian referred to that well-known English city of Sailsbury.
Does no-one employ sub-editors any more? In fact, does no-one even run a spell-checker? Typos in blogs are one thing, but newspaper articles and illustrations, that's something else.
++++++++++++++++
One of the interesting fall-outs of the subprime crisis has been that, at last, we are beginning to see the inner workings of where the risk actually went, and what the financial institutions were doing with their money. Barclays, for instance, turns out to have provided back-up financing to one of its structured investment vehicles. There are four of these SIVs that were set up by Barclays Capital. Was this public knowledge? Not really. Perhaps you could have found a passing reference to it. Edward Cahill, who has left Barclays Capital to find further success elsewhere, thought up the marvellous SIV-lite, a structure that reminds one irresistibly of LTCM. I think that the SIV-lites worked on gearings in the high double-digits. This is a fantastically efficient use of capital when things work well. It's also a recipe for disaster when they don't. Some more seasoned observers would call this "gambling".
One of the greatest lines on LTCM was the observation was that it didn't matter if LTCM (and remember, the first two words of that initialism stand for "long-term") was right at the end of the term of its investments. because its gearing got to such a high level that it had to be right at the end of every day. It had started out making money via a system that worked well when it was a small player. It failed to realize that, as it got more and more money, it ceased to be an observer and started to be an influencer. It further failed to spot that the opposition doesn't stand still. Other players see what you are doing. Some of them start doing it too. The opportunities disappear.
Well, LTCM did notice this, actually. But, instead of saying "there ya go lads .. it was a good system, but the plots blown now", it said "fuck, we've got all this money, where shall we put it now?"
In the US subprime crisis, the financial institutions lent the money. Then they packaged it up and sold it on. The investors said "this is great! Give us some more!" And so the lenders went after more and more risky and riskier loans. The market got to big for the borrowers available. So, they sought out new borrowers.
++++++++++++
There was another interesting snippet this morning, about the growth in credit card defaults in the US. In itself, this isn't sensationally intersting. It may or may not be linked to the subprime crisis, but my hunch is that it is not -- it's a fall-out from the excessive growth in credit in the past few years. But the interesting comment (from the US journalist) was that some borrowers "may choose to default on a mortgage before losing their credit cards".
Huh? At first glance, this looks insane. Conventional wisdom dictates that borrowers will always default on unsecuritized loans before they default on a securitized loan. Hell, that's why lenders ask for security in the first place.
But, as the journalist points out, this is not so Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass as it seems. First, these might be highly leveraged (for which, read "100%") borrowers on their homes. Although "handing in the keys" has serious long-term effects (as borrowers in the UK discovered after the growth in defaults of the early 1990s), it had less of a long-term effect on the average consumer these days than does defaulting on credit cards.
Indeed, you need credit cards these days, just to do ordinary stuff. So, far from being an unsecuritized loan, the credit card companies have you by the balls, because their "security" is that you can't function in the real world without a credit card. If you walk away from your mortgaged home, you will still be able to rent an apartment (although you will probably need your credit card), but if you default on your credit cards and keep your home? Well, just try ordering something from Amazon and offering to pay cash, or try hiring a car, or paying for a plane ticket. In the lands of terrorism fear and money-laundering mania, cash just does't cut it any more.
_______________
