Scissors Paper Stone

[peterbirks]

Under time pressure this morning, so I'll make this quick:

Ben Grundy posted about a hand at the Vic NL tourney that caught him out:

Middle position raised to 300 when blinds were 50/100. Two limpers and i have QQ in the big blind. I decide to make it 1500 to play. The original raiser passes and he was the only one i was worried about until the button moved all in for 3100. I couldn't pass now with what i had already put in so called. I was still a bit surprised when he turned over KK.

This is the second time that I have read about this play from a player in late (flat-calling a previous smallish raiser, or limper, with a monster, gambling on a raise from an aggressive player in the blinds) in the past couple of weeks (Andy Ward mentioned a case at Luton on his site). And it's rather irritating, as I had been pondering this as a counter-strategy to aggressive players. I had actually tried it in a couple of online tournaments, but no obliging re-raiser had appeared behind me. Now the cat seems to be out of the bag. Ah well, at least it caught out the Kid! Bet it doesn't again though.

I've been thinking about the "sustainability" poker argument, and I've come to the conclusion that the closest business model is that of Fitness First or other "health clubs" (hah! Have you seen the state of their showers?). You get a large number of people joining, who drop out fairly quickly. So you clearly need a continual stream of newcomers. Party Poker has admitted this, saying that, while the average life of a joiner is seven months, this hides a big disparity and unequal bell curve.

But what do gym clubs do to keep going? Well, they get those who have fallen by the wayside to come back. I myself am one of those "returnees". If the poker sites can manage that, then perhaps the sustainability will go on longer than some have imagined.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well if he(anyone) doesn't get his Queens caught out again by Kings in this manner, then he sure as hell will get caught out by laying down QQ to 9-10s. It's a bit like saying 'Never again will I be trapped by an utg limp-raise with AA'.

The strategy is nothing new, I even suggested this on the mob a couple of years ago when someone asked how much they should raise with AA after several limpers with big stack/small blinds.

With this strategy, it's no so much 'cat out of the bag', but 'cat & mouse' - it's still effective whether people are aware of it or not.

chaos

The QQ

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Yep, good point. My original title expresses the "cat and mouse" nature. What I meant was that the play with the KK was a nice counter-strategy and what was slightly surprising was that ben Grundy was surprised about it.

The thing is, how often will the "call small raise-reraise the raise behind" be losing to QQ, and how often will it have QQ strangled? At the moment, it seems to be a lock on KK or AA, so you could argue for the QQ being laid down. If there is a reaonable CHANCE that the QQ is winning, then it should play. But Ben made the telling point, with the famous "I was too far in to fold" line. Not a situation you should ever find yourself in....

Re: The QQ

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

Even if no one does reraise, there's a great deal to be said for flat calling with AA/KK/QQ when you have position and the raiser is loose/aggressive. I know many people disagree in the case of QQ especially (Colclough for example) but you have to consider the downside of reraising with Queens - you only get called by a better hand, as the hero found out in this case. Although to be fair, out of position as he is here, it's a tricky spot.

While I keep finding excuses not to play these festival events I'm fairly sure that with the mantra of "aggression, aggression, aggression" so prevalent, trapping is becoming more profitable. And there are a lot of players who (rightly or wrongly) put so much stock in their hand-reading powers that if you fool them once in a hand, they won't reconsider until it's far too late.

Andy.

Re: The QQ in late

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

To say that in the case of QQ in late: "you only get called by a better hand" is but a proportion of the story. I assume that Dave C's point is that, although this might be true, you have to consider this as a percentage of the cases where a call costs because hands like AQ, AJ, AT, JJ, TT, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55 come in and hit to beat you, whereas before they would have folded.

So the raise with QQ in late gets shafted about 12% of our total number of combinations (reraised/called with KK or AA) while the flat call gets shafted when the poorer hand comes in and hits. A cursory look at these combinations puts that at about 26% of the 88%, or 22% of the time. So your raise loses out about 10% of the time (because a fifth of the time that you are called by the better hand, you beat it), while your flat call loses out about 22% of the time.

These figures might alter if you were both very deep-stacked and I would be more tempted to flat-call with the Queens in late if this were the case. And they also change depending on the willingness of the players to call the initial raise with the Ace-mediums.



Pete

Re: The QQ in late

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

I know we've been through this before but you have to take account of the following :

Against a loose aggressive player, you can easily win more money on the flop against a hand that would have folded pre-flop. For example you will usually win all the money when he has JJ-99 and the flop is all rags.

The shafting you get from reraising into AA/KK is a much bigger shafting than the one you get from calling AQ and folding when an Ace flops

I shouldn't really lump QQ in with AA and KK when advocating the "flat call a raise in position pre-flop" move because with the QQ you're doing it for different reasons. Think of what you would do with JJ or TT against a loose raiser - call and take a flop. Do you remember Barry on Gutshot saying "I hate Jacks" after playing a $3000 event ? What happened was he reraised twice with them and lost the hands (without providing any further details) ; then when he raised in early position someone flat called him with QQ and cleaned him out. My stance with QQ is more of a JJ-like call and see than a KK-like slowplay to extract more money later.

Andy.

Re: The QQ in late

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Yes, as I said, much of my maths is solely based on pot-committal pre-flop. But you are right, the potential gains within the 22/78 scenario (flat-calling) are greater than your potential losses when the flop comes Axx. I wasn't advocating the move. Rather, I was pointing out the counter-argument that "you will only get called by players beating you" was not the whole story. I agree with you. If you treat Queens as sort of "Jacks and a half" then you can make a very good case for flat-calling with them, and this case is strengthened the more the average number of Big Blinds sitting at the table.

As you approach a smaller average of Big Blinds at the table, the argument for the flat-call (with either Jacks or Queens) seems to me to weaken. (a) You are more likely to be called by a hand you are beating/dominating and (b) the flat-call takes up a greater proportion of your total betting stack.

Re: The QQ in late

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

PS: When I said "you are more likely to be called by a hand you are beating/dominating" I mean that, if you raise pre-flop, you are more likely to be called.