HU Hand - discuss [Archive]

Kat

09-01-2009, 12:53 AM

Yoda

09-01-2009, 10:17 AM

PokerStars Game #32300585667: Tournament #191078643, $5.00+$0.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level IX (300/600) - 2009/09/01 0:50:20 ET
Table '191078643 2' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: LorraineLove (11454 in chips)
Seat 5: A REAL DEAL (6546 in chips)
LorraineLove: posts the ante 50
A REAL DEAL: posts the ante 50
LorraineLove: posts small blind 300
A REAL DEAL: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LorraineLove [Jd 4d]
LorraineLove: raises 600 to 1200
A REAL DEAL: raises 600 to 1800
LorraineLove: calls 600
*** FLOP *** [3d As Kd]
A REAL DEAL: bets 4696 and is all-in
LorraineLove: calls 4696
*** TURN *** [3d As Kd] [Qd]
*** RIVER *** [3d As Kd Qd] [9c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
A REAL DEAL: shows [7d Qh] (a pair of Queens)
LorraineLove: shows [Jd 4d] (a flush, King high)
LorraineLove collected 13092 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 13092 | Rake 0
Board [3d As Kd Qd 9c]
Seat 1: LorraineLove (button) (small blind) showed [Jd 4d] and won (13092) with a flush, King high
Seat 5: A REAL DEAL (big blind) showed [7d Qh] and lost with a pair of Queens

Coach and I argued over this hand last night. Was last hand heads up. Blinds are 300-600 with Kat having about 2-1 chip lead. Kat min raised on button(SB), which is basically keeping pressure on the short stack. Coach reraises and min raises back. At this point, im calling pretty much with any 2 cards to a min raise with Kats stack.

Flop 3d As Kd Giving Kat the flush Draw and Deal nothing. however, since min raised Kats initial min raise, he attempts to represent a A or K and goes all in. Im thinking most Aces here and short stack would have been shoved preflop. Im also thinking that most Kings with a good kicker would be raised preflop. at the time of the hand, I thought that maybe coach limped in with a small pair, but after thinkiing it over now, I know a small pair would have been raised preflop.I just dont agree with just a min reraise back from coach here.
Coach goes all in representing the A or K and is called by Kat;s draw.
Kat has 12 outs. 9 diamonds and 3 Jacks for a total of 12 outs.

the debate starts because Coach thought Kat should not have been in hand with J 4.
I see no problem min raising the button here big stacked and think calling a min raise back is a must.
when the flush draw comes out on board. 3600 in pot and coach goes al in for like 4700, I think Kat has pot odds and odds to win pretty much to call. if he loses hand, still has about 5k behind. Im calling in his shoes.

IF kat could show us the pot odds and odds to win, and how he got his numbers, would be for great learning.

:loco:

Kat

09-01-2009, 01:47 PM

One of the things I love about poker is that a single hand has SO much content. Consequently the following may go on a bit, but I think the fact coach and yoda had a spirited discussion about it on the radio suggests it was an interesting one.

First, I can't emphasize enough how making the correct decision in situations like this is critical to your long term profit. I see a lot of players get over the bubble and sort of relax cos they've made the money. For me, the tournament starts when I get ITM. Similarly, once you've made it HU you should be working your butt off to take 1st. Think of the difference in your earn if, when you get HU, you always take first compared to always taking 2nd. It's a big difference in overall ROI. This sounds very obvious, but IMO many players don't work hard enough at maximizing their profit once they're ITM.

In terms of winning this tourney the critical decision actually comes on the flop, but let's look at the pre-flop action first.

I've been trying a little experiment when I've got HU in HF tourneys this month that I'd like to explain. HU you have to play most of your hands and that is gonna include some weird ones. If you don't you get blinded off. Exactly how many you play depends partly on how many your opponent is playing. If your opponent raises every hand pre-flop you have to grit your teeth and stick in there with her/him and even play back with hands that are "garbage" full ring.

My assessment of coach is that he is a solid, quite tricky, and observant player. Against such a player HU I want to disguise my hand. The easiest way of doing this is making the same play pre-flop with a broad range. Since he was also playing a lot of hands HU (correctly) I knew I couldn't sit back waiting for "good" hands. So I decided that pre-flop I was going to min-raise about 80% of my hands on my small blind. (The reasons for min-raising rather than 3x or something were partly dictated by M, but I don't wanna get too far off track.)

So if I do this coach has no idea what I'm holding other than real junk like 63o is probably going in the muck. But, why raise instead of just calling my SB?

Imagine a situation in which two players are HU. One always min-raises his SB, whereas the other always calls his SB. The player who raises every SB will be playing hands in which the pre-flop pot is 3 big blinds. The player who calls every SB will be playing hands in which the pre-flop pot is 2 big blinds. The player on the SB acts last post-flop and position HU is a huge advantage. Thus the "raising" player has the advantage (and is more likely to win the hand) when the pot is bigger. Clearly this is a great situation. To make it even stronger, sometimes those min-raises from the SB are going to take the blinds uncontested.

Back to the hand. I open-min-raise with J4s - a hand easily big enough given my strategy. Now coach has noticed what I'm doing and now does something very clever. (I say that partly because I didn't expect it, and getting your opponent on the back foot on these things is always good.) He min-reraises. And since he hasn't made this move before I am trying to figure out why.

First, coach knows I have to call this min-reraise ATC. There's too much in the pot to fold for an additional min-bet. So he's putting more money in the pot when he's OOP knowing we're gonna see a flop. My first reaction is "he has a monster, tread carefully." Now, I actually never had a chance when the hand was in play to get past that first reaction, but when I was thinking about it later there are at least 3 other possibilities for coach's move.

1) He is doing this completely randomly so I have no idea what he has, so that if he connects with the flop his hand is going to be well disguised.

2) He has already decided he is going to shove any flop irrespective of whether he connects (perfectly reasonable since the odds are I'll miss the flop).

3) Since his min-reraise looks like he could have a big hand he will bluff off any big flop (one including big cards).

So what happens? Flop comes AK3 two diamonds and coach shoves. And I think this is a brilliant play by him. He's put a clear idea in my head he has a big hand like AK and when that flop comes AK3 I am folding nearly all my hands to his shove. I'm probably only calling there with a big ace, two-pair, a set or... yup, the flush draw. (And those hands are a tiny subset of my pre-flop range). SO basically coach made a great move here and got unlucky to run into my flush draw.

Should I have called his shove with the flush draw? Yes. I'll let those of you who are interested digest the above, then I'll explain how I figured out I should call.

Kat

09-01-2009, 01:52 PM

Just realized I slipped into "KatSpeak." Here's a glossary:

SB: small blind
BB: big blind
ATC: any two cards
OOP: out of position
HU: heads up

A REAL DEAL

09-01-2009, 09:22 PM

Thanks Kat, great article my argument ,with yoda was would he have called me, he said yes and i disagreed :violin: anywho Mike thanks, and im looking forward to us heads up again n again i had great time and enjoy your company, anytime keep up good work, and thank you much for responding MikE:thumb::cheer2: , AL p.s Yoda would of folded j4 trust me

Kat

09-01-2009, 11:17 PM

I dunno when I became 'Mike' but that's fine. My birth certificate says "Keith" but I only use the name for music.

Anyway...

It was indeed a fun HU confrontation, coach, and I look forward to round 2, but lemme tie up this issue of whether the call was good.

When chicago shoves on me here it's costing me 4900 to win 8400 roughly. So how does one decide whether to call or fold in these situations? This is very important cos they come up all the time HU.

You need to know some odds to make the correct play. I happen to be wired funny and process numbers real fast, but in most cases that's not necessary. Just remember the odds for common situations. Both a flush draw (9 outs) and an open-ended straight draw (8 outs) are roughly 2-to-1 to hit with 2 cards to come. In this hand the pot is giving me 8400-to-4900 which is 1.7-to-1. Let's assume that if I hit my draw I win and if I miss my draw I lose. Pretty reasonable. Oh! Oops! I need about 2-to-1 (actually 1.9 to 1) but I'm only getting 1.8-to-1. I should fold, right?

Wrong.

Charles gives one scenario where I have more outs than the nine for the flush draw. If coach is on a medium pair here I have 3 extra outs with my live J. That easily pushes the decision in favor of the call.

But that isn't the hand I put him on. I'm thinking an A or K so pairing my J does me no good.

So why did I call?

Naughti Ms. Cali gave the correct reason in the chatbox. It's the difference between chip equity and cash equity. If I call and win obviously I take first in the tourney. But if I call and lose this pot I have Al (or Mike, or coach) covered. So I am still alive with a shot of winning. And as y'all know I don't mind playing a short stack.

It turns out that even though my flush draw is not quite good enough on its own for this call to be correct (well... actually it turns out my hand is, but let's not get side-tracked by running outs), the combination of a slightly -EV chip equity call combined with the fact that I can still win the tournament if I lose this pot makes this an easy call. It's very +EV in terms of cash equity.

For those of you who are into math the details of this can be worked out using something called an ICM (independent chip model) which in this case tells me my overall calling equity here is about 63%. (Where anything above 50% means the call is correct.) Now nobody actually uses an ICM at the table (except maybe Ferguson) and I certainly didn't when facing this decision, but if you're in a situation where you're facing an AI, you're on the come, you have your opponent covered, and the pot is offering you a shade less than the "correct" price, it's always going to be the case that the correct play is to call.

If you haven't thought about these situations in this way before it may sound a bit intimidating. Or you may decide that all this math nonsense has nothing to do with how people actually play poker and you can safely ignore it. I feel strongly that, while you don't need to be a geeky walking computer like me, getting to grips with the basic ideas in these situations is really important.

When I say "important" I mean "profitable" obviously.

Love peace fur - Kat

Yoda

09-02-2009, 01:35 AM

What I really want to know is how u coming up with the numbers(like 63%). What about the 50%. why is the thresshold 50%? Charles needs to see the numbers to understand how to get the answer.

Kat

09-02-2009, 02:49 AM

What I really want to know is how u coming up with the numbers(like 63%). What about the 50%. why is the thresshold 50%? Charles needs to see the numbers to understand how to get the answer.

The cash equity threshold at 50% is just like any dog/fave number. If a play is better than 50% then you wanna make it. Like if you've got weighted coin that you know comes up heads 50.1% of the time and someone wants to play heads-or-tails with you for a buck a spin then you're gonna pick heads. To figure out how to get 63% google "independent chip model." But as I said, you don't have time to do that at the table anyway, so instead...

It's the idea that's important. In this situation, because I have Coach covered I can take the worst of it on this call. The question is how much worse and there are a couple of approaches, but a simplified one is...

Let's suppose I make this call when I'm a 45/55 dog. 45% of the time I'll win the tourn right there. However, while I lose the hand 55% of the time there is some fraction of that 55% when I come back and win the tournament anyway. What that fraction actually is can be estimated from the relative stacks when I lose the hand. But you can see that if I'm only a slight dog on the call in question I don't need to win the tourn very often when I lose the hand to make it a +EV situation. In fact for a 45/55 dog call I only need to win the tourn 10% of the time that I lose the hand cos 45% + 10% of 55% = 50.5%.

A REAL DEAL

09-02-2009, 01:01 PM

THANKS KEITH how i got mike??? anywho you daman:yield: :amen:

Kat

09-02-2009, 02:09 PM

THANKS KEITH how i got mike??? anywho you daman:yield: :amen:

I think wot happened was you asked on the radio who Sushi Hound was and I typed in "it's Mike."

But no worries, for years people thought my name was "Katherine."

xxlurchxx

09-03-2009, 09:20 PM

I thought ur name was Lorraine? Now stop feedin da fish I don't want em growin up and eating me! Ya know Doyle Brunson regrets writing Super System. :mad:

Kat

09-04-2009, 12:23 AM

I thought ur name was Lorraine? Now stop feedin da fish I don't want em growin up and eating me! Ya know Doyle Brunson regrets writing Super System. :mad:

No you want em to grow up so they're bigger when you eat them. ;-)