HU PLO

[SuuPRlim]

on sabbatical from ipoker mate lol. will prob fire up again soon but i'm in love with the deep games on stars atm .... was waiting for you and cos to move up and give some liquidity back to the games anyway!! :-P

lol i've been doing nothing but giving liquidity to the ipoker games this year. scary how much im losing on there

[permanentquandary]

Might as well chuck in a random hold em question to. With hands like  44 55 66 77 in either the bb or sb facing a late position open from a loose opener when your playing jst over a reshove stack like 30-40 bigs. I think peeling oop makes the hand very difficult to play and recently I've just been 3betting small to induce a shove and get it in/take it down. But loose button openers tend to reship very wide so is this an optimal way of playing the hand or am I just getting in a lot of flips for no reason!

Intrigued to see what you think?

My opinion on this is based on 100 bb internet cash games, but IMO the 30-40 bigs tournament situation only amplifies what would be my view on a cash game due to the need to play tighter with shallow to mid stacks (as a cash game player i'm counting 81+ bb as deep, 41-80 as a mid stack, 21-40 as shallow and 0.x to 20 as critical/see you in the ICU).

If you are facing a loose opener, IMO it is questionable whether to play small pairs at all in the given situation. That might seem tight, especially because you have a hand, and he probably doesn't have one, and there's even some chance you are against a hand you are 70/30 or better against.

Here's my reasoning however. Firstly you are OOP, and secondly the value of these hands comes from making a set as they are notoriously difficult to play when you do not make one as oftentimes 968 million overcards come on the flop, thirdly it is hard to make a pair on Hold'em, never mind a set (AFAIK it's about 8 to 1 against, roughly) and the consequences of this are that you check/fold flops, have to call down in guessing hero call situations, or checkraise bluff without any idea what he has or what to do if he calls (again, due to being OOP), and fourthly and finally, even those times you make a set, most times you will not get paid off beyond a c-bet if you are playing a typical guy who is not emptying the clip all 3 streets with air. By paid off, I mean you get his stack or decent chunk of it, or rather in these cases, you don't get paid off.

^Above reasoning applies to if you call the raise.

For a tournament situation, it's not good poker to be speculating as a caller OOP, especially in this situation as you need to be getting paid off 10x the raise size for it to be a +ev call (idk if you heard of that rule before but its 10x for small pairs, 20x for suited connectors) and with these effective stacks you probably won't be getting the implied odds on the call that you need. That rule thing applies more to cash games, but again it's probably even stricter for a tournament because of having to preserve your tournament life.

The other option as you mentioned is to reraise. In cash games this is generally a poor play vs a loose player because you will be deep and OOP and barrelling postflop (assuming he calls the reraise) when you have 0 clue what he has (very exploitable by him calling with value hands postflop, the one move he loves to do most). I don't see how it is much different with 30-40 bigs, you're still in the same situation postflop. It's super awkward OOP. Obv there is value in taking it down pre with the 3 bet but you are possibly laying him your stack vs winning his relatively small raise (relative to your stack).

Sooo IMO it is better to just lose your blind and wait for position.

Why am I only dealing this game? I need the best way to kill a vampire, big time lol

[JK]

BOMBACLAAAAAAT

[cambridgealex]

Excellent post Adam.

You could've just said that by calling oop with small pairs you'd be in a permanent quandry unless you flop a set!?

But seriously, it's spot on more on less, fold pre!

Just to add one thing to why 3betting them isn't a good idea, lack of 'visibility' post flop (I think you touched on this) and also they have no blockers so makes them less good hands to bluff with.

Vs ppl that 4b bluff too much it's profitable to 3b small pairs to 5b jam, but I think you already know this.

[permanentquandary]

Yeah one is very much in a PQ postflop without a set holding a small PP.

Also I want to add, coz I failed to even though I intended explicitly to in my OP, that because villain is a loose player he is unlikely to have a hand to call with if you make your set, so attempting to do so will seldom have enough value to justify the attempt. So I would say that this type of speculative call has a lot more value vs a tight player, or a player who has raised in early position, or either or both of these when you are in position. Vs a tight player he's going to have an overpair a lot and obviously these hands don't get folded a lot with these stack sizes, so you will get their stack a lot.

One more thing to balance my argument a little, I think that when deciding whether to call in a tournament, whether it is a +EV money play should not necessarily dominate your decision making if the decision is close or would/could only be very slightly -EV money play in cash game (which applies to this situation). Until you are in the money, you are always risking only your buyin, but your goal is always to come 1st and get the most money, so you need to put yourself in situations to do that, which is done by accumulating chips/stacking people and not being all in outside the money unless necessary to your survival or you have nuts/close to it. Let's say you and villain both have 40 big blinds, you make the call preflop and he does wake up with enough hand to give you his stack. You now have 80 big blinds. So now, it's most likely that you will be cruising for the next few levels of play and during that time you will also get additional chips and nobody can bust you, and you have a much larger shot at coming 1st. In other words, a -EV money play could be +EV for a tournament.

And finally whether you are getting paid off on your set depends a lot on your own image as much as that of villain's. If you are playing wildly and have shown a lot of bluffs, or if you have a losing image, you are going to get paid off more and with weaker hands, even as little as ace high, or villain may even try to bluff raise you if he misses a draw or maybe the board gets scary or maybe it's a bone dry board like TT2 or K27. But he also has to be paying attention and you have to know he is paying attention for this to be a consideration.

[Rasbomba]

I like the post Adam. I totally agree that peeling pre flop is awful. I didn't consider that an option as it obviously is just a complete guessing game. I do think 3betting is the best option. Both you and goulderfish are treating your hand as a bluff. A 3bet pre flop is will get through more often than not and if you do get reshipped your not doing terrible against his range (assuming he's loose). With a 30-40bb stack late in a tournament with the antes and blinds along with the raise ur picking up close to 5bb which is big for your stack. It will also get a fold from a lot of bad suited hands and unsuited connected hands like  Ths and  Qhs that he will muck more often that not.

Folding is just so nitty against an agro opponent. But I do love to flip!! Preflop you'll get a lot of folds, he will never peel you and if you get reshipped against an aggressive opponent then you've still got a pair! Plus 66 always hits a set!