SuperStud Freeroll time

[Honeybadger]

Well you shouldn't play raggy low draws either

I'm not going to try to convince you... if you want to play big pairs then fair enough. You will lose money in the long run doing so, but at least you won't have to sit out as many hands.

[Tal]

Ice cream alert...
If I'm stud8, I'd almost exclusively fold JJx, whichever way it comes, unless I have a low/ace up and I'm playing it as a bluff. Obv that's limit rather than pot limit, but it's largely because it's infrequently a good/well-disguised high and offers no low prospect.

So, what would be the justification for calling in TJ's spot? Short-handed? Tight rep? Pot limit offers greater room for bluffing/implied odds if you hit of either getting paid or getting others off their hand?

Ice-cream response.

We played a LowBall hand last night.

I was in the Blinds, & my Up Card was

Underneath, I had 

So I hatched a cunning plan.

I decided to see what everyone's next card was, & proceed from there.

Bet, £10.

Called by all.

I drew a 6, or similar low.

Jim was showing (something like) 6-8 v my shown 5-6.

Lovely when a plan comes together.

Bet £50.

Snapped by Jim.

Next Street I draw another nice Low card, & Jim fails to improve much.

POT!

Most of my stack is now in the middle. AND JIM CALLS ALL-IN........

Whoops, you have proper got me here Jim, I have Q high.

Jim's reply?

Winning, I have K high.

He did, too.

They'll give you your own TV show playing like that

[rfgqqabc]

The call pre by TJ with JJ. (Complicated, 'innit?).

Yup, 100% agree, we don't play this hand in S-S.

However, I was in the Blinds, & afaic, it had not been raised. It MAY have been made £6 by someone, & then, as tradition dictates, called in 5 spots, if so, yes, I'd have slung £4 in to see one street. A SS hand lasts 5 minutes, so it was either pop outside for a ciggie, or chuck in £4.......

It is a horrendous SS hand of course, & like most costly mistakes in poker (& life) it starts with a lickle mistake & just gets worse from there on in.

Can't recall how much I did in the hand before eventually folding, but it was way too much, & was competely my own fault.

Think I'd played too long, & my concentration was failing.

Must say, I loved the way Jim played the hand.

Tommy Angelo wrote an article on the +ev of smoking. Obviously tongue in cheek. If you've never read his books tj I'll send you one for xmas, you'd get along so well

[SuuPRlim]

Just a quick thing on the 5th street betsizing;

When i read the HH first I thought on 5th I would have bet £275~ (i'm right in saying there is £350~ in the pot at this stage, and WC has £890 TJ has £1,300) my plan wouldbe to pot any spade or low card on 6th street, potentially chk/fold like the  as exploitable as it is but the reason i would play bet bigger would be for more fold equity on 5th street and because simply i don't trust people to fold trips in this game (they should but people dont) so im effectively "buying my 6th street" and if get a good card the pot is set up nicely to just pot, again for maximum FE

However if we assume they're never fold then the smaller bet when we don't actually have a hand yet might have some merit, my only gripe with a pot betsize on 5th is that once WC has called a pot bet we can never make him fold on 6th+ as here is now too much money in there, maybe this will increase of FE significantly on 5th its worth sacrificing our 6th street FE, but let's not forget we have a very strong hand so if he calls GL to him

Don't forget also we have two ACES for a scoop as well.

[Honeybadger]

It's been bothering me that I did not ever explain properly why playing a hand like (JJ)9 is such a terrible play. Tbh, this is the sort of thinking that I don't like giving away for free since it is hugely profitable for me that people play these sort of hands at Superstud (and what follows will also help Superstud players understand something very important about starting with big trips too). But I am going to explain it briefly just the one time...

First (and least important) is the fact that you are well over 20 to 1 against hitting a set on fourth street. This is not like a flop game where you see three cards at once and so have a much better chance of hitting a set before the second round of betting starts.

Now you could say "Well what about my implied odds? If I flop a set it will be concealed and I can win a massive pot!". Two problems with this. First, when you turn a 9 up it looks like you must have a set anyway... so hitting a concealed set of Jacks is not exactly deceptive. Second, and most important, making a set at Superstud does not have anywhere near the implied odds that you think it has. In fact, the opposite is often true and a set suffers from reverse implied odds. This is the KEY POINT, and I want to explain it further below.

To understand this properly I want you to think about a situation where you actually start with a rolled up hand like (JJ)J. As starting hands go, big trips are in a category of their own. In a sense they are 'premium hands' in the same way as ,   or (or even just ) are premium hands. However, big trips plays completely differently to all the other premium starting hands, especially when deep.

To see this you need to take a 'bird's eye view' of how these hands play out down the streets. All the other premium hands gain equity on every street. But trips lose equity down the streets. Sometimes their equity can decrease alarmingly quickly. Trips usually have dominating equity on 3rd street, but by 4th street are often flipping vs a low/high combo draw like ( ) . And often by 5th street they end up in the terrible position of being free-rolled on by a low hand in a massive pot with plenty of money still to bet. In fact sometimes on 5th street trips is actually chasing for the high side too (i.e. when an opponent makes a low plus a straight or flush in 5 cards) - and this is clearly the worst possible position to be in.

This is the problem with playing big trips when the money is deep. Your equity decreases very quickly down the streets, and it is on the later streets when the bets becomes big. The fact that your hand is face up makes this even worse - your opponents should be able to play perfectly against you.

Now let's extrapolate from this why playing a hand like (JJ)9 is so bad. Basically you are drawing to trips. Which means that - at earliest - you will have trips by fourth street. However, as I have explained, even by fourth street the equity of trips has already declined massively vs the low-orientated hands (which will usually have at least a gutshot to go with them by 4th street if they choose to play a big pot). This means you are drawing to a hand that does not even have great equity when you hit it. Usually if a big pot is brewing you will - at best - have only 4th street as an opportunity to bet with (marginally) the best of it. If a big pot gets played on fifth, sixth and seventh streets then very, very often trips is in a lot of trouble and is being freerolled on.

So by drawing to trips you are playing to make a hand that has already lost the chance to make a wager with dominating equity (since you did not make your hand until after third street), but has plenty of chances to make future wagers with poor equity.

[tikay]

Thanks Stu, that all makes sense.

Surely, though, the same logic, only slightly less so (one street less), applies to a wire-up?

As it happens, hands like 3-3-3 can improve 2 ways - to a low, OR a boat, & maybe the wire-up itself will hold, though not often.

But what if we hold, say, J-J-J?

In my experience, what we generally do here is either get in a raising war if heads-up, OR we try to keep all the low drawing hands in, & hope they either miss their low, fail to improve, or we boat up, so we get either half of a 5 way pot, the lot, or.......nothing.

Assume we are mid-position, the game is laggy, the stacks are deep, & we have wired jacks.

We........?

[SuuPRlim]

brilliant stuff stu

[Honeybadger]

@ Tikay

Yes, the same principles apply when we start with a rolled up hand. That's pretty much what I was saying tbh. Trips have great equity on third street (and sometimes fourth street) but on all the later streets they lose equity to the low hands. This is why big trips is not the amazing hand that most people think it is. I'm not saying you don't play these hands of course (rolled up trips that is... I have already made it clear we should not play hands like big pairs in the hole), I am just saying that you need to understand exactly how the equities work in order to play them well. Big trips plays really well with short/medium stack sizes - since you can get most of the money in early on.

Interestingly, if you were playing on a table full of very tough players then it is even possible that playing a hand like (JJ)J would be a money losing play when deep. Your hand would be face up and you would be destroyed by good players on the later streets. Fortunately we don't usually play on tables full of tough players. And against weaker players who will call on fourth when they catch a brick and will chase incorrectly with just low draws on fifth/sixth streets (and will rarely bluff us when they pair one of their holecards) then trips is a good money making hand obviously.

Of course small trips is a completely different animal. There are two reasons for this. First your hand is not face up since it looks like you are going low. Second, you have three blockers to someone with a low hand making a straight vs you.

[SuuPRlim]

Interestingly, if you were playing on a table full of very tough players then it is even possible that playing a hand like (JJ)J would be a money losing play when deep.

yh, the players don't even need to be all that tough either imo - just good/brave enough to start piling money in when thier board looks good, but say you were playing with 5 other good superstud players, raise pre-3rd and turn a JACK over you can only win the pot with a good run-out really.

[Honeybadger]

Going back to the actual hand, a few quick points:

1. Tikay should have potted fourth street over the £96 bet from the guy with presumed trips Tens. By doing this he has a fighting chance of getting it heads up vs a lower set. This would be a great spot for him. Even if one or both of the low hands call then Tikay will have put almost a third of his stack in on fourth street with some sort of equity edge and has an easy all-in on fifth regardless of what each player catches. Of course the trips Tens should realise he is losing to a luckily caught bigger set of trips, and should thus fold. But judging from his play in this hand he most likely will not do so.

2. The trips Tens has played his hand absolutely horribly. He should probably fold on sixth street, but if he is not going to fold even when the low hand catches such an unbelievable looking card then he should have just jammed it in on fifth street vs the low hand's weak lead. No Aces are showing on the board so it is semi-reasonable to hope that the low hand has paired the Ace on fifth and that is why he has made such a weak bet. Not saying this would be good play... just saying it is much better to jam it all in on fifth street than to get it all in on sixth when the low hand's board gets even stronger. (Obviously this is all based on the assumption that Tikay does not have a hidden set of Jacks, which of course he in fact does).

3. Just to reiterate my point from a few posts ago... the OP should have bet bigger on fifth street rather than making such a weak bet. The aim in such situations is to put opponents in difficult spots - and making such a tiny bet does not accomplish this, it just gives someone with trips a really easy stress-free call. Note that it is not necessary to bet the full pot on fifth street, but it IS necessary to bet around half pot. Thinking "I don't have the hand I am representing and I don't want to play for stacks, so I will make a block bet to get a cheap sixth street card" is the wrong way of thinking in this situation. You should be thinking, "Ha! My board is extremely scary and I have a chance to make my opponents fold their equity share in this big pot. I will make a bet that puts some real pressure on them. If one of them sets me in then it is a shame, but it is no big deal. I have decent equity in the coup. And also, it won't end well for them if they make a habit of such plays against boards like mine... This time I might not have a low or a flush yet, but often I will. So they would be committing suicide against my range by doing anything other than folding".

[77dave]

Have just run the hand and it looks like my biggest mistake is not raising myself when TJ flats the 96. I have 45% equity on 4th street and if I do raise at these stage all 4 stacks go in here.