[2NL] Finding villain's range

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.02 BB (9 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from

UTG+1 ($2)
MP1 ($0.26)
MP2 ($2.85)
MP3 ($0.80)
CO ($3.63)
Hero (Button) ($2.24)
SB ($1.53)
BB ($1)
UTG ($1.25)

Preflop: Hero is Button with KhJd
3 folds, MP2 calls $0.02, 2 folds, Hero bets $0.08, 2 folds, MP2 raises to $0.14, Hero calls $0.06

Flop: ($0.31) 7c, 3c, 10s (2 players)
MP2 checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($0.31) Qh (2 players)
MP2 bets $0.38

Hmm, apparently I can't post images.

Anyway, villain is 88/8 over 25 hands, so not much to draw on. This was the only time I've seen him 3bet. That said, I'm struggling with his range. I find it difficult to wrap my head around which hands would cause him to limp/raise like that. I've seen him limp ATo and KJo in previous hands - and subsequently call 3BB/4BB raises - so I can only think that he's holding something pretty big like QQ+, AQ+. If so, why limp in the first place? Bluff?

Just a bit puzzled by this hand and looking for a bit of direction on how to analyse it - thanks.

Villain is 88/8, he isn't really thinking about what he is doing. His range could be almost anything.

If you have a hand, call. If you don't have a hand fold. Always bet any hands and big draws you make against him and probably fold hands like TP to serious aggression.

Don't try too hard to guess what he limps/minraise with preflop. Some do that randomly with just about anything or because they are tilting, some do it with very strong hands like QQ+ or AK, some do it with all their pocket pairs or Ax, etc. When he shows down one of these hands, make a note and you will have a better idea next time. The point is that he offers you magnificent odds because he only min raises. Against an obvious fish, yYou can confidently call this, while keeping in the back of your mind that you should play carefully post flop.

It's more important to focus on post flop. Try to put him on a range for overbetting the turn. Do you think you can call this bet with your open ended straight draw? Why? To simplify your analysis, assume that you will always stack off and win when you hit a straight, and that no extra money will go in the pot if you don't (even if you hit a K).

Once you have 10 posts you will be able to post images. You need to upload them somewhere on the internet (or here in your FTR profile), then press the "insert image" button and paste the link to wherever you posted the image.

Welcome to FTR.

This is an obvious fold.

Hero has an OESD, but no pair, and is clearly behind even Ax bluffs from Villain. Villain is betting like he has Qx at minimum, and there's no reason to think a J OTR is going to help Hero's hand. Given there's every reason to think an 88/8 has at least a pair +FD in this spot, Hero can't be too happy with any clubs OTR.

So Hero can probably win with a 9 or an A or a maybe a K, of which there are 11 total.

Note that a K OTR is going to slow Villain down if he has a pair of Queens and a missed FD, so the King might have negative implied odds, meaning it will scare Villain into NOT paying off. Not to mention, that Villain could easily have 2 pair or better already, so the K is bad when Villain DOES put more chips in. Also note that any club OTR is going to slow Hero down, even if Hero makes a straight.

So those 11 outs go down to 6.

With only 6 clean outs, Hero has ~13% chance to "suck out", which is roughly 8:1 against, and so Hero needs 6 more bets from Villain + the difference in the overbet, or 6*$0.38 + $0.07 = $2.35. That's more than Hero can afford (and we haven't considered rake, yet), so there is absolutely no way to make a call a +EV play.

Unless there's fold equity, which I seriously doubt.

Did you follow the reasoning here?

Thanks for your replies and the welcome. I suppose I can see why strategy might not be a 88/8 player's strong point.

Before I read MadMojoMonkey's reply, my reply with regard to whether I had odds to call was going be something along the lines of:

I'm getting 2.8/1 to call (I think? $1.07/$0.38), whereas the chances of me making my straight with 8 outs are 4.75/1 which means that I definitely don't have the odds to call.

...which I think is technically correct? I'm ploughing through The Theory of Poker at the moment and still getting my head around the correct ways to calculate equity, but I think certain things are starting to click.

I admit, I hadn't factored in how a club might help him, but understand why my number of clean outs should drop to 6 because of it. I'm not sure I understand that 8/1 you mentioned, MadMojoMonkey. With 40 cards that wouldn't help me / 6 outs, wouldn't my odds against making the straight be more like 6.6/1? Or have I misunderstood?

6 outs out of 46 unseen cards in the deck is 6/46 = ~13% chance to hit your hand.

Now, 12.5% is 1/8 so when I said 8:1, that was remarkably wrong and that's twice this morning I kind of donked a post, so I do apologize. Of course, 1/8 is 7:1 against, and it is just a quick estimate, so yeah, 6.6:1 against is absolutely correct.

OK, so lets look at the implied odds again, considering 6 outs:
4.6*0.38 + $0.07 = $1.82

Hero will have ( $2.24 - $0.14 - $0.38 = ) $1.72 behind, which caps the amount of Villain's money he can win.

Again, this is more than Hero can afford, so I sucked out on my advice.

I meant to keep it simple to start with, so back to my simplistic assumptions. You have 8 outs to a straight and we assume that you always win when you hit. There are 46 unknown cards in the deck. So 38 out of 46 times, you will loose your 0.38 call. 8 times out of 46, your profit will be the amount in the pot before your call (0.31+0.38) AND the rest of villain's effective stack (1.72) for a total profit of 2.41.

So 38 out of 46 times (82.6%) you loose 0.38 and 8 out of 46 times (17.4%) you win 2.41, so:
EV = 0.174*2.41 - 0.826*0.38 = 0.105

So with these simplistic assumptions your call would be profitable. However, as MMM said:
- when you make your straight with Ac or 9c, sometimes villain will have a flush and you will loose
- when you make your straight with Ac or 9c and villain does not make a flush, he may stall and not stack off
- when you make your straight with an A, villain may also stall and not stack off

On the upside though:
- if any non A or 9 club comes on the river, villain may stall or slow down and you might have a bluff opportunity. Wouldn't recommend vs an 88/8 though, but this goes to show that you can count some bluff cards as outs in some circumstances
- if a K comes and villain slows down and you check behind or call a small bet, you can win

You could try and quantify all that, but I am confident your EV will end up negative in the end because
1) we were too optimistic when we assumed that we would always win the rest of villain's money (in other words, we overestimated our implied odds, which is a common trait of bad players who call too lightly with draws)
2) we loose to a flush sometimes when we make our straight

So yes, it's a fold ott.

MadMojoMonkey:

That makes perfect sense - thank you.

I was initially wondering where that 4.6 came from, but after pondering it a while, it's the pot odds subtracted from the odds of making my straight, right?


davidem:

Your post is a great help, thanks. I just have to try and absorb everything here and apply it to future hand analyses. Particularly equity calculations; I'm not used to even roughly performing them in my head while in play.

I did end up folding in this hand, so it's nice to know I'm at least heading in the right kind of direction in terms of reasoning.

You're welcome. Don't forget to visit the digest for some awesome theory and strategy threads.


http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...pm-123008.html

Read all the stuff under the "ranges" section and these are absolute must-read:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ad-180192.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ll-173396.html

This one applies to what we discussed in this thread:
http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ws-173190.html

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...tc-161721.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...rs-165910.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...rs-173495.html

Originally Posted by Circuits

That makes perfect sense - thank you.

I was initially wondering where that 4.6 came from, but after pondering it a while, it's the pot odds subtracted from the odds of making my straight, right?

You're welcome.

That is correct.

All of those posts that daviddem mentioned are quite useful, and you will definitely want to read them. It's a lot to take in all at once. Stick with it. Once you start doing these calculations away from the table, you will see that the same thing keeps coming up over and over again and there's really not much to it.

Originally Posted by daviddem

You're welcome. Don't forget to visit the digest for some awesome theory and strategy threads.

also:

this: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...-a-153854.html

and if you haven't got one or the other

this: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/software/10/
and/or this: http://pokerstove.soft32.com/free-download

(psssst: i actually prefer this: http://www.flopzilla.com/ but don't tell anyone)

Thanks, lots more reading to get my teeth into. I'm familiar with IRC so I'll try and hop on there sometime this week.

I've already got Pokerstove but hadn't heard of Flopzilla. I guess they're pretty similar in terms of functionality? I'll give both a go, in any case.

Pokerstove is nice and simple (not developed anymore though afaik)
Equilab has more functionality (a nifty one is combo counting)
Flopzilla has more post flop analysis tools