2 pairs in pine

OneByPhi and I were talking about what to do when we get 2 pairs with our first 5 cards: http://www.flopturnriver.com/chinese...table.php?3196


Which 2-pair hands should be broken up? How do you set 7766X? What about 8866X?

I wouldn't break up small 2 pairs, they're strong in the back and I don't see an advantage to split them. I'd most likely break up hands like KKQQX, AAKKX, etc or something like AA99K, KK55Q, etc.

Yeah, I'd keep them together and go for a full house, it has gotta be pretty likely that you're gonna pick up 6 royalty points

Normally I would keep JJ77 in back here but I split it after OneByPhi showed me his 7. What do you think?

OneByPhi



Discard T 2 3 3
Eric (Dealer)



Discard Q 8 5 2

If you're going to set it like that, then on the first draw I feel like you have to play a card lower than a 10 in the middle, with the intention of setting two pair in the middle, and going for FL.

(Obviously, an exception should be made if you draw a jack and a ten on the first draw lol).

But I don't think that's a bad play.

Originally Posted by sam1FTR

If you're going to set it like that, then on the first draw I feel like you have to play a card lower than a 10 in the middle, with the intention of setting two pair in the middle, and going for FL.

Exactly. Conversely, if I have a totally live ace then I don't break up the 2 pair. For example, a set like X / A / 9933 is looking for an ace in the middle as opposed to 2 pairs in the middle (unless we boat up in back of course).

OneByPhi



Discard T 2 3 3
Eric (Dealer)



Discard Q 8 5 2[/QUOTE]

Notice that the hand ends up stronger by this route. If you had set xxx/T/JJ77, the hand would end up like this:
First draw comes QJT, J to the bottom to complete the boat, T to the mid to make a pair, and Q in the muck. Second draw comes QA8, AQ up to go FL-mining, 8 to the muck. Third draw comes 975, there are 2 live 9s, 0 live 7s (you can't use another one low), and 2 live 5s, so you play 95 to the mid and muck the 7. Fourth draw comes K62, bricks. K to the top, 6 to the mid, 2 to the muck and your hand is:




Discard Q 8 5 2

So instead of trips in the mid, you have a pair of Ts, and this route was a much worse drawing hand because the set you played improved to trips on the middle on the third draw, giving you a freeroll at what was then a 6-out FL draw, whereas the 2-pair low set could have found itself in the position of catching an A or a Q on the last draw but not being able to play it.

I know that this is just one hand, that the draws could have come out differently and made the 2-pair set better than the break-up set, but I've been playing the break-up line a lot lately, and I have done well with it. In a post I'm trying to get together and hope to post soon, I'll go into the play in more detail.

I just played this hand against WAZZUP:
OneByPhi (Dealer)



Discard: 7d 2c 7s 2d

This hand illustrates how breaking up small 2-pair hands can help get to FL. I really will get that other post finished soon and go into more detail, but this hand is a classic of when the idea goes just passably well.

The hand is set xxx/442/55, breaking up the 2-pair. The first draw is 937, three non-fl cards that comepletely miss my hand, so I put the 9 on the bottom and the 3 in the mid. The goal at this point is to make 2-pair or better on the bottom and a small 2-pair in the mid to enable an eventual FL draw. The next draw is much more helpful: A32, an FL card for the top and 2-pair made in the mid. The third draw is K97, sweet! Another FL card for the top, adding outs to the FL draw, and 2 pair made on the bottom. The last draw brings AQ2, and it's off to the land.

If I had set xxx/2/4455, the hand would have played out like this: The first draw is 937, three non-fl cards that comepletely miss my hand, so I put the 93 in the mid, and muck the 7. The goal at this point is to make the boat on the bottom and a middling 2-pair in the mid to enable an eventual FL draw. The next draw brings: A32, an FL card for the top and a pair made in the mid. The third draw is K97, problematic! Another FL card for the top, adding outs to the FL draw, but playing the 9 in the mid to make 2 pair in the mid is super-risky because there's just one draw left (although happily, WAZZUP isn't showing any of the outs). If I had already made an FL pair on top, I would just make the 2-pair and hope to catch one of my four outs on the end, but since I only have an FL draw on top, I can make a strong case for playing safe here. Whether I decide to gamble or not, the last draw brings AQ2, so if I played safe, I at least avoided fouling, and against WAZZUP's actual hand I win the top to avoid a scoop, but if I gambled, I caught the FL card, but fouled because the bottom never improved.

Roughly 30% of the time that you set 2-pair low, it will not improve (odds courtesy of MadMojoMonkey). This hand shows how small 2-pair hands can still turn a profit when the boat card never comes.

I like the way splitting 4455 worked out for you.

Originally Posted by OneByPhi

Roughly 30% of the time that you set 2-pair low, it will not improve (odds courtesy of MadMojoMonkey).

Right, that's about what I get.

In position with 4 outs:
= 1 - (38*37*36*35*34*33*32*31*30*29*28*27)/(42*41*40*39*38*37*36*35*34*33*32*31)
= 1 - (30*29*28*27)/(42*41*40*39)
= 1 - .245
= 75.5% chance of improving

OOP our chances are worse.

As promised, here's a deeper discussion of the situation:

My friend EastsideJohnny and I started devoting a lot of attention to setting starting hands with two pairs a month ago or so. We made the transition from regular OFC to Pineapple maybe four months ago, and we had brought a lot of OFC habits into POFC that we had to unlearn. In OFC, we had gotten into the habit of always setting the 2 pair low. This seemed like a great idea in POFC too, since setting 2-pair UTG will lead to a boat by the end of the hand 70.64% of the time in POFC (this math tidbit and some others later are courtesy of MadMojoMonkey--and mad props to him!)

But pretty soon we realized that in POFC, if one of the pairs is an FL pair, the hand has more equity if you break up the 2-pair and put the FL pair on top and the other pair in the bottom. And if both of the pairs are FL pairs, the hand has more equity if you break up the 2-pair and put the smaller pair on top and the bigger pair in the mid. So hands like QQTT5 went from xxx/5/QQTT to QQ/5/TT and hands like AAQQ5 went from xxx/5/AAQQ to QQ/AA5/xxx.

And something else cool started to happen. Sometimes we ended up making a boat on the bottom anyway, or even quads. We made FL pretty often with the one-FL-pair hands and almost always with the two-FL-pair hands. The royalties for QQ+ on top outweighed the loss of the boat royalties by themselves when the hand didn’t foul, and the implied odds of a trip to FL were icing on the cake.

It took us longer to see the limitations and problems of always setting 2-pair low when neither pair was an FL pair, and especially when both pairs were 77 or lower. Yes, 70.64% of the time you make a boat when you set the 2-pair low, but that means that roughly 30% of the time you don’t. And we saw how on those hands you end up totally hamstrung—you often get scooped because your hand is so weak if you resign yourself to not making royalties and play safe, and if you try to set up royalties in the mid or top or to make FL, you usually foul (unless you get AA in the mid and KK or QQ on top, or AA or KK in the mid and QQ on top). Yes, 6 points for the boat is nice when you make it, but 6 points isn’t that much in POFC--the point of the game is getting to FL.

So we started experimenting. I kept playing the 2-pair low if the bigger pair was 88 or bigger, but I started playing hands with 2 small pairs by setting the 2 pair in the mid, and the kicker based on its rank (Q+ top, 2-7 mid, 8-J low), leading to sets like K/7766/xxx, xxx/77664/xxx, and xxx/7766/J. I got really lucky with it at first, which I think swayed my thinking too much, but I’ve moved away from this play lately for the play discussed soon (breaking up the 2-pair). Although I did make FL fairly often by catching two FL-pair cards and 2-pair or better in the bottom, I fouled too often and I missed boats a lot (after all, 70% of the time one of the boat cards will come).

EastsideJohnny went a different direction: he started breaking up every 2-pair when the top pair was JJ or smaller by putting the bigger pair in the bottom and the smaller in the mid, setting hands like JJ662 as xxx/662/JJ and K9955 as K/55/99. And as I steadily bled chips to him, I noticed that his way worked better. Any time that the big pair tripped (35.32% of the time, thanks, MMM!), you could build toward a monster. MMM worked out that if you break the 2-pair in this manner UTG, you will make trips or better in the bottom and trips or better in the mid an impressive 20.21% of the time. Yes, he did sometimes have to throw away the trip card for the mid when it came before the bottom hand improved enough to beat trips, but sometimes he would catch both trip cards. Even when he didn’t, it was often easy to make hands with the coveted FL pair/2-pair/2-pair structure. And sometimes monsters that would never have happened with the standard set had a chance to materialize, such as boat over boat, or trips over trips over trips. Another redeeming feature of this set is that since the basic plan is to work toward a second larger pair in the bottom and a second small pair in the mid (although leaving the door open for better hands), it is much less prone to fouling than my method of setting the small 2-pair in the mid.

Nowadays, EastsideJohnny is still breaking up all of the 2-pair hands. I’m breaking up 2-pair hands where the bigger pair is 77 or less, but I’m playing hands where the top pair is JJ-88 by setting them on the bottom. I think that when the top pair is JJ-88 your chance of making the boat on the bottom and 2-pair or better in the mid (enabling an FL draw) are good enough, and your chances of hamstringing yourself are small enough (because there are still a lot of smaller pairs to get 2 pair in the middle), that keeping them together on the bottom is best, but I’m open to persuasion.

Very nice, indeed. Thanks for the epic post!

Yes, this is great info! Thanks for sharing.

I really like your summary BiPhi,

I am still splitting up every 2 pr. It has come back to bite me in the ass a few times and when they are 2 middle pairs I'm still working it out. Say 66/55/Q. I am hamstrung if I only catch bigger than a 5 and can quickly find myself running out of options on that second draw.

I think that this speaks to a larger point in the game and it is not about which set has better odds necessarily. It is about which play gives one the greatest flexibility and opportunity to get to FL. 30% of the time you are stuck with XXYY on the bottom and although that may be good enough, it's an unacceptable rate. Additionally, I feel that if you don't have an A,K, or Q in your set or first draw you it is going to be hard to make a winning hand.

When splitting the 2 pr I don't find there are many times (other than the above 66/55 scenario and those similar to it) when I am stuck after the first 2 draws. There is usually wiggle room for FL or the opportunity of salvaging a bet when I split 2 pair on the set.

Keep finding the edges. Once the basics are down there are so many little edges to learn, such an amazing game!!

after thinking about it, I do not see how 66/55 or 44/33 is any different then 4435 in the middle, which I think was a brilliant find, Jim. Maybe I'll switch to the mediocre 2 pr in the middle. See what comes of it.

I can't stop thinking about this. Maybe it is better to split pairs most of the time. Still, there are exceptions like the one I mentioned before with a totally live ace in position: x / A / 9933

Should we build a couple bots to run simulations? We could have whysplit2 setup to always split 2 pairs and whykeep2 setup to always keep them together. They could be dealt millions of random 2 pair hands against each other (excluding QQ, KK and AA). We could then see the win rates for each bot for different types of 2 pair hands.

That would be really cool.

I think splitting 5522 was the right play for me here.

Eric



Discard 9 7 T 4
Wazzup (Dealer)



Discard 5 2 2 3

It didn't work out but it is still probably the right play. I can't think of too many examples in pine where we can prove that it is definitely wrong to split.

It caught my eye that you set the kicker to the mid. I wouldn't have done that unless it was blocked. Since you're OOP, that can't happen.

You gave more strength to the mid by allowing it more shots at 2-pair than the bottom. Both hands can play a drawn pair, but the mid can also play any 6's... giving it more outs than the bottom. The 6 kicker is also bigger than the 5's, potentially ending up with 6's up in the mid and trying to build up from bare 5's on the bottom.

I know it's results oriented, but if you'd placed the kicker to the bottom, then you could have made A's / J's up / trip 5's.

***
WAZZUP's set is terrible. I'd have played Q/K3/T7.

Again, results oriented, but WAZZUP could have easily had Q's / trip K's / T's full... making the trips and the boat is just icing on the "already secured my FL" cake with the final draw.

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

It caught my eye that you set the kicker to the mid. I wouldn't have done that unless it was blocked. Since you're OOP, that can't happen.

You gave more strength to the mid by allowing it more shots at 2-pair than the bottom. Both hands can play a drawn pair, but the mid can also play any 6's... giving it more outs than the bottom. The 6 kicker is also bigger than the 5's, potentially ending up with 6's up in the mid and trying to build up from bare 5's on the bottom.

If the kicker was higher I would have set it on the bottom. I felt that going for 5566 on the bottom might not give me enough flexibility mid. I'd much rather go for 55JJ, 55TT, 5599 or 5588 bottom.

I've been thinking more about this.


Keeping Together:
If we're dealt JJPPX utg (where PP is any pair deuces to tens inclusive) then I think it makes sense to set JJPP in back.
Even if we don't get a full house then we can still get to fl easily because we can beat a lot of 2 pair combinations in the middle.


Splitting:
If we're dealt 2233X, 2244X or 3344X and we keep the 2-pair together in back then it is impossible for us to set a lower 2 pair in the middle.
Therefore a strong case can be made for splitting the pair.


It would be cool if we could program bots to see when it is best to keep 2 pairs together and when it is best to split.
My thinking is that it is usually best to keep the 2 pairs together in back.