a poker argument with my friend...

ianmc38

The results are different. If we smooth call the flop, we allow AK to bet again on the turn/river.

In situation 2, we're only smooth calling if we're looking to float. Taking the pot by raisiing now is fine.

NickyOD

If we are talking stricly about cash games here.....I would usually just call. The stack size of the villain is important too. Deep stacked against a good player I'm definitely calling. On this flop a smooth call should be much scarier for my oponent than a raise.

In general as NFR pointed out calling is usually (but not always) better, espicially against an experienced oponent because they will just fold every hand that you beat and when they are behind they will usually be drawing very thin. Sometimes you will be outdraw but long term smooth calling gains more chips.

While there is nothing wrong with trying to take pots down early, this is more applicable to tournament strategy (but not always). Cash games are all about extracting the most value from your hands over the long term and not overplaying marginal hands, especially top pair, which is something that an ameteur player takes a while to grasp.

The point Gholli made about a raise with 78 being better is because you get underpairs and hands like AT-K to fold. These are all hands that you shouldn't be too unhappy to keep in when you have AJ on a Jack high flop.

As Hectorjhelly has pointed out many times, smooth calling is the lost art of NL Holdem.

Ste05

ianmc38 wrote:

The results are different. If we smooth call the flop, we allow AK to bet again on the turn/river.

In situation 2, we're only smooth calling if we're looking to float. Taking the pot by raisiing now is fine.

We are just looking solely at the expectation of the raise in Gholi's original question. Subsequent action doesn't come into the discussion AFAIK. And the question was which hand is the better hand to raise with AJ or 78. As I've now said twice, there's no difference. Because by raising with AJ here, all we do is reduce our AJ to a 78 or any other random bluff in this spot.

If we talk about the turn and river, obviously then it all comes down to who our opponent is, but as I pointed out previously, the only value our AJ hand has is for catching bluffs from the likes of AK, 1010, etc. Although AK is highly unlikely to bluff again on the turn given the action thus far.

And standardly floating with the likes of 78 is just mental TBH. I know you didn't advocate it, but it's completely irrelevant. And yes I agree that it's fine to raise now with 78, it's just another bluff, we make bluffs all the time, all we can do is hope our timing and victim selection is correct.

Hitman Actual

Ste05 wrote:

Raising with 78 will get AK to fold. This earns us the pot, If we are re-raised we fold.

Raising with AJ will also get AK to fold. This also wins us the pot, If we are re-raised we fold.

The result is the same.

I still think that raising with 78 is marginally better, because our opponents make more mistakes by folding a lot more hands that beat us. Raising with AJ means that the opponent makes very few mistakes. Surely this implies that the raise with 78 has to have a higher expectation?

Edit: The higher expectation comes from hands that would have made it to showdown (a certain percentage still will!). The raise with 78 gains by winning the pot now that it loses (excluding outdraws) to hands at showdown (88-TT, AK).

califano

musician wrote:

Few things here.

When I have an arguement with a "friend" it tends to be civilised but anyway...

Maybe the way Iranians chat is the the equivillent of the way the Irish argue?.
Like when Lisa Simpson gets lost in Springfield, she asks two Russians playing chess where she is but gets startled when they yell at her. The subtitles however are the Russians kindly giving her directions!.

Rnger

Fundamental theory of poker anyone?

The AJ raise has less expectation because you miss out on catching bluffs on further streets. Your losing that money. Thats the whole arguement for calling. You will gain more money off Joe Poker more often by calling here than raising. Further streets must be taken into consideration here

Raising causes him to fold worse hands then ours. Its the opposite with the 78 raise. Simple stuff no?

NickyOD

. . .

RoundTower

I raise AJ here much more often than 78, raising AJ is often right depending on opponent, stack sizes, etc, raising 78 is rarely right.

DeVore

Since our opponent is going to fold call or raise regardless of our cards, then we will pick up the pot with any fold and ditch the hand to any reraise. Therefore we only have to consider the situations where the opponent flat calls.

So the difference between these hands/moves is which you would rather be holding when flat called after reraising in this position. I dont like either but I do prefer AJ!

DeV.

Hitman Actual

Time for an "It Depends" answer, me thinks. Someone mentioned that by raising AJ here, you're treating it as a bluff. But by raising 78, you treat that as TPTK. In both cases, the hands that beat AJ also beat 78 (AA, KK, QQ, JJ), and can be practically ignored for this analysis (although AJ obviously has more value as it can improve and win). Also, if you get re-raised, you fold both hands; if you get called, you slow down in both.

Assume the other hands you're up against are 88-TT, AK, AQ, KJ, QJ. When you raise with AJ (TPTK) here, a specific opponent will fold a fairly high amount of the time, but will still call a smaller percentage of the time, which leads to our expectation in the hand. When we raise with 78, the opponent calls/folds with the same percentage split, the fold part giving us our expectation in this case.

Here's my "It Depends" part: There's a crossover point where we gain more by bluffing with 78 and getting our opponent to fold, compared to the gain we make when an opponent calls with a hand we're beating. The problem with the bluff is that it has to make the opponent fold a hell of a lot; also, we're risking more to win a smaller pot on the flop. Plus, the bluff bet size affects your expectation. All this has to make up for the potentially bigger pot that AJ can win. Actually, in writing this, AJ does look the better proposition. But anyway, raising with 78 may be more profitable, depending on:

1. % of time opponent folds.
2. Pot size on flop.
3. Bluff raise size.

BTW, I obviously still agree that raising with AJ here is generally a poor move in any case.

Right, rip shreds through that if you will.

Goodluck2me

lenny_leonard wrote:

Time for an "It Depends" answer, me thinks. Someone mentioned that by raising AJ here, you're treating it as a bluff. But by raising 78, you treat that as TPTK. In both cases, the hands that beat AJ also beat 78 (AA, KK, QQ, JJ), and can be practically ignored for this analysis (although AJ obviously has more value as it can improve and win). Also, if you get re-raised, you fold both hands; if you get called, you slow down in both.

Assume the other hands you're up against are 88-TT, AK, AQ, KJ, QJ. When you raise with AJ (TPTK) here, a specific opponent will fold a fairly high amount of the time, but will still call a smaller percentage of the time, which leads to our expectation in the hand. When we raise with 78, the opponent calls/folds with the same percentage split, the fold part giving us our expectation in this case.

Here's my "It Depends" part: There's a crossover point where we gain more by bluffing with 78 and getting our opponent to fold, compared to the gain we make when an opponent calls with a hand we're beating. The problem with the bluff is that it has to make the opponent fold a hell of a lot; also, we're risking more to win a smaller pot on the flop. Plus, the bluff bet size affects your expectation. All this has to make up for the potentially bigger pot that AJ can win. Actually, in writing this, AJ does look the better proposition. But anyway, raising with 78 may be more profitable, depending on:

1. % of time opponent folds.
2. Pot size on flop.
3. Bluff raise size.

BTW, I obviously still agree that raising with AJ here is generally a poor move in any case.

Right, rip shreds through that if you will.

raising with AJ had to be more favourable here than 87, purely for improvemetn reasons. we sre semi bluffing with Aj as we can hit another J to improve, we are outright bluffing with 87 as we cannot easily improve on the next streets sufficiently.

Gholimoli

folks ,
ok i made one mistake in one of my posts saying that im only talking about the
expectation of that individual raise and not in temrs of the expectation of the whole hand from there on.
again im not talking about "how to best play this hand" .
some people are talking about calling here with AJ being correct play.even though i agree with that comment but its not relevent to the point i was raising.
my point was a raise here with AJ is not a good play and infact if you had 78 here instead it would be better play to raise with that.im talking about the expectaion of your whole hand when raising with AJ versus when raising with 78.
you can clearly see how 78 can be a better raising hand here becuase your hand has 1.little to no chance of improvment 2.little or no showdown value
but with AJ you have both .
also 78 you can get alot of hands to fold that you dont want them to fold with AJ (such as now dominated Aces ) .so a raise with AJ will allow you to miss all the profits you would have made through worse hands than yours and a raise with 78 will allow you to collect on all the profits than getting better hand to fold will bring you.
im not sure if im explianing this well but i thin people are thinking too much in to this and this is a real simple concept.

also i agree totally with what Fuzz said about different players having different impact on this and i even said in one of my posts that even though it plays a huge part ,i left it out cuz it would make things much more complicated

Hitman Actual

goodluck2me wrote:

raising with AJ had to be more favourable here than 87, purely for improvemetn reasons. we sre semi bluffing with Aj as we can hit another J to improve, we are outright bluffing with 87 as we cannot easily improve on the next streets sufficiently.

I mentioned that here:

lenny_leonard wrote:

although AJ obviously has more value as it can improve and win

But that's not the point of the argument. It's not a thread about semi-bluff v pure bluff.

charlesanto

In short ...

Only bet when you know you're behind - never bet when you're ahead :cool:

I must play the boards €200 f/o !!!:D

mewso

Gholimoli wrote:

im talking about the expectaion of your whole hand when raising with AJ versus when raising with 78.

Surely it's the same expectation. You don't win more money with 78 here. In fact you may win more with AJ here because you will be more willing to continue on the turn with it. I can see how raising with 78 is a better play but not how it has higher expectation.

DeVore

Gholi, you simply cant take this raise in isolation. In that case raising with 78 here would be AWFUL... you *might* take the pot but you have the same chance of taking the pot as if you hold AJ.

What *might* make the play good is the subsequent streets... Raising here should be the first shot in a long bluff (you are bluffing, you simply havent got a prayer of winning at showdown realistically, as you acknowledged).

To simplify:

We are only talking about times you RAISE with either hand. You are going to fold to any reraise with either hand and win with any fold with either hand.

So, we can narrow any difference/benefit of this play to times when you reraise and you are flat called. So, we HAVE to look at the next streets for any difference between them...

If you think you can take him off the hand on a later street with 78 then its a marvelous play, if not then its fugly!
If you get to the showdown, you're fecked with 78 and probably fecked with an unimproved AJ.

Do you have a strategy for subsequent streets with the 78 raise? If so what is it because the value of your first raise is dependant on that... If you dont have a strategy then its as ugly as a red-haired stepchild IMHO.

DeV.

Hitman Actual

The OP is confusing to say the least. Gholi seems to be making several different points while meaning to only make one. I interpreted the question as: which hand has more expectation in this situation, raising with AJ or 78. That's comparing both hands directly. But then the discussion switches to looking at the best play for each hand in isolation. And then seems to change to discussing whether calling with AJ is better than raising with 78. I think.

I agree that what Gholi is trying to get across is a "real simple concept", but I'm still not sure what the argument was supposed to be about.

Hitman Actual

DeVore wrote:

We are only talking about times you RAISE with either hand. You are going to fold to any reraise with either hand and win with any fold with either hand.

So, we can narrow any difference/benefit of this play to times when you reraise and you are flat called. So, we HAVE to look at the next streets for any difference between them...

No, there is a difference in the raise for each hand. The value with 78 comes from the times we get our opponent to fold. In contrast, when our raise with AJ gets called, you have a hand whose value comes from the hands that it's now beating (excluding outdraws). For analysis purposes it's best to ignore 'fancy' plays on later streets; most of the time both 78 and AJ will slow down in the same way anyway.

Gholimoli

musician wrote:

Surely it's the same expectation. You don't win more money with 78 here. In fact you may win more with AJ here because you will be more willing to continue on the turn with it. I can see how raising with 78 is a better play but not how it has higher expectation.

this is wrong .the fact that you are willing to continue on with AJ hass nothing to do with it or the expectation of the play.
raising with 78 is better play becuase it has a better expectation.

FastMachine

I fold 78 on a J23 board. If you're standard play is to reraise someone else's raised pot when you've completely missed, you will be bleeding cash. Now and again I'd reraise on a bluff, but the standard play is to fold.

As for AJ, I raise here every time. So what if you loose action from 88-1010, how much action do you think you'll get anyway with an overcard on the board on the flop and a good chance of another one on the following two streets. Although your average villain will often call the initial raise if there's only one overcard so you have some value here too.
The advantage of raising though is you find out early if you are up against a better hand and save yourself alot more money than you stand to gain off negligible action from 88-1010.

If the villain has an unmade hand with a K or Q you also prevent them from outdrawing you. O.K. they have only one card to draw to here but in similar situations where people "don't want to make opponents fold worse hands while calling with better ones" - such as 88 on a 934 board and villain has AJ, by not raising here you are giving the villain a 3-1 chance of outdrawing you, these outdraws happen all the time when people could've taken the pot when they were ahead. I really don't agree with the "don't want to make opponents fold worse hands while calling with better ones" theory. This is basically a fancy term for slowplaying and it's not even slowplaying very strong hands (which can be good), it's slowplaying vunerable ones too which is asking for trouble. It often leads to often getting outdrawn when the villain should've been put out of the pot on the flop, and to calling off your cash to a better hand because you never raised to find out where you stood. Another advantage of raising for info is that you can get more action when you have a very strong hand as you'll often by reraising marginally and thus a villain is going to find it harder to let go of an overpair/tptk when you have him by the balls.

I find the more vunerable you are (with a genuine hand) the quicker you should raise to find out where you stand. The stronger you are, the more you can flat call and keep a villain in, although it's often good to play it as strong as it is.

FastMachine

Gholimoli wrote:

this is wrong .the fact that you are willing to continue on with AJ hass nothing to do with it or the expectation of the play.
raising with 78 is better play becuase it has a better expectation.

Why say 78, why not just say a random hand, which is what 78 is. The standard play with a standard hand that has missed on someone else's raised pot is to fold, you don't make money by betting your garbage hands.

Hitman Actual

FastMachine wrote:

I

As for AJ, I raise here every time.

Every time? Surely that can't be right. What happens when people pick up that you bet for "information" and start re-raising you with hands you're beating?

Also, calling with the intention of getting more money from worse hands is definately not slow-playing. I'd say it's a pretty basic concept.

FastMachine

lenny_leonard wrote:

Every time? Surely that can't be right. What happens when people pick up that you bet for "information" and start re-raising you with hands you're beating?

Also, calling with the intention of getting more money from worse hands is definately not slow-playing. I'd say it's a pretty basic concept.

Well, I generally don't call raises preflop with AJ. If for some reason I did though, a reraise is my standard play here. There will be occasions when I'll flat call, for example if I'm up against someone tight enough to be only raising with premium hands and won't fire a second barrel unimproved.
Against standard villains though, if you flat call what do you do if the they have a better hand, which you have no way of knowing, and bet again on a non danger turn? Resign yourself to calling off a stack? Fold when it could be the second barrel of a bluff?

People don't pick up that you're betting for information. They just see you as an aggressive opponent. I don't see a problem with betting for info anyway, I always like to know where I stand.
I know for a fact that I am getting taken off better hands now and again (probably 10% or less of the time) by villains that have nothing but are sick of the pressure you're putting on them. The money lost here is small change compared to the money gained against: better hands (by which I mean you get out cheap), worse hands when they call your raises, worse hands when they they fold to your raises and the extra action you get when you do have a very strong hand.


Calling with the intention of getting more money from worse hands is all well and good when you have a strong holding that you know to be ahead. Calling with a hand that could itself be the worse hand is a different situation altogether.

eggie

I think Ian and Gholi make very good points here.

Raising with A J here will only get called/raised by a better hand in most cases. If you stay in the hand after this (which a lot of players will thinking they are ahead) you are committing more chips to the pot, therefore costing you more chips when its likely you are behind (not all of the time of course). These extra chips increase your -ev.

Where as raisng with 78 you can simply throw your hand away, after getting re-raised because you know you have no chance of winning, therefore you are not committing extra chips to the pot after this, therefore not increasing your -ev. Also if you raise and AK folds you are losing ev because if an A lands on the turn you would be way ahead of AK and make extra chips (a high percentage of the time), increasing your +ev.

If you are playing against a donkey then you are way ahead anyway and will get those chips whether you raise now or check call (depending on the player of course).

EDIT: Fast Machine also makes a valid counter argument, i think which method you choose to follow depends on the scenario at the table and your view on the players, and what you think their view on you is.

Interesting topic.

The Snapper

Gholimoli wrote:

this is wrong .the fact that you are willing to continue on with AJ hass nothing to do with it or the expectation of the play.
raising with 78 is better play becuase it has a better expectation.

raising 78 cannot have a better expectation over raising AJ here. However, the relevent point is, raising 78 you may well increase your expectation for that holding whereas raising AJ ( rather than calling ), you more than likely are decreasing your expectation for that holding.

Hitman Actual

The Snapper wrote:

raising 78 cannot have a better expectation over raising AJ here.

This is probably going to sound flippant, but why?

The Snapper

raising 78 cannot have a better expectation over raising AJ here. However, the relevent point is, raising 78 you may well increase your expectation for that holding whereas raising AJ ( rather than calling ), you more than likely are decreasing your expectation for that holding.

lenny_leonard wrote:

This is probably going to sound flippant, but why?

Really, you wonder why ? or you wonder if I know why or, your being flippant:)

Gholimoli

FastMachine wrote:

I fold 78 on a J23 board. If you're standard play is to reraise someone else's raised pot when you've completely missed, you will be bleeding cash. Now and again I'd reraise on a bluff, but the standard play is to fold.

As for AJ, I raise here every time. So what if you loose action from 88-1010, how much action do you think you'll get anyway with an overcard on the board on the flop and a good chance of another one on the following two streets. Although your average villain will often call the initial raise if there's only one overcard so you have some value here too.
The advantage of raising though is you find out early if you are up against a better hand and save yourself alot more money than you stand to gain off negligible action from 88-1010.

If the villain has an unmade hand with a K or Q you also prevent them from outdrawing you. O.K. they have only one card to draw to here but in similar situations where people "don't want to make opponents fold worse hands while calling with better ones" - such as 88 on a 934 board and villain has AJ, by not raising here you are giving the villain a 3-1 chance of outdrawing you, these outdraws happen all the time when people could've taken the pot when they were ahead. I really don't agree with the "don't want to make opponents fold worse hands while calling with better ones" theory. This is basically a fancy term for slowplaying and it's not even slowplaying very strong hands (which can be good), it's slowplaying vunerable ones too which is asking for trouble. It often leads to often getting outdrawn when the villain should've been put out of the pot on the flop, and to calling off your cash to a better hand because you never raised to find out where you stood. Another advantage of raising for info is that you can get more action when you have a very strong hand as you'll often by reraising marginally and thus a villain is going to find it harder to let go of an overpair/tptk when you have him by the balls.

I find the more vunerable you are (with a genuine hand) the quicker you should raise to find out where you stand. The stronger you are, the more you can flat call and keep a villain in, although it's often good to play it as strong as it is.

this just shows that you have missed my point completely.
if you read through my OP and the following replys i gave you will see that time and time again ive mentioned that im not trying to teach how to play AJ on a J high flop in a raised pot.
im also not trying to teach ppl what the standard play is with 78 when you have missed.
thats another discussion but the points you have made here regarding how to actually play AJ are flawed IMO anyway.if you raise AJ here every time your losing value.
also not raising is not slow playing at all but its keeping the pot under control and small and managable which is good practice considering your hand cant handle much presure.remember the pot was raised and now the raiser is leading for something like the pot so if you reraise here everytime with AJ i can only say god help your BR cuz its a very bad play.
back to the point i was trying to make for the Nth time .
im not talking how to best play AJ ot 78 in this spot.
AJ has show down value and 78 does not .
AJ can yet improve but 78 cant.
AJ can not get better hands than it to fold but 78 can and all of this leads to one the point im trying to make that raising with 78 here has a higher expectation than raising with AJ .
to give an example :
villain raises to 25 pre-flop with AK and you call.

flop(50)
J 2 3

villain bets 50.
now:

1.you have AJ and raise

in this case villain will fold so you take the pot which is 100.
how ever consider the value your missing by just flat calling this bet.
villain may have another go on the turn to take the pot in which case you can call and extract more money out of him.
also an A may fall on the turn or river and make villain put more money in the pot so basically by reraising villain your allowing him to play perfect which in turn is losing you money.

now consider villain has QQ+ here.
you reraise and villain comes over the top in which case you will have to drop .but if you didnt reraise you may have caught another J or an A on the turn or river giving you the best hand so by reraising here you have prised your self out of the pot.


2.in this case you have 78

flop(50)
J 2 3

villain leads with AK for 50.

now you reraise him and he will have to drop.now you have won a 100 pot with the worse hand which is excellent for you.

if villain has QQ+ then he will reraise you again and you will drop.
notice that this release of hand is much better than the AJ release becuase unlike AJ ,78 has little no chance of becoming the winning hand with two more cards to come so your not losing anything.
i hope this explians it a little better.

Ste05

Gholi. Expectation is measured by $$$, not how good or bad something is for you. In both these cases you Expect to win the $100 now. The only difference is you that have reduced your expectation for the AJ to having the same expectation as 78. i.e. as you say you miss the value of picking up another bluff on the turn.

The Snapper basically described the situation perfectly.

The Snapper wrote:

raising 78 cannot have a better expectation over raising AJ here. However, the relevent point is, raising 78 you may well increase your expectation for that holding whereas raising AJ ( rather than calling ), you more than likely are decreasing your expectation for that holding.

mewso

Ste05 wrote:

Gholi. Expectation is measured by $$$, not how good or bad something is for you. In both these cases you Expect to win the $100 now. The only difference is you that have reduced your expectation for the AJ to having the same expectation as 78. i.e. as you say you miss the value of picking up another bluff on the turn.

The Snapper basically described the situation perfectly.

That was my point but then I was told I was wrong. Maybe I am but far too much emphatic dialog here these days.