A Slave to Variance

It’s not every day you get to win a 34.5 big bet pot in 40/80. You need the right set of ingredients.

1) Preflop betting which is capped seven ways.
2) Some idiot who jams with AK on a raggy paired board.
3) Some other idiot who jams with a baby gutshot multiway.
4) Probable pocket overpair to the flop.
5) Flopped trips (it was sooooted).

The biggest challenge by far is managing to get the pot capped preflop seven ways. People just don’t cold call four bets much in that game. About the only way to get this is by having limp-reraisers. In this pot we’ve got two; AKs up front and 65s in back.

holdem       $ 40/80 Cales Cove                         Wed Mar 30 22:42:30 2005
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00 rake: 3.00  pot: 2757 [2d 3c 2h Ac Jc]
johnnydingle   1477 cCc  CC   c    cc          560 -560.0 [Qs 2s]
Andrew         3140 cR   Rc   c    r           560 2197.0 [6c 5c]
DannyMaster     897 cf                          40  -40.0
Suited-Hooks   1140 cC   f                     160 -160.0
nguyen68       5108 f                            0    0.0
No Limit Pro    521 SrC  bR   kc   kf          400 -400.0
ProdigyEight   2134 BcC  f                     160 -160.0
Taquisha       2453 crc  rC   b    bc          560 -560.0 [Kh Ah]
ckraise        4072 cCc  CC   f                320 -320.0
baetown        1788 f                            0    0.0

When the preflop betting is insane, the flop betting usually is as well. It’s not only a time for everyone to bet (or call) the best hand, it’s also a time for hyper-agro nutcases to try and leverage out anyone who has a prayer of sucking out in such a big pot. We get to see the much hailed “Three Bet For a Free Card Play” fail miserably too.

Of course, what’s a big pot story without some kind of runner runner suckout? I’m sure AK was cursing my flush, without once considering that he was an even bigger underdog every postflop round.

In one of my comments, Goran asked me to explain what the preflop matrix represents. Essentially, it is a 13×13 grid, with each cell representing one of the 169 distinct preflop hands.

The hands along the diagonal represent the pocket pairs, with AA in the upper left hand corner, and 22 in the lower right hand corner. The hands above the diagonal represent the suited hands, and those below the diagonal are the offsuit hands. For example, the upper right hand corner is A2s, and the hand just below AA is AKo.

When I first started playing hold’em I did a lot of work with the matrix. Coloring it this way and that. This little animated gif is a representation of all the hands which have positive showdown equity as the number of players vary. Each frame decreases the number of players by one, from 10 players down to heads-up.

Some cool things to note:

- A5o is +equity for a full table, but A6o and A4o are not.
- 98o is always on the cusp of +equity - blinking grey and white.
- Small pairs yo-yo, being +equity with few or many opponents.

I could watch it all day long…

“Stones? You little punk. I’m not playing for the thrill of fucking victory here…”

“I play for money.”

- Knish

So, the basic theory of limit hold’em is “pound, pound, pound”. That is to say, you should keep betting your hand hoping that your hand is good, or that your opponent will fold. That is of course, unless you’ve suddenly fallen into the land of bimodal opponent distributions.

holdem       $ 40/80 Tikehau                            Mon Mar 28 16:55:21 2005
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00 rake: 2.00  pot:  498 [6s Jc Qc Ad 4c]
Andrew         5651 rr   k    k    c           240 -240.0 [Kd Ac]
JoshK          2016 f                            0    0.0
Angelina       4902 Sf                          20  -20.0
ckraise        2000 Brc  k    k    b           240  258.0 [Ah Jd]
Taquisha       1480 f                            0    0.0

When your steal raise get’s three bet out of the blinds, by a “sane” opponent, it’s going to usually be a big ace or a pocket pair. Here’s a picture of the typical BB 3-bet distribution:

A  suited   2
-------------
#5432111.....
3#111.....
3.8.......
2..6....    .
1...5...
.....4......
...   3...
..     2....
.       1
.        1
.         .
.          .
.           .
-------------

So when my AK flops a broadway QJ-gutshot, I’m pretty freakin’ hosed. His distribution isn’t really bimodal (yet), I’m just plain beat. My “back is up against the wall.” AK beats a lot of aces, until the flop comes QJ-high. Now, the only ace he might have which I can beat AT, and possibly some suited aces. Of course, 1/4 of the suited aces are gonna jam back at me.

I have been transformed from the Fantastic Four Bettor, back into the wimpy computer geek that is my secret identity.

The turned ace is some help. Now my opponents distribution is bimodal. He’s either got me crushed with a better ace (or maybe tied with AK), or he’s just begging for free cards with a hand like 88. I’m so accomodating.

Of course, I’m gonna call his river bet and lose. But compare how little I lost to someone who might blindly pound in this spot. Two overcards + a broadway gutshot is a quite attractive hand, and very poundworthy most of the time.

My favorite part of this hand is the little irony that ckraise failed in his attempt to check-raise me.

Poker is a game of little secrets. The best players aren’t the best because they have a different understanding of the fundamental nature of the game. They are the best because they have a deep understanding of all the tiny little edges that you can get here and there.

One fairly “obvious” edge is that when you are faced with a narrow distribution of hands, the least likely rank to help the player is the King. Jerrod Ankenman has a good illustration of this concept in his journal.

How do you use this information? Well, you should probably play king-high flops a little more aggressivly than you would most other flops, all else equal. The goal of course is to get random underpairs to the flop to fold. Unfortunatly, this doesn’t always work out for the best:

holdem       $ 40/80 Eleuthera                          Fri Mar 25 19:57:52 2005
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00 rake: 2.00  pot:  638 [Js 3h Kd Tc]
Angelina       4238 f                            0    0.0
LyinBryan      1457 Srr  bc   kr               400  318.0 [Kc Kh]
Andrew         3231 Brc  r    bf               320 -320.0 [5h 5s]
iloveparis     1798 f                            0    0.0
orkids         1746 f                            0    0.0

Sometimes when a king hits the flop the player actually does have trip kings.