I Love Ac8c

Ac8c is a hand that I'm rapidly becoming partial towards. I stacked somebody with Ac8c for the 3rd time in the last 4 or 5 days (over the course of maybe 1000 hands). This time I was actually a about a 9:1 dog on the flop, but my clever opponent decided not to raise me until I had a full house.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
CO ($143.45)
Button ($126.30)
SB ($173.70)
BB ($98.10)
UTG ($21.20)
Hero ($122.35)
MP1 ($192.30)
MP2 ($44.20)
MP3 ($66.25)
Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with 8c, Ac.
1 fold, Hero calls $1, 1 fold, MP2 calls $1, 4 folds, BB checks.
Flop: ($3.50) Qc, Ad, Ts (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $2, MP2 calls $2, BB folds.
Turn: ($7.50) 8d (2 players)
Hero bets $4, MP2 calls $4.
River: ($15.50) 8h (2 players)
Hero bets $12, MP2 raises to $37.2, Hero calls $25.20.
Final Pot: $89.90
Hero has 8c Ac (full house, eights full of aces).
MP2 has Tc As (two pair, aces and tens).
Outcome: Hero wins $89.90.

I played a few hundred hands of $0.50/$1.00 today and ended up winning about $120. These games are great -- there really are some bad players in there. Obviously i'm running good, but I can't take all the credit for winning. The guy who calls $50 on the turn with the Ah5h on a Ac7s4cJc board deserves some of the credit too.

Let's have a quick play of the day before we move on to some other stuff. This guy calls the river raise with less than 2% equity against a random hand. Yikes. He was a seemingly solid player too (which is why I tried to bluff him). Who knew it was a value bet?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
SB ($106.95)
BB ($180.30)
UTG ($174.70)
UTG+1 ($98.10)
MP1 ($21.20)
Hero ($108.30)
MP3 ($192.30)
CO ($44.20)
Button ($66.25)
Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9h, Qh.
3 folds, Hero raises to $3, 4 folds, BB calls $2.
Flop: ($6.50) 6d, 4c, 8s (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $4, BB calls $4.
Turn: ($14.50) 4h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks.
River: ($14.50) 8d (2 players)
BB bets $1, Hero raises to $8, BB calls $7.
Final Pot: $30.50
BB has 2c 2d (two pair, eights and fours).
Hero has 9h Qh (two pair, eights and fours).
Outcome: Hero wins $30.50.


Moving along, I'd like to congratulate my brother. Last night he placed 5th in a ~150 player $50 buyin tourney yesterday, which was good for about $500. And he wasn't even playing under his own account! A freind of his was playing the tourney and wanted to go out to the bar, so he IMed my brother and got him to play. I started watching when there were 3 tables left and my brother had the chip lead. He played pretty well in general, only making minor mistakes like making a fold that I would consider too tight here or there and getting out of line by stealing blinds with cheese from too early a position.

He did really well, especially considering that the only "tournament poker" he plays is at our weekly home game. Things didn't really work out for him in the end, but that's how it goes sometimes (most of the time actually). Hopefully this good result will convince him that he should play more poker.

I want to talk about 1 hand that I thought he played too tight. There was a fairly loose and aggressive player, who had been in 2nd in chips more or less the entire time I was watching. He was opening with plenty of weak hands to try to steal the blinds, and he and my brother were still the top two in chips (though not by very much) when it was down to 7-handed.

With the blinds at 800/1600, the LAG opens UTG for 7000 (a fairly typical raise for this guy). All fold to my brother, who has 99 in the BB. They each had about 40000 in chips and my brother folded. I probably would have moved in, but I think you could make a case for doing a "stop-and-go" (calling preflop and moving in on all but the most threatening flops) in this scenario as well. It should go without saying that I think calling to try to play the hand out is a poor play. Let's examine the merits of folding vs. jamming.

Folding, as usual, has an EV of 0.

Assuming that the LAG has the same number of chips as us, jamming nets us +40800 when we are called and win, -40000 when we are called and lose, and +7800 when we are not called. Let's assume that the range of the raiser is {A5s+, A8o+, 44+, KTs+, KJo+}. Let's further assume that he will call our jam with {AJs+, AQo+, TT+} and fold everything else. Then the LAG is folding about 69.5% of the time and calling the other 30.5% of the time, and pokerstove tells us that our equity against his calling range is 38.2%.

Then our chip EV by jamming is (0.695)(7800) + (0.382)(0.305)(40800) + (0.618)(0.305)(-40000) = 5421 + 4753 - 7539 = +2635.

This doesn't even take into account how much more of a chance you have to win by getting a monster chip lead with 6 left.

That is all for tonight -- I need to go read about data flow analysis for some code I'll be writing over the next few days. Fun.