Monday, August 9, 2010

The Big Potato; All Up In Your Soul

The Big Potato has been kind enough to discuss hands with me of late, mostly from a game theory HUHU point of view (as I feel this an area at which he excels relative to me). He is a very talented player and I respect his opinion greatly, and occasionally says hilariously true things. So here is a text conversation from two days ago, based on the merits of check raising borderline air HU against a weak/tight opponent in a blind defense.

Me: Hand? Prop opens button. He's weak/tight but not by prop standards. I defend K8hh. J75 one heart I c/r. Reasonable?

BP: Check call is better from a game theory perspective I think....

Me: What does c/c accomplish? Am I really hoping to get to showdown UI some % of the time?

Me: What if I had Q8hh? That I'd c/r confidently. A8hh I'd c/c for sure.

BP: Check call for value. could be leading + draw. Q8 w bdf seems like solid cr candidate. Bryce in hu matches liked to bias towards call call folding k hi combos

BP: On certain board textures....

Me: I mean that seems to be giving opponent no credit for triple barreling...but Bryce is obv correct so...

I feel like c/c then c/c the turn is just tough if I don't fine SOME help. Like am I c/c a black deuce?

Now at this point I kinda got involved in the playing of other poker hands and put my phone away to stop texting with the Big Potato. And he pontificated mightily in my absence.

BP: I mean cr isn't bad. I'm sure its fine. But its probably a decent calling candidate. But since this prop is probably playing fit, raising 'too much' is prob

BP: An asset rather than liability.

BP: I dunno I play poker there. Against some prop you prob aren't doing well on deuce turns. But if he always double barrels then maybe you can do something..

BP: I dunno all you medium stakes 2+2 are bluff catch phobic and you love to instead raise that portion of your range so I knee jerk want to disagree w you but...

BP: I'm liking the raise now...but calling is still fine. Like everything depends on how opponent nd how you craft your ranges generally..

BP: I don't know how many barrels I'd fire if he calls depending on the t and r. I'd probably just look into his soul and make the exact correct decision bc props are

BP: So ground down that they are very autopiloty and telly.

Me: LOL thanks I appreciate it. How's life?

BP: Pretty decent. Workout like a beast. Dating tons. Working on O8 and other games. Running so so.

BP: Can't complain. How about you? Read your blog. Congrats on the anniversary. almost all of us don't take the straight path to success. You should be proud imo

Me: It'd be pretty boring to just have won the whole way to 1/2 I suppose. Thanks. You have that 6-pack yet.

The Potato is engaged in a prop bet, the details of which are roughly his developing a 6-pack against a female of extremely limited athletic ability completing a marathon. Don't hold your breath on this one folks.

BP: No not close really but I look way better naked than I ever have. So I'm happy.

Me: Nice hand

Me: BTW I think imaturn this text conversation into a blog post if you don't mind.

BP: Post away


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What up Jesse! I think c/c is probably best both from a gto perspective and also from a maximally exploitative perspective against most villains.

Villain would have to be extremely weak tight to make c/r here correct, otherwise you're just targeting a too small range of better hands that will fold at some point in the hand. I do think c/r Q8hh is best so obviously c/r isn't bad, but then again almost nothing "reasonable" is ever bad in LHE so there.

Anyway c/r is poor from a gto perspective because it makes your c/c range on this particular texture much too sd bound, but against this villain I would focus more on the exploitative permutations of the hand. I still come to the same conclusions, but it becomes closer.

So what he said.

jesse8888 said...

Ladies and gentleman, I give you OnTheRail15, crusher of souls, soccer and Pittsburgh apologist, and drunken bowling hustler. Thanks for the thoughts, OTR, that was much better worded than I ever could have put it together. The point that really strikes me here is that there are downsides to making your c/c range too showdown bound, which at first blush might not be obvious. If your c/c range is showing down 100%, you're going to lose a lot of "barrel value" from him on the turn, as eventually (in theory) he'll figure out that you're never folding once you call the flop, costing you the chance to bluff catch and value-raise.

One thing I will say is that this villain may in fact fall into what you'd call "extremely weak" territory. A lot of live 20 players understand the need to "steal the blinds" with "marginal holdings" but do not adjust their post flop play appropriately by showing down at a high clip. I find this combination to be almost worse than not opening up to steal in position at all; at least the guys who do that still win most of the pots they get involved in.