I've seen many experienced posters suggest that the "Protecting Your Hand" chapter from SSHE should be taken lightly (i.e., ignored) for today's small stakes games. Rereading the book this week, I wondered what parts of this chapter specifically were troublesome.

Concepts like cleaning up outs, using position to give incorrect pricing to weak draws with x/r's, recognizing when you cannot protect your hand, etc. all seem like applicable and good concepts to bring to the table.

There is one example with KK in an "extremely large pot" that is prefaced as being contentious at the end of the chapter, is this example primarily what people dislike about this chapter?

The last session I played I felt like I played fairly passively, and rereading this chapter is sort of solidifying that feeling for me, particularly regarding cleaning up outs.

Can you give us an example from your last session, so we have something more concrete to talk about?

lots of SSHE (and typical "old" poker wisdom) focuses on winning pots (protection) instead of winning money (getting max value). it's a common fallacy that you should do everything you can to maximize the chance of winning the pot that you're in. the correct approach is to get maximum value in each situation possible. you will win fewer pots but you will win more money.

random math example i am making up:

we are in 10 pots. we go for max protection! we win 7 pots with average potsize 6BB = 42 BB woot

we are in the same 10 pots. we go for max value! we win 5 pots with average potsize 10 BB = 50 BB hooray

obviously i'm not accounting for BB we lost/expended in the other pots, and i'm simplifying/ignoring other things. but the point is that a value-based approach has a higher expectation than does a protection-based approach.

now, do the two things go hand in hand sometimes? sure. but at the end of the day, we measure our results in money (bets) won, not in pots won. a famous limit holdem poster named kitcloudkicker once said 'win money not pots.'

I really don't think SSHE overly focuses on winning pots over getting max value. It gives that kind of advice for "extremely large pots", where winning that pot at all costs is also maximizing your value.

I thought this video by Miller was a good complement to SSHE.

What I realized after studying the video and SSHE on hand protection was that: a) many hands at low limit passive games cannot be protected; b) more often than not, the circumstances call for value betting either because of situation (a) or because we have been the aggressor on the prior round of betting and should not give it up because of our equity. This leads to far fewer situations when we are playing to protect our hands than might be suggested in SSHE or the video.

I didn't take great notes, but I did have a somewhat similar spot to this example from the book:

KQhh OTB, raise after 3 limpers, blinds and limpers all call.

Flop: Th 9s 4d

Checks to player on your right who donks. SSHE suggests raising here to clean up outs.

BBB, that makes sense. Is it safe to say that protection plays and value plays will overlap more often with marginal hands rather than strong hands?

I would never raise here. Also, to do so would t be to clean up ours, I would be to get players with equity to fold.

I don't think I would raise here either. But is there a difference between cleaning up outs and getting players with equity to fold? I don't think so.

Looking at the quasi-math, OP is getting 9-1 on his 2 overs + gunshot + BDF draw. So, OP is not folding. Let's say OP has 11 outs (3Ks, 3Qs, 4Js + 1out for the BDF). So if OP raises, at 4.5-1 plus implied odds, the raise is still +EV (a raise for value). BUT, OPs 3Ks and 3Qs may not be clean outs. Donking Villain could have flopped a set, or two pair, one pair with K or Q as Villain's current kicker, and in some SSHE games, Villain can be holding AA, KK, QQ, or JJ (among other possibilities). Now, 8 outs looks pretty generous with a strong likelihood that OP is far behind. At 9:1, OP is in. At 4.5:1, not good (card odds are 47:8 or jut about 6:1).

So, should OP bet to protect even if it is not +EV to do so on this play? This seems to be the basic divide between those who more frequently favor hand protection and those who do not. The argument goes that +EV is +EV and -EV is -EV, regardless of "hand protection". Miller acknowledges this argument but maintains that making a play that is not maximum +EV on one street is ok if it sufficiently increases EV on a later street. But if OP is betting from behind Villain, can OP possibly make up enough EV later from getting the other players to cold call 2 or fold. If a player other than Villain cold calls and OP is behind Villain, not much has changed other than OP and Villain sharing any value error made in the cold call (with Villain getting the lion's share). That hardly seems like enough to make up for a -EV bet now by OP. If the other players would fold a better hand, that would be a good thing, but how much more likely are they to fold to a bet now as compared to a bet on the turn?

In OP's shoes, I call. If a remaining player folds to a 10 or 11:1 bet, that's almost certainly +EV for OP and a very possible outcome in SSHE games. If the other players, like OP, peel and miss on the turn, it's easy fold time for all. If OP hits on the turn, a raise by OP (or even a bet if Villain checks) is most likely to get the two non-Villains to fold (assuming they checked to the Villain). And Villain's response to OP's play whether a bet or a raise is likely to greatly narrow Villain's range and make OP's decisions much easier from that point forward.

At least that's how I see it......

1. I think the spots where you can actually effectively protect a hand by making a non-standard play are pretty narrow. They exist, but most of the time, as DougL says, you are just better off trying to get value and if they draw out, they draw out.

2. I think the spots where "clearing outs" is a good play are extremely narrow, bordering on non-existent. And these plays are way overused and, in my experience, generally amount to lighting money on fire.

For instance, somewhere in America, the following hand will happen in a small or mid-stakes game tonight. Someone will raise pre-flop with AK, and see a flop with 2 or 3 other players. The flop will come some low cards, like T54, and the ace-king bettor will fire a continuation bet, which will then be called by someone and raised by someone else. The ace-king bettor will then 3-bet and get himself heads-up against the flop raiser, in an attempt to clear any outs that are clouded by hands like A5 and A4 (and maybe K5 and K4, though less likely). And the ace-king bettor will lose the hand and lose more money than if he just called the flop raise and played the rest of the hand based on pot odds and ranges.

If you have cloudy outs, most of the time, the proper course of action is just to discount them and count them as less than a full out, rather than to put in significant additional money into the pot to give yourself 2 full outs rather than 2 cloudy outs.

I basically never try to clear my outs. And I don't think that stance costs me any money at all.

3. In small stakes games (and SSHE is supposed to be a small stakes book), in my experience there's far more money to be made simply playing a stronger, tighter range than opponents who play too many hands, playing more aggressive and thus getting non-reciprocal value from your made hands, and placing opponents on accurate ranges so you can play your drawing hands correctly and make correct calls and folds on the river. If you do those things well and never protect a hand or clear an out, you are going to make far more money than a player who has leaks in the areas I mentioned but implements a brilliant hand protection and outs clearing strategy.

I don't see this as an out-cleaning play (the only useful fold you are going to get is KJ, maybe). If anything, this would be a cheap river play.

The problem we face in lawdude's example is the the villain with A5 or K5 has already put in a bet, so he's not folding on this street. When the hands you're targeting don't fold, these plays are expensive. You also run into needing someone to correctly raise TP (not only 2pr+) hands on this dry board. If the villains only raise top pair with a nut kicker, sets, and two pair, cleaning out A5 isn't valuable.

All this to say that the maths can make these plays good, but my experiences with small stakes (and some midstakes) live games say not often. Some opponents are dying to make expert folds, but generally people are calling. Also this play is sexy expert play, so the temptation is to over use it.

woot? What's woot?

Clearing outs? What does this mean?

Bravo, man!

You managed to explain how to beat low-limit LHE in one sentence.

Impressive!

I've raised to clean up outs exactly once in the past year and was immediately accused of colluding by the player that was forced out by my check raise after I called the flop 3 bet, the turn bet, and then folded the river unimproved.

The problem here is that they don't always have weak draws. Players will check all kinds of hands and then they'll probably call anyways cus **** you and your check raise.

I can only remember one check raise in the past two or three years that I felt was clearly for protection. All of my other check raises were either for pure value that I felt maximized my profits or they were bluffs.

Compare those two (2)!! instances above with the other thousands of times over the past few years that I've checked and or called down with a hand that would have otherwise benefited from protection and I think the benefits to my winrate are negligible to the point that I could have just folded my T8o and 44 respectively and I would only be out about 0.000001 Sklansky bucks over a period of three years. That's not much.

There was a time in LHE when the common wisdom was that players would fold strong hands (as strong as Tx, and including K9/Q9 type of hands) or strong draws (as strong as KJ with a BDFD) facing two bets cold after this type of action. That is not really the case any more, and I'm not convinced it ever was.

That said, protecting a vulnerable hand (say, 9x) by raising the flop can be good, since it's valuable to get multiple people with 6+ outs against you to fold in a large pot. But there is a very fine line between protecting a currently-best but vulnerable hand (which is good) and isolating yourself against a better hand while charging yourself more to draw (which is bad).

you just said it yourself, they wont fold if you raise whether you have a pair of 9 or the draw.

i would rather have the draw and raise in that spot with 6 player when i raise than a pair of 9 that would get crush before getting at a SD.

Maybe T94 is the wrong texture to illustrate this point, but suppose you have a flop like 972r and you have the A7s. Even the lowly QT has 6 outs against you. Getting anyone to fold is a huge coup.

That's not an outs-clearing raise, really. That's a value raise. (Unless you are suggesting doing it when someone has a 9. )

I think we all agree that if you think you flopped the best hand, you should raise and that such raises can also have the effect of protecting the hand. The "clearing outs" rationale has to do with when you are behind.

Sup, law? You still in LA? Miss me?

Good to see that, what, 5 years later nothing has changed. Except nobody's mentioned WITHEG or GTO in this thread, yet.

Well, at a certain pot size, people are making an FTOP mistake by folding a hand with six outs. But I think we are saying the same thing.

We don't talk about WITHEG anymore Boz. We talk about The Intelligent Poker Player instead.

Illustrative of my point.

Balancing your turn raising range is the new big concept against people who limp/cold call versus a cap preflop and donk flop, obviously.

Wow. You are blowing my mind and pulling me out of 1980's poker.
After you explain it it seems so simple.
How about split poker and the "promo raise" to knock out the 2nd nut low when you hold 2nd nut low? Is that also way out of date, since todays players would have to die of an illness during the hand to fold 2nd nuts.


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