SC's in large part are very overrated by the poker community.

It's obv great for the game that most people feel otherwise.

That is all I'm probably going to say atm

It really depends what you do with them.

In my game you're going to lose a ton with SC if you try to gii for 200bb everytime you make a flush because most players won't show up unless they have you over flushed or they boated up.

If you treat small flushes as good but not great hands when deep and reserve the big guns for nicely concealed straights or timely bluffs you'll do just fine.

Having said that, my opponemts' love of suited cards and inept play with them is why I'm happy playing any suited ace from almost any position vs most of my deep stacked opponents.

Yeah $8 drop is pretty steep. Especially if this is 1/2 and your opens are only to $15... It's definitely a good reason to tighten up IMO, because realistically our preflop EV decisions are probably sitting somewhere below a single BB (plus or minus) when we're deciding on opens with any hands but our absolute best or absolute worse.

Yeah, the max rake has gone up here $2 over the last 2 years, and I'm guessing it has a lot bigger affect on peoples bottom line than they realize. Loosely dicking around in a bunch of small pots just doesn't seem profitable to me... with the lone exception perhaps being it helps build an active image for meta-game purposes (but I'm not sure it's worth it).

GcluelessrakenoobG

I could be wrong on this but I feel like if I want to open 66-22 from EP then I kind of have to open more big unpaired combos, AXs/SC to keep my "hit flop %" up. 66-22 is 30 combos that rarely hit and become almost unplayable OOP multiway when they miss. Opening just 22+ AQ+ AJs+ KQs either leaves you cbetting air a lot or check folding a lot of flops.

So if I'm getting multiway pots vs my EP rises ($10-$15 at 1/2) I tend to drop: 66-22, AJo KQo, and A7s- 87s- KTs QTS.

I think it makes sense because effectively you are playing shorter stacked due to huge raises and huge MW pots so I make the same adjustments as if I were short stacked and had no fold equity.

High rake would simply add to the pressure to make the same adjustments.

mindblown.gif

Barrelling in 1/2 is not lighting on fire, you just have to not barrel into someone or some spot where villain is clearly going to call you. In the past I thought maybe it's a regional thing, but I've played enough around to world to say this is patently not true, and just rumours spread so people can continue playing unthinkingly without feeling bad about it.

There are many spots where people just have "I hate how big this pot is getting" written on their face, and then there are just so many overbetting spots where people snap fold because "nobody ever bluffs that big" or whatever. Obviously that requires observing your opponent, but I feel everyone here just reads into what they have done in the past, and not extrapolate what that means they will do to a different action. Nobody says things like "well he called down in this hand" but not include "but it's a super standard hero call spot that he tanked a long time with, showing that he's nitty in this particular situation, so if we put more pressure and have fewer missed draws in our perceived range then we can still bluff" and so on and so forth.

Agree AXs and SC are great to 3bet or iso-raise over lmpers when you're in position. I'm just saying I ditch some when my big EP opens are going multiway becuase then barreling doesn't work great and my flop "hits" are difficult to play OOP too.

Totally agree barreling the right players and spots works and you can find them in any game anytime anywhere - if you have the skill to see them and the guts to pull the trigger.

I think the key is, if you raise A5s UTG and it goes 5 ways, you actually don't need to win the pot more than 20% of the time for it to be profitable, and I can assure you the 20% or whatever you do win the pot, you're going to win a larger pot than your opponent since you have a hand with greater implied odds. In fact, you don't even need to win the pot 20% of the time in that case.

Of course actual maths means factoring in when you get 3b and so on and so forth, what I did was overly simplifying, but complicated and pointless math is not important.

People lose with these hands because they feel like they "have to" win with them or bluff with them. It's OKAY to check/fold a lot, that's not "being weak". People say hands like A5s and 78s and so on are hands that beginners lose lots of money. What bs. Just give up when you don't flop good, stop bluffing when opponent is likely to have a good hand, and don't go overboard and value cut yourself (don't just bet/3b when you hit a 7 high flush). You have amazing visibility, you have high polarisation with flop distribution, they're MUCH BETTER hand to play than QJ KJ which require you to know when to call down top pair non nut kicker, and when to get thin value, which is way tougher and way more opponent specific.

The best players can get thin value with marginal hands, and that's a very very complicated thing that even good players mess up and end up losing a lot of EV with.

With hands like A5s and 67s, if you literally only barrel when you have a draw, cbet sometimes when it's not multiway and a good dry board, occasionally fire on a K or A turn or if you have a combo draw, then only put more money in when you have odds to peel draw OR make your hand, and just literally never try any fancy barrels or overbets, you're almost already guaranteed to do better than AJ KJ QK etc hands, which I think are ALSO playable, just more difficult.

The idea that suited connectors and suited aces are hard to play are an absolute myth, idk who propagates it. People just don't like playing poker where you're expected to not win the pot very often, but every bet is an investment and if you're not ready to have to give up sometimes or lose a pot, then you shouldn't be playing poker.

The idea that playing suited connectors and suited aces makes you too loose is even more ludicrous. There are way way way fewer combos of those hands than all the offsuit trash people play.

Great post. The bolded parts are things I am glad most players at my level will never get.

Good point on not needing to win often once it goes MW. That's definitely something I find hard to remember when I've missed many times in a row! You're right though, if you just give it up rather than get frustrated and try some silly bluff into the field you don't actually lose much raising pre and x/f awful flops.

I'm going to remember this when I play tomorrow and see if I can maintain a wider opening range in these situations.

This doesn't seem like a particularly great example. You've given one of the best flops possible for A5ss, and even then every time we put money in the pot and got called, we're likely drawing (albeit with great equity). Then when we river the nuts everybody folds. Of course we're going to do well went we bink so hard.

Yeah it's easy to make a hand look profitable when we river the nuts.

Such a good post. (Sol's stuff usually delivers imo). Miller actually addresses in his sections on loose games and Multi way pots the exact point about smaller shared equity multiway resulting in losing a majority of pots but still being very profitable. And the associated "negative psychological reinforcement" losing those smaller but numerous pots has.

And the stuff Skip bolded... when the Course came out and I read it I actually posted (here I think) that I hope players in my games don't read it. Once I read the typical responses to it though my mind was put to ease.




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Yeah, not to say poker strategy hasn't made games tougher, but for the majority of people, understanding and accepting fairly straightforward maths and concepts is hard enough, putting said theories into practice is even harder, and most people won't get there.

It's definitely true that poker can be complicated, and if you're not good, playing tighter and using training wheels can be useful to not lose much money before you get enough experience and comfort to start putting more complicated concepts into practice.

But myths like suited connectors are particularly hard to play, or that 3bet pots are hard to play so it's okay to flat more often, are often just myths that make poker even harder for new players. Suited connectors and Ax are easier to play because you usually either have a bluff catcher or a strong hand (or air), and 3betting certainly makes poker easier than playing multiway with a hand like AQ or AK.

Since you're betting 1st in the above example, it's obvious the blinds folded. So, there is $33 in the pot b4 the rake.

OTF: You bet $20 & the call. This bet is the close to the minimum required to max out the rake. The house still has $4 to rake after the Flop betting. Why bet $20 to win an additional $16? If he'll call $20, won't he call $23? Make your opponent pay the tax.

You say they're raking 10% up to $70 + $1 BBJ, so OTF, there is only $29 in the pot, but they have another $4 to rake for the house.

If he doesn't want to call the $23 but will call $20, so be it, I'll take the smaller pot & just not tip the dealer. They don't get a tip unless the pot is over $60, but the max rake is $6 + $1 or $5 + $2, with no flop/no drop.

In your example above, I would have quickly grabbed my $40 & when the pot was given to me, noted out loud that I won a whopping $35 & not tipped the dealer.

Despite being this cheap, I still end up giving the dealers 9.5% of my gross profit because you tip them going up, going back down & back up again. Over and over and over. And the only reason it's under 10%: I recently sat in on a juicy 5/10 game, won $1100 on two hands [flopped sets of Aces & Queens] & packed my bags after 30 minutes.

I strongly disagree with most of your last paragraph

"You usually either have a bluff catcher or air or a strong hand"

I mean, thats pretty ldo for any starting hand

I think most otherwise good players lose sight of the fact you realistically need about 20-1 to crack aces with sc's

Its mostly fools gold

I play them (for rare instance where i feel balancing plays are needed @ 2/5) but just not near as much as most. Opening baby axs utg at most tables is pretty laughable but I'm certainly ok with this forum siding with it being a standard play

Damn good thing! Because A5s has 10% equity going to flop vs. 4 players calling with: 22 - JJ; A5s - AJs; ATo - AJo; KTs+; 75s+; 54s+. 17% equity going to the River.

There is a 53% chance someone has an ace with a bigger kicker [10 handed] when you o/r UTG with A5.

This reads like it makes a helluva' lotta' sense. Do you play a lot of 1/2 & 1/3 sir? I'll open with T9s UTG long before I'd consider doing it with A5s. Because, when I hit the flop, it is going to hit others quite often. Also, I'll only play them after being at the table for 3+ hrs only playing 9.5% of all starting hands UTG/+1/+2. Because, I don't care what people say, after 3 hours of folding in EP, 1/2 of the players have noticed.

Also, with T9s, you only flop 2 pair or better 1 out of 20 times approximately. The rest of the time you go past the Flop, you're trying to make a hand OTT, OOP. I'm hoping for the observant players to fold & the fish, who call OTF bad, are my Vs.

A lot to unpack here.

That's definitely not true with mid-high pocket pairs and offsuit broadway hands. You're going to have top pair a lot, and that hand is definitely not "just a bluff catcher", as it's a hand that may be a value bet or on you'd check down for showdown depending on the action and reads.

Hands like 67dd is going to flop say Q73dds where you generally will always have a bluffcatcher, and rarely a value bet in any point, unless you move to twopair, where it becomes a clear value bet in most situations.

Of course in all cases, if you get check raised by a reasonable player than all those hands are bluff catchers, but that's just how it is, if you don't have a nutted hand you're bluffcatching vs polarised check raises.

Weaker suited aces are also quite similar for the most part, where you'd go for some thinnish value for a street or maybe two (three with dynamic and specific reason or if you rivered an ace and all draws missed or something), but generally know your hand is a showdown hand or bluff catcher unless you make 2pair +.

Actually, you come out here and say you "strongly disagree" but actually don't put forth any argument as to why these hands don't have more visibility.

Are you trolling? ANY hand is an underdog against out flopping AA, we're not playing these hands because we want to make money playing vs AA, this is a ludicrous straw argument. By this logic we shouldn't play ANY hand vs AA, or, you know, play all of them because you apparently know your opponent's exact holdings.

What a joke, you think you can speak over millions and millions of good player's databases that shows SCs and Axs are powerful hands? You can speak over solvers that does more math calcs in a second than probably you in a lifetime? Finally, even if you don't trust maths, you speak over the experience of all actually consistent winners at ranging from mid to the very high stakes?

Hands like SCs and Axs are NOT played "for balance". They are played because they are +EV hands to play in a vacuum. This is another example of bs game theory jargon that people pick up without knowing what it means.

A2s-A5s are stronger hands than 22-55 for opening EP. They're certainly better hands to 3b or 4b or defend vs 3bs. IN A VACUUM.

Are you serious? How often, if opponents are playing that tight a range, are FOUR of them going to be able to vpip? You literally gave them 13% range.

cbf to do the math, but suffice to say, if it's regularly going to go 5 ways, the opponents probably aren't flatting a 13% range.

What's this 17% equity going to the river thing also? Obviously our actual equity vs range doesn't matter, what matters is how polarised our equity distribution is, that is to say: of the boards that we continue on, who much equity we have.

You realise this doesn't make it unprofitable right? You realise FIRST they have to vpip it, which, if you open UTG, they probably will fold a bunch of them. Then you have to get dominated on an A high board first, which if you both have Ax, is less likely, then you have to not flop two pair and actually still have the best hand, then third, you have to somehow lose tons of money by flopping an ace with A5s, which, wtf are you doing with it that you're losing tons of money being outkicked with A5s raising from UTG where you have a very strong Ax range, your opponent shouldn't even be value betting multiple streets with better Ax, if you manage to pay them off because they have ATo, that's all on you for being a spewy calling station.

HMMMM.


You literally named a hand that I was saying is extremely strong, and told me that that's a better hand than another hand I said was strong. Do you realise how you're not actually, like, disputing what I am saying?

I'd open both hands all day any day UTG, not even remotely close.

I'm glad you read nothing about what I wrote. Have fun.

Why are you telling me this? You realise I literally said that up there when I said our hand has high visibility.

Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this point

But solvers have a ways to go preflop (particularly FR); it's postflop where they're largely making the loot?

Sorry but having a really hard time believing that at a standard live full ring table (we are discussing live, sometimes insanely raked FR as opposed to higher stake online databases belonging almost entirely to =<6max'ers correct?) that hands like 67s are going to be profitable utg in a vacuum

I'm not buying

Yeah, you should be playing very tight in a "perfect" FR game, and 67s probably gets played at some frequency but not 100%. A5s probably still is a 100% open, but I am not sure on that. A5s is obviously part of a 10% PFR, but it might be true that you should open less than that in FR UTG. Even if you do open say 8% though, you probably will still open A2s-A9s at some frequency, and the suited connectors also, at some frequency.

All that is mostly irrelevant though.

What really matters is that they are better to play than off suit big cards hands like KJo ATo (or even 22-55), which a lot of players consider more playable, and start spouting myths like "you should only play those hands for balance or as to see flops cheaply".

The best online players don't deviate from solvers preflop too much I think (as a default, not excluding adjustments).

Well I'm definitely not arguing that KJ or AT should be played for balance purposes lol

If i decide to open 67s utg at a live FR game it isn't because I have faith in the hand's playabilty tho

I will just kindly agree to disagree about A5s being a 100% open in EP. Not sure if you're playing under special circumstances where this might somehow be +ev

OP expressly was talking about A5s 67s type hands vs offsuit broadways, so it's not so much as whether those hands are playable or not, as whether they are more playable than those hands.

OP posted 2 things that stuck out:

1) Suitedness is overrated.

2) playing for balance is pointless

my answer is:

1) it is not

2) we don't play it just for balance, it's inherently +EV

A5s is +EV to play in a vacuum, and better EV than many offsuit high card hands. Databases show it, solvers show it, anecdotal evidence shows it.

Generally speaking, if I play any hand in any position, it's because I think the hand is going to make money.

As to whether A5s falls into that when opening EP, you're welcome to disagree. That's okay, of course.