$6/12 Stud High (mixed game), $1 ante, $3 bring-in, rake 10% to $4.

Reads:
Seat 3 (bring-in): I don’t really know him well but seems LAG and not necessarily a good LAG
S4: Regular, very loose, very passive, very nice guy.
S5: Aggressive, sometimes maniacal. Seems to be playing at lower stakes than he prefers, and just feels gambly.
S6: Hero is a regular and (I daresay) perceived as solid, perhaps a little too aggressive, sometimes makes bad river bets.
S7: Don’t know, seems solid
S8: Don’t know well, seems average. Complimented my intelligence.
Seat 1: Regular, pretty solid, occasionally kind of passive on later streets in all games.
S2: Semi-regular, I've seen him play in other games, pretty solid player, sometimes a bit too passive on later streets in all games.

Third Street (1.3 SB)

Seat	Card	Action
S3	2	Brings in $3
S4	A	C
S5	K	C
S6	(T9) T	???
S7	6
S8	5
S1	9
S2	9

As an aside, I wish they'd drop the bring-in to $2 to induce my opponents to make more incorrect BI defenses. Half a SB is too much for a BI.

I suppose you should raise given the other guys didn't, even with the two dead 9s. It will make the hand easier to play later, and hopefully knock the rest of the table out.

Is this some random game, or does these guys have an inkling of how to play? IE not slow playing/passively playing split aces or kings.

I think S4 would complete with aces, but he's so passive that I'm not 100% sure. He's so loose that he's playing here with literally any two hole cards, so it's quite unlikely he has aces.

S5 was playing most everything, too. Given his general aggression, and the fact that people in this game weren't folding much for $6 that they would have played for $3, it would surprise me if he was slowplaying kings.

Thus a big part of why I posted this hand was my intuition that TT is the best hand here about 70% of the time.

I raise every time

You probably have the best hand, and even if not you'd prefer fewer opponents later on. Raise.

Hmm, good reminder that I have a lot to learn in stud. The consensus surprises me, but that's why you post "sanity check" hands, especially as a beginner.

I thought TT was probably best but not overwhelmingly so. Having a dead kicker made my hand look like a RIO trap. (In LO8 I've really worked hard on trying to see it more as an IO game, which it is; stud has one more big betting round than O8, so I figure it should also be a hugely IO-oriented game.) So I mucked it.

I don't recall what anyone had (big leak!!!).

Wise man say, "when have best hand, put money in pot"

mucking on 3rd just on intuition/self taught math has to be a huge huge huge mistake.

Raise, flat....fold? fold shouldn't even be an option.

what about a complete from the A and a call from K?

muck right?

Incidentally, in this game, raising is almost as likely to result in a 6-way pot as limping. I alluded to this in passing but it's worth stating.

By the way, I also just realized that it adds some value to this hand that queens, jacks, eights, and sevens are all completely live. This is even better because all those diamonds diminish the chances of a flush.

OK. Thanks for the feedback.

When I mess up a hand, my emphasis is on translating this discussion to actionable principles.

• One principle might be, "The best high hand is worth more than you think it is, whether totally live or not."
• Another principle might be, "Dead kickers are a lot less important than a dead pair. After all, you can still make trips, and you get four more cards to try to make two pair."
• Yet a third principle might be, "The possibility of overcards to your pair isn't really as important as you think, so TT as the probable best hand is almost as valuable as AA as the probable best hand.
• A fourth: "You're overapplying the idea about hand value depending on number of players (from Zee/Sklansky). The fact that this could well end up a very multiway pot doesn't diminish the value of your hand as much as you think it does.

Any opinions on which of these lessons are the one[s] I should be learning?


Another good way to learn from a hand discussion is to change some details to try to find boundary cases. So how would we play this?:

Seat	Card	Action
S3	2	Brings in $3
S4	A	C
S5	K	C
S6	(T9) T	???
S7	6
S8	5
S1	9
S2	T

Villains haven't raised, so they're not representing strength, so you probably have the best hand and can raise for value.

You can have an effect on the number of players in the pot, but only if you raise.

If you're behind you can improve, but that's not as important as making conditions favorable for all the hands you'd play this way.

If villains raise and re-raise, and they are typically honest with such actions, then you fold. If you have history that indicates otherwise, you raise.

This hand would have gotten interesting if OP had raised, and both the Ace and King called. I have seen a lot of loose players in live games limp with split aces. And if the King knows that, he could very well limp in as well. Even if he is a maniac. I agree with the consensus on raising with the tens, especially with the positional advantage that is likely coming on fourth street. But you better be able to get away from the hand if either of those villains wake up on 4'th or 5'th.

If I raise, it's 1:12498323423087634 that both the A and the K call. These are just not folks who are limping for $3 to fold for $3 (nor should they be). Note the weird large bring-in, but still, they'd call $4 more if they'd limped for $2.

It's fine if both the A and K call, you expect them to and they probably should. It's the other down stream people you'd like to have fold their ****.

Definitely

call. The pot is definitely going multiway and you aren't folding out any hands that are coming in for a limp most of the time. Your hand also does very poorly multiway, and often times the A or K has a hand that does well against us if not crushing us (slow playing)