HH converter failed to convert, sorry. Pretty much all streets I'm interested in your thoughts. Villain just seems like a fairly standard player.

PokerStars Hand #129048869590: 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo Limit ($3/$6 USD) - 2015/01/21 8:51:48 ET
Table 'Hansa IV' 8-max
Seat 1: cyberkanguru ($197.96 in chips)
Seat 2: Love lzh ($73.20 in chips)
Seat 3: Emmico ($50 in chips)
Seat 4: Negentropia ($136.16 in chips)
Seat 5: dihola ($57.82 in chips)
Seat 6: mMagic_cards ($82.82 in chips)
Seat 7: drey_ua ($159.23 in chips)
Seat 8: RichieRichZH ($35.38 in chips)
cyberkanguru: posts the ante $0.45
Love lzh: posts the ante $0.45
Emmico: posts the ante $0.45
Negentropia: posts the ante $0.45
dihola: posts the ante $0.45
mMagic_cards: posts the ante $0.45
drey_ua: posts the ante $0.45
RichieRichZH: posts the ante $0.45
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to cyberkanguru [3c]
Dealt to Love lzh [Qc]
Dealt to Emmico [9h]
Dealt to Negentropia [Jc]
Dealt to dihola [5d]
Dealt to mMagic_cards [9c 7h 8c]
Dealt to drey_ua [Js]
Dealt to RichieRichZH [4h]
cyberkanguru: brings in for $1
Love lzh: folds
Emmico: folds
Negentropia: folds
dihola: folds
mMagic_cards: raises $2 to $3
drey_ua: folds
RichieRichZH: raises $3 to $6
cyberkanguru: folds
mMagic_cards: calls $3
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to mMagic_cards [9c 7h 8c] [5c]
Dealt to RichieRichZH [4h] [Ac]
RichieRichZH: bets $3
mMagic_cards: calls $3
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to mMagic_cards [9c 7h 8c 5c] [8s]
Dealt to RichieRichZH [4h Ac] [Ks]
mMagic_cards: bets $6
RichieRichZH: calls $6
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to mMagic_cards [9c 7h 8c 5c 8s] [Kd]
Dealt to RichieRichZH [4h Ac Ks] [Th]

?

Third is awful. You're opening a weak door into a low door, and the bring-in can easily have a hand to punish you with. Your suit is a little dead and there are two Jacks out. If you're playing a hand like this it should be to steal through one or two weak door cards. You don't do it here because you will often be raised, sometimes 3-bet and your hand is empirically weak in a split-pot game.

Peeling 4th with a gutshot is fine given the size of the pot, you'll get free cards often on Fifth or have an easy fold, but you shouldn't find yourself in this position often.

Fifth you have the best hand, betting is mandatory, same story Sixth. You should c/c the river, perhaps c/r when you make a straight for those times the villain makes trips or Aces-up and no low.

Just to be clear, we are opening into a J and the bring in.

Sometimes, perhaps we get raised. But we also sometimes win the hand on 3rd street.

Opening into 4, J and 3 B-I. Just begging to get messed with/punished.

yeah I fold 3rd. two Js dead doesn't help your straight either.

What scenarios would you open here?

when the 7 is up and I don't have two low cards behind.

I love how confident electrical sounds when saying "we have the best hand on 5th"

If you pay a crap hand and luck into a pair you should try to get value for it or you are compounding the mistake of playing it in the first place.

funny since 3rd seems like a clear open to me, although 2 players I regard as very loose disagrees (from my experience). It seems like an even clearer open if people play tight on 3rd.

sure this hand is trashy, but so is the bottom of my opening range in just about any other game. what are the bottom of ur opening range if 978 stinks?

card removal is important imo, but i think just being in steal position contributes more to the value of our hand, so even if my cards were dead, i'd be inclined to open.

anyways, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, Ts are way more important than jacks since jacks are kinda backdoor'ish whereas 7s and 8s make pears.

yes its a easy open on 3th. i like that play

lol glad it wasn't so bad that every person disagreed with it.

Everything about stud games is situational since we see so many cards before we have to do anything. Having a pat opening range is a crippled way to look at it. You open hands you think will get through as steals or when the appearance of your hand gives you a playing advantage or it has profitable hot-and-cold equity if you have to play a pot. None of those are true here.

Mathematically speaking, if villains are tight enough that you can steal > 40% of the time, then it's +EV to complete and never put in another nickel if called/raised. If I had to guess, I'd say there's some way to turn a profit if your steal rate is down around 1/3 of the time as well.

We have no information about tightness. There are plenty enough steal opportunities that don't involve us playing a weak door into two good ones with a weak holding, so I'd consider this a poor steal.

I'd prefer 978 over k23sss if pots are normally competed hu

and I'd prefer k23sss over 978 if pots are normally competed multiway

in this spot, it's rarely going to be competed multiway (3 players left to act) so 978 is gonna be beast.

Why is it relevant if there are better steal opportunities or not? Are you only allowed so many steals/hour? Are you gonna go broke if you lose $3 in this pot and won't be able to keep playing to take advantage of these better steals?

The only question is: is stealing better than folding. Folding has an EV of 0. If a steal works often enough to have any +EV, even if the rest of your line is to fold 100% if the steal doesn't work, than it is a good steal. Maybe not a great steal (i.e. you don't miss out on more than a few pennies of EV), but still correct.

For example, assume the following:

1. Villains all have 25% VPIP
2. They won't play any looser/tighter with a good low card in the door
3. They won't play any looser/tighter with a J door
4. They won't play any looser/tighter as the bring-in
5. They won't play any looser/tighter vs. Hero opening an 8 door in his position

Then a steal here will work 42% of the time, and thus be mathematically correct regardless of hero's hole cards. Think of the worst hole cards you can have in this spot, always give up if your steal is called/raised, and you still have a profitable steal. Are the above assumption accurate? IDK, but unless they are far off then this spot is certainly not an auto fold.

If you find yourself in a game with those characteristics, ie players who don't care what their cards are or yours, then you can do a lot of things that won't be profitable otherwise.

I play a lot of stud8 and I can't remember a full game lineup where steals like this worked anything like 40%.

I play very little stud8 so I defer to your experience and knowledge (or information, if you will) about the tightness of typical opponents. I don't think a VPIP for a TAG player at full ring is out of line based on experience in other stud variants, however. I'm guessing typical stud8 players tighten up with a J in the door and loosen up with a good low card, and may loosen up a bit in the bring-in as well. So I would expect that you're right, typically a steal won't work 40% of the time. Could it work 33% of the time?

I'm playing tomorrow so I'll try to keep tabs on uncontested opens, but until I clock it I'd put the line at 25 percent. By that I mean if somebody opens a pot he gets called at least 75 percent of the time.

Better games higher, worse games lower. Are you only talking about the bring in completing, or anyone completing in your line?

Bring in completion is rare. I was talking about the situation described in OP, where there are several hands including a couple of low cards still live and somebody opens.

Played 6 hours of mid-stakes 8-handed OE last night, during the 10 or so E rounds not a single open was uncontested. There were two open-completes from bad players, neither of which stole the ante, and there was one walk, where nobody called the bring-in.

So that's a 0% steal success rate. I'm playing tomorrow, but that's a mixed game and won't have as many rounds of E, but I'll still keep tabs and report back.

Admittedly, online games are different and generally the players are better at equivalent stakes, so stealing is more of a factor, but in typically loose live lineups steal success is going to be much lower than necessary to make poor steals profitable.

How many hands of E does that work out to, 80 right? Decent size sample to get started here. I'd certainly expect live games to be looser than online (micros excluded), and probably correctly so if the antes are larger. Note that I'm not saying "players are typically tight enough to make stealing with this hand profitable." I'm just trying to establish a line for how often a steal would need to work to make it correct.