First things first:

I'd raise 1, 2, and 4, but I fold 44 because the blinds are too loose to make the raise have value, and there aren't enough of them to make limping profitable.

But now to the other bits going on here.

I disagree with this, which will become quite obvious in what follows.

This is a stupid line of reasoning. Hot/cold is overrated trying to evaluate the preflop value of hands.

This is a strawman and borderline belligerence. Nobody ever made such a claim. If you include flopped flushes, I believe the value is around 7.5:1. Ironically, if you give yourself the tiniest bits of implied odds, you're getting the right price in the example that follows.

This just in, your example with 4 limpers and you're on the button is a situation where you're almost always going to get a 7-handed pot. This is a good spot to limp a suited ace.

The pot is 7 SB on the flop and if two players get to the river for an average of one bet per street with no showdown, it will be a 15 SB pot. However, it is reasonably likely to get to be about 20 SB. Sometimes you win mediumish pots, and sometimes you lose large pots. If you manage to put in a ton of bets with just top pair, then you're just playing poorly and that's a different leak than playing suited aces after 4 limpers.

Aaron:"If you manage to put in a ton of bets with just top pair, then you're just playing poorly and that's a different leak than playing suited aces after 4 limpers"

well put it, A2s ftw with lot of limpers.

While this is certainly true, W, it also stands to reason that if you don't have the expectation preflop of being able to put in a ton of bets with the "good" hand that you can most-reasonably expect to make, then you probably shouldn't be playing the hand. Or, to put it differently, if the best hand you're likely to make doesn't qualify as "good", then why are we playing?

Again, this is an environmental issue mostly. You're not getting 2-3 people calling down on a 3-flush board these days, nor people betting all the way with 2nd pair on an ace-high board, and in the absence of that you don't have the implied odds to play the hand in the first place. Yeah, yeah, hot/cold preflop blah blah blah...there aren't going to be Villans putting in a ton of bets (either due to your reluctance or to theirs) on the best boards you can hope to see, so your implieds just aren't there.

And, just to be a nit:

If it's 7sb on the flop and 2 players show down for an average of 1 bet/street, the final pot will be 17sb. The problem with that analysis, of course, is that if you're one of the players 6 of those bets were yours before you embarked upon showing this hand down, so you're not even getting 2:1 on your money. If you only look at postflop, you're getting slightly better than 2:1.

I would be surprised at this if it were true (working on the assumption that you had 7 players on the flop), because this would indicate a pretty nitty postflop environment. But given that I don't play online FR, I cannot argue for or against the plausibility of that statement.

I re-nit by telling you to reread it.

I gave a pretty bleak postflop scenario.

no, we see lots of 4handed flops, in which i think it's a tough spot. we don't see lots of 7handed flops, in which basically any two cards are good from the button

buzz, admittedly i am not very good at pokerstove. so if i get this wrong, please let me know. i put in monte carlo simulation, a2 sooted vs 3 other random hands and get this:

29.3% equity 4ways so a little over our share of 25% right?

i then changed the ranges things so that we have a2s and our 3 opponents have 'any pair, any suited, any broadway, and any ace.'

we're now only at 22.5% which is less than our fair share 4ways.

if i put the ranges at 'any pair, any suited, and any broadway' we're getting 24% 4way which is basically a quarter.

if i do a "zomg crazy" range of our opponents not being morons, and give them all the range 'any broadway, any pair,' then we're 22% 4way which is below our share again.

if i play around with different ranges like suited connectors, suited one gappers, etc, we always end up with low twenties % four-way.

(this is kinda cool actually )


but basically you can't have it both ways imo - our best-case scenario is that every single one of our opponents are total morons and play any two cards (the 'random' setting on stove). but we all know the games aren't like that. as soon as you give your opponents any semblance of skill the math doesn't seem to work out. again i am not great at stove so if i got this wrong please let me know.

and obviously if there's a bad limper and i have a2s in lp i raise it always for the purpose of hopefully getting the blinds out, getting heads up in position with a hand that probably has a slight edge plus i have the initiative/momentum for the hand. but that's the same reason we isoraise any hand preflop.

like we consider ourselves skilled players but how much equity does that really add to our hand postflop? like 2%? 5%? at some point the hand becomes crap such that we don't deem it worth playing even with our good skills and i think a2s is right on the edge of that kind of hand, i guess.

and going back to the 22% thing, i agree that having the button, position, and initiative for the hand is a worthwhile and useful thing and beneficial to us in a nebulous-but-probably-worth-a-few-percent-of-equity kind of way, which is exactly why i would isoraise this hand to begin with after one limper, instead of folding it preflop.

hi aaron, i think that by quoting bits of what i said out of context you are mis-reading or possibly mis-interpreting my post.

the main point(s) that i was trying to make, using sarcasm and humor:

-a suited ace is not that strong of a hand

-people tend to overvalue them

-online game conditions have changed over time leaving fewer "classical" profitable spots for a suited ace

-as game conditions have changed, blindstealing and isoraising have become more important, and in those spots a suited ace is still valuable

hope this clears some stuff up,
thanks,
bbb

i mean, what am i supposed to say to that? you're saying we're all wrong but you don't even play in these games? in a live game like you play in i agree that a suited ace has a little more playability, if that helps us approach rapprochement

Under the hypothesis that you've got 4 limpers in front of you, it seems highly improbable that one should expect *NOT* to get to showdown on a flush draw flop that ends up with a 3-flush board by the river. The pot size will be at least medium-sized (15 SB), and I would be highly surprised to see players not looking you up with decent hands in a pot that large.

If the game is so tight postflop that you don't expect to get called down on a flush board with *SIX* villains, then you should be able to make a moderate killing with a very high bluffing frequency.

So when I say:

I really mean that I would be surprised. It's much like the surprise that online players feel when they sit down at a live table and find that everyone has limped into the pot before they've even seen their cards. You're describing a world that I have trouble believing exists, and until I actually see it with my own eyes, I will continue to be a dis-believer.

I raise all of these, limping 44 and 98s would be fine also

I don't get wanting to fold 44 here. EDIT: Actually against blinds that bad you probably ARE getting set value. wtf call

cmon aaron give me a break here. if i didn't know you better i'd say you were just trolling.

i've played live at similar limits to you (they don't have 15/30 at foxwoods, just 10/20 and 20/40) and i agree that live games are soft and good and fun.

and i play online daily thousands of hands, in games ranging from meh to tough, from 1/2 to 5/10. and because you don't play in them, they don't exist and i'm just making it up to win the argument?

anyway sorry to hijack your thread bella. you have a knack for starting good discussions!

babar,

Hero can be behind "preflop" and thus drawing, so he is limping after 4 players with odds (5.5:1), he is not raising because he doesn't have an edge.

Oddly I put in A2s vs 4 random hands and I get 23%.

We might change a couple things in stove:
add another random hand for BB
add another nearly random hand for SB who usually comes in
limpers, so take off the raising hands (JJ+, AJ+)

Buzz

I'm glad you know me better.

Since you play lots of hands, do you happen to have any where it's 7 to the flop (not necessarily with you in it)? Of those hands, can you find out how many get to showdown? What about average pot size?

I'm a disbeliever for lack of evidence. If you can provide some numbers, I'm willing to re-evaluate my beliefs in light of the evidence.

I stand corrected. If what you're telling me is that you think it's likely we're going to see a flop 7-ways, get it HU on the flop for one bet, and have our lone remaining opponent call one on the turn and fold for one on the river, then absolutely we should be playing A2s. We should also be playing the 7 of cups and the Death card, even though it's not suited.

This, of course, doesn't answer why there's such a difference between A2s and A2o.

Edit: ok, having read the last few posts, I realize I'm being snarky for snarkiness's sake, and that's not so gOOt. My point is that I do think the online game conditions have changed, to-wit:

a) you never see 4 limpers any more; and
b) if you do see 4 limpers they're generally LP/TP, so you're not going to get paid when your A2s hits.

Further, I see what you're doing with the 15 bets thing. It's 15:1 to make a flush by the river with 2 suited cards, ldo. But given that you're putting in 6 bets, the pot needs to be 90 to make it break-even.

Meh, I'm tired of this conversation. Sorry if I've contributed to unnecessarily prolonging it.

bbb-
i only play at pokerstars and it happens at 3/6 down.
admittedly i suck at poker so i'm not back at 5/10 online nor will i likely ever be...can't comment there. not often, but it happens. about as often as when you get a maniac, or a huge fish. not often, but its good to know how to adapt your play when it is relevant.

years ago, during the loose era...someone would post a question about isolating a CO limp and everyone would say "change tables". at least we've moved on.....