iggy - I agree with you on this to some extent, but what about betting initiative? If you are going to get fold equity, you are going to have to take this initiative at some point. As for implied odds, if you are going to have high implied odds, you opponents will have to see you maximizing your fold equity and be unable to distinguish between the pot building and bluffs. In other words, when you enter a pot, you'll be planning on taking the betting lead when you plan on winning the hand. (You obviously won't try to win every hand, and will fold some percentage of flops...)

OOP - It's easy to do, you can donk out with a PSB, or you can cr. If the donk gets called or raised, you'll have to do it again on the turn, and by this time its getting expensive. Same thing for the check raise except it gets pretty pricey right off the bat.

IP - if you opponent doesn't c-bet, you can bet for the same price as the OOP donk. If he does c-bet, you need to raise flop (gets expensive) or call and see what you have to work with on the turn. if he c-bets the turn, well if your going to get fold equity, you're going to have to pay, and if he checks, you bet will still not be as small as you would like.

My point, by calling preflop, you make gaining that initiative more expensive. You bets are bigger, your leverage is crushed--with the result that your margin of error is drastically decreased.

Also, for a bit of clarification, I add that just because your hand is strong enough to raise, doesn't mean you have to raise.

I agree, Jeff's point that one pair is hard to play out of position is groundbreaking stuff.

I think we can end this thread by saying: Due to geometric pot size increases implied odds, especially in multiplayer hands, is overrated. Draw to the nuts and realize that without overbet option protecting mediocre made hands can be difficult (this is multiway).

PS The sun rises in the east

Don't be such a douchbag.

Jeff, my example was clearly multiway so HU was moot. Since you want to talk about HU pots with top and bottom pair, are you calling turn if a smart aggressive player bets when J, K, T, Q, diamond comes out on turn and hero has top and bottom pair without flush or high straight cards?

Saying that you will call at least one bet in a HU pot is fine, but at some point you will probably need to show initiative to win the pot, the later it is the more money that will committed to aggression.

what does it mean then?
does it mean that if you were planning to raise and there is raiser then you do what? raise/call/fold?
it seems you saying calling in this time is OK
do I understand you post correctly?


anyways, I think calling in the position with wide ranger is OK esp on BTN
mostly I prefer to have a pair or suited Ace in my hand though.

Fold. All you can beat is a bluff.

I know you are worried about getting bluffed out by the second barrel, but you have to look at it from your opponent's perspective. To him, your calling range would be something like A-Q-x-x, Q-Q-x-x, 5-5-x-x, K-J-T-x or some combination that includes diamonds, and maybe A-A-x-x as well. In order for your opponent to bet the scare card, he would either have to put you on specifically a made hand and not a draw, or he would have not just not care and hope the turn card scares you. That said, the vast majority of players shut down to scare card if it didn't hit them, and those that don't are giving off implied odds, and so they are giving up something as well that can be exploited when you flop stronger.

Jeff

1) Players will repop AAxx preflop in position as dominant action
2) If hero has AQ, QQ, 55, along with very strong draws such as KJT+ diamonds he is raising the flop on this medium drawish board for value and to protect.
3) If villian has air or any hand that cannot stand a raise on the turn then bet/fold especially on straight cards will occur.
4) That said if hero turns a5 into a bluff on turn by raising he will fold out air and some AQ while getting crushed when villian has something.

It has been mentioned in the forum recently that PLO cash games are having much more floating of the flop in recent play. Given that development, some players are going to adjust by double barrelling more often. How willing should a player be to turn weak made hands into multi-street bluff catchers? There is not going to be a simple answer, but the multi-street problem is critical to long-term profitability.

See this is where a lot of players go wrong. Top two pair and middle and bottom set are small pot hands, and this is true whether you are playing 6-max or full ring. You can commit with these hands in low-SPR situations, but with significant money left to play, the default play should be to smooth call on the flop with these hands and keep the size of the pot down, sort of like TPTK in NLHE. Because if you raise, you are only going to get significant action from hands that you are either a small favorite to (like a draw) or a big dog against (like top set).

And the higher the SPR, the bigger a mistake it is to commit with these hands.

I think the first adjustment is to widen your calling range.

So basically, you staged an agreement on page one when you actually had no idea what I was talking about. The point of the example is that the burden is actually on the pre-flop raiser in that scenario to hit the flop hard, and not on the player with the positional advantage, and that this is true no matter what you started with.

You agree that one pair is difficult to play out-of-position, but what you neglect to take into account is the fact that you are a dog to hit the flop hard virtually no matter what you hold. What this means is that against a player who knows what he is doing, you are a dog to make it to showdown. And what that means is that you are often giving up value if you are constantly raising from out-of-position pre-flop.

And if you are giving up value in these spots, then the player with the positional advantage must be gaining value, which in turn means that "preflop calling is your biggest leak" is too blanket of a statement to possibly be correct.

Actually, your point is the worst I've read by far. if the pot size increases geometrically, then implied odds are pretty important, imo. DUCY

Well perhaps I over-simplified your first post, but imo, I did not over simplify by all that much. i don't know what you mean by "staged an agreement"

Also, you are changing the subject to raising OOP from calling preflop raises, and that seems to be a type of deflection.

Also, what do you mean by virtually all hands are unlikely to hit the flop hard. If you mean most hands are unlikely flop a strong hand with a strong draw, then I agree. If you are telling me that most hands are unlikely flop a fair amount of equity, then I would tend to disagree leaving room that we may have different definitions of "unlikely"

Jeff,
No offence but your posts in this thread seem to have a lot to do with the series on floating that you have written for cardplayer.
Basically what you are arguing over is what you seem to think is a new concept that you have come up with ie. floating.

It's O.K. to present your argument with your heavily tailored examples and have the micro and low limit guys think "WOW" he's right what a great idea I'll try that" and it will work if they utilize it right. However you're forgetting that some of us playing as low as 1/2 have seen this all before with NLHE.

PLO is now at about the evolutionary stage that NLHE was 3 or 4 years ago, by that I mean the 2/4 games for example play like the NLHE games of that time with the way different concepts are being realised and applied at different limits.
Anyone who played NLHE at that time can remember when floating, pot control, 3 betting suited connectors and wait for it...re raising small pairs from the blinds were all new concepts to 1/2 and 2/4.

Now these concepts are being applied to PLO. As the higher stakes players have come into the games, their strategies and the counter strategies they have come up with have begun to filter their way down the limits and they are being applied to the lower limit games. But some of the players in these games have been here before, we've already done this with NLHE and because of that the evolutionary process of the game is speeded up at the middle limits. The games are a mix of players who have risen through the limits and players from NLHE who are able to jump straight in at these limits with their NLHE bankroll and basically learn by adjustment.
Only recently people have been talking about 3 betting light as if it's new, because the majority of players here play 2/4 and lower it's taken it's time to filter down and it's taken time for other players to realise that the biggest winners in their games were already doing it.

Your argument seems to be that position is worth more than initative in a raised pot regardless of your holding and putting the onus on the PFR to hit the flop than make a hand rather than you having to.
Whilst I'm sure everyone would agree that having position is a huge advantage that we would always like to have I think if you tried to argue your point to a NLHE player they would simply, and rightly so, laugh in your face. I mean why do we raise? why do we C-bet when missed, why do we re raise a draw? As the player having the initative we don't have to hit anything hard, we don't have to get to showdown to win, that onus is on you the caller, and remember there comes a point in the hand where you have to represent something, you have to push back and make us fold. We already all worked this out for NLHE.

The concept your arguing isn't a specifically PLO one it's a general poker one and has been around for a while.

How are we giving up value by raising OOP pre?
What's the counter strategy? to only raise from the button fold all SBs and call with any 4 to a raise from the button?
The player with position can only gain value by entering and winning the pot, he can't do it by sitting there folding thinking "hahha look at this idiot raising UTG for the 5th time in a row, he's losing so much value".