i don't have the data we used to anymore, so i can't check, but i'm betting it's a suuuper small winner at best and a marginal loser at worst when played VERY well. playing it very well becomes more difficult when you have an excellent player in the bb and even tougher when you have loose people behind you.

this isn't a hand that will connect on lots of flops and it doesn't play well in lots of spots. it doesn't play super well vs. an iso 3bet. and KJs is definitely a better hand b/c you'll at least have overs and a backdoor draw a decent chunk of the time you don't connect. when you whiff with A4s, and you're facing 2 people, it's a tough spot, you're getting ~6:1 from the pot, but you probably won't get through that much, but it's close. at that point you have to really construct intricate ranges and plans if this hand is in your opening range.

i do open A4s 100% from the CO though, and whether i do so in the HJ depends on the people behind me, so it's not 100% from there either, but if you're auto opening A4s lojack/utg 6m, then i think that's too loose.

let's look at it from another perspective. what is the lowest offsuit ace you'll open utg 6m?

i'm betting it isn't A7 or A8, right? for me it's ATo or A9o optimistically. 12-13% UTG 6m seems about right. this means that if you're opening A4s b/c that's not too loose at all, you're opening a ton of other aces b/c the suitedness isn't worth 5-6 kickers, right?

c). fold

the only upside to this hand is that it's the future. if the future of poker is doing it, it can't be that wrong. in a few years, we'll all see that this is the optimal standard way to play this hand

what would you say to the balanced crushers that open A2s UTG in a 9 handed game?

I was asking what OTR thought because he seemed to think folding's out of the question. There's reasons to fold

1) The betting isn't closed. So while there are pot odds that's only if the last player calls,
2) You do not have immediate odds to hit the turn. Actually it's close if it gets just called. 5 outs, 11.5 to one to improve, and also some bdfd turn cards that bail you out.
3) You are between two people. This means that you might not even get to call 1 bet on the turn, or it might be two more small bets to you on the flop. Then what? And the other guy is unpredictable.

If it's too good to fold, then it's a bluff imo (w/ perhaps the best hand). Calling is my least favourite option. There should be >0 bluffs. Out of curiosity, what would you consider a good bluff with on this flop? Like T9s (which is also too marginal to play pre)? Maybe AKs w/ bdfd?

If you're never bluffing here then it becomes exploitable and crusher may decide to make some annoying laydowns, because you always have it.

2 things. 1. If I check this flop with this hand there is no way in hell I'm folding for two bets. Ppl just get so spazzy when you check in this spot.

2. So many hands preflop in lhe are basically breakeven or small winners but the reason you open this hand is because you want enough hands that connect with various board textures to play later streets well. I'm not saying you should open a bunch of terrible hands for the sake of your overall range, but I am saying there is a large benefit to having hands that can connect on different boards if at all possible.


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In no-limit this is undoubtedly true. I am not so sure how important this is in limit poker.

I don't know what to tell you. It's important.


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you get that with hands that are super easy to play and balance low boards: QJs-65s. those hands are a) easy to play, b) balance you range, and c) dont' take up a big chunk of your range like also playing low aces would. also they are not easily reverse dominated.

i'd rather be opening 54s UTG than A2s UTG in a standard agro 40+ 9 handed game.

No you wouldnt

there's no way i check this flop. but given the check, even the spazzy folks out there don't make it worthwhile to continue not closing the action 3 ways w/ this hand. you would be right in this case, but then what's your plan for the hand in general? just call down on favorable boards?

yes and a 12-13% range from UTG 6m does that. you have all suited connectors where all straights are possible (stopping at 54s) and those (T9s-65s) 20 hands add a lot to your ability to connect on different boards. you don't need to add easily dominated hands that can be difficult to play. people only need to see you show down those hands one time and they'll never forget it.

i'd say they're overdoing it on the balance

No.


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probably overstated, but i'd rather not be opening either one that early full ring. the point is that you don't need to go crazy with balance in EP full ring. if balanced crushers are doing it, that doesn't mean it's optimal. the cost of being in -ev spots when you're 3b is greater than the advertising/threat value of connecting with some low boards as well when you raise utg. once you get into later position, balance is way more important b/c your range opens up a great deal.

you can add like 3-4 hands UTG and be balanced (12-16 combos) b/c as i said, it only takes 1 visible hand with that to ingrain that in people's memories.

generally though, it's easier, maybe not optimal ev, but not that far, to play tight as hell up front.

It's also very hard to argue with the statistics of Stox's book when it comes to pre-flop play. I've cut the advertising plays and merely tailor pre-flop theory with table conditions. It would truly have to be the best of times to raise A4s here.

In no limit, if the 442 flop comes, it pays to have a >0 chance of you having a 4 because of the scale of the big bets. In limit, you are able to get to the showdown, and even if it's all low cards you can have a pair or a set. There isn't a flop that doesn't help a tight pre-flop range in some way provided you're playing the profitable multi-way hands in correct spots.

At one point I did balance EP reading an outdated book by Bob Ciafionne. I see no reason to do it. It's better, in my opinion, to mix-up post-flop if you are going to mix-it-up for deception.

Also, I would frankly pass on 44 as well, unless it was the best of times.

My favorite bluff would perhaps be the back-door royal w AKs. But, I am unsure what the bluffing frequency would be.

There are psychological considerations though, and your opponents will rarely remember you mixing-it-up on the flop and will virtually always remember you throwing some advertising dollars at them pre-flop, but my experience says they'll simply play impatiently because they are by nature impatient and will lose pre-flop anyway.

add: In limit you'll get a showdownable hand enough with your range so even if they knew what your range was it would be hard if not impossible to exploit that fact alone. And if you are occasionally throwing in other hands for deception, as soon as you know how occasionally they are doing it, it seems easier to adapt to that opponent.

. I mean, except for the fact they were basically considered too tight from day 1. Good book though

You both seem to be glossing over the fact that A4s is often actually the best hand, while 45s never is.

I'm fine with open, fine with flop and turn, and given my assumption of who the opponent is, would put in a cry call on the river.

This hand is a perfect example of advice everyone gives to lower limit players-- if you are in a decently sized pot and don't have a definitive read that the opponent always has it, go ahead and call one bet on the river heads up as long as you have any showdown value. It's fine and good to pay off.

Having said that, if you want a more sophisticated analysis of the river, why not put the villain on a range and count the combos, and see if we are getting the pot odds to call?

Paul described the co as "loose and tricky." To me this means missed value with big hands on the early streets, bluffs on all streets, and value betting too thinly, all of which leads me to believe that calling the river will be profitable.

wrt to this debate, seems to me you are both right.

OTR is right that it is always terrible when you basically "can't" have a certain type of hand. DougL used to make this point on the low limit boards with respect to people who always raised anything with an ace in it while also having a checking or calling range. He pointed out that one of the most useful pieces of information a player can ever have on you is "she never has an ace here".

On the other hand, it's really easy to take this principle too far. Your UTG range in a standard 9 or 10 handed game really shouldn't have very many 2's in it, even if it means that on a 322 board you never have trips or a boat. And if you don't believe me on this, extrapolate it out-- imagine playing, say, 18-handed limit hold 'em with a 5 bet cap against expert players. In that game what would your UTG raising range be? Whatever it would be, would it contain any hands with a 2 in it?

In other words, at some point, even though it sucks that you are going to have a narrow range on some flops, it is nonetheless correct to have a narrow range.

We all know this, by the way-- it's how we treat 3-bets and 4-bets when a tight player has raised. Nobody looks at a tight UTG raiser who is likely to have AT+ KQs TT+ and says "I need to 3-bet some hands with a 2 in it, because otherwise I will never be able to represent that I have a deuce". It just becomes more important to not play hands that have equity disadvantages than it is to have a wide range.

tldr cliffs: nothing wrong with trying to make sure you can connect with a wide range of hands in many situations, but there are situations where it is wrong (especially in early position full ring or in pots raised by tight players) and in those situations, don't worry about the fact that your opponent may have more information about your hand.

I guess you and I have a different approach. When I see someone better than me doing something I'm not, I don't automatically assume they're doing something wrong; I wonder if they're doing something right. Then I seek to understand it instead of trying to explain it away.

I used to think like that. At this point, I don't think either way. I just try to analyze it. Sometimes it makes sense to me and sometimes it doesn't.

And the reason that's all I do is that one thing I have discovered is that there are plenty of players who are better than me who nonetheless have serious leaks. There are also plenty of players who are better than me who do things that I thought were wrong that weren't.

Now if I see a GTO bot do something....

It can be very hard to improve at poker because you don't know what you don't know. So you don't know your leak is a leak, and this is true of players of all skill levels, so I also "use to think" that better players were doing something with sound rationale, and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't.

Regardless, Mike Sexton knows. Mike Sexton knows your poker sins, your dirty poker secrets. He knows.

Is my post really that unclear? I'm saying that when you see a player that you know to be better than you at poker doing something that you don't understand, your first thought shouldn't be, "that's bad. They must be overdoing it or have a leak." You should try to figure out WTF they're doing and why and then make a judgement about whether or not it's a good play after you've first sought to understand.