Bet sizing to make up for dominated hand.
Join Date: Jul 2018
Posts: 9
Hi. This is the hand I played badly. PartyPoker is acting up. Lost the hand history.
The jist:
Hero has JTo
Flop: J x x rainbow
Hero checks. Villain bets 2/3 pot. Hero calls.
Turn: J x x T
Hero bets 1/2 pot. Villain calls.
River: J x x T K
Hero checks. Villain checks. Hero shows JTo. Villain mucks AJo.
My question is. PokerStove says I'm dominated preflop 29% vs 71%. Since I'm going to be losing money on average. How much money do I need to extract in these situations to make up for my loses?
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 4,822
Not a lot of details to go on here.
If your software is telling you that, given the specific preflop action, JTo is a fold preflop, then you will not be able to make it profitable postflop in the long run.
There is no correct bet size that can magically fix your range in the middle of the hand.
When you go down a branch of the game tree that is not long term profitable, you just have to make the best of it *that time* and try not to repeat that mistake later.
To give a ballpark guestimate answer to your specific question, you have to bet larger when you make your hand to make up for all the times you miss and lose money.
If you are a 30/70 dog preflop then you have to earn back about half of what you put in pre just to break even, and rake will make that even worse.
-Rob
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 13,256
JT is obviously dominated by AJ, but villain's range isn't just that one specific hand. If villain only played AJ, then it would be mistake to call with JT, because you're crushed, but it's probably the case that JT does OK vs villain's range as a whole.
e.g. You defend JT in the BB vs a range that the villain opens, because JT does "well enough" against that range to at least break even, given the pot odds.
FWIW, against the following arbitrary 25% range, which is similar to what many players would open in the CO [22+,A2s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,98s,87s,76s,A9o+,A5o, KTo+,QTo+,JTo] JTo has almost 39% equity. It won't win quite that much of the pot OOP, but if you were in the BB, the pot odds probably mean you only need to win about 25% of the time to break even. The losses you sustain when you run into a better hand are overcome by the pots you win by either making the best hand, or by bluffing.