Sorry it's taken this long to reply. Lot of good replies in here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordRiverRat
Great thread. This hand I was in recently vs a TAG reg is probably a great example of RIO in action since with the action I only really want to put one or two small bets in but there's a significant threat of a triple barrel shove by the river. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...ation-1509225/
OP what would your math have to say about this?
I saw this hand when you posted it. I think the flop is a textbook case of RIO. For those that haven't looked at the thread, Hero has raised preflop with QJ and now Villain has led out on a flop of
Q77rb (Hero has a backdoor club draw)
The pot is 45 and Villain has bet 30.
What makes this a RIO spot is Hero's read that Villain is going to continue to fire on the turn, no matter what he has. This is a significant factor in the question of "how often do we have to be good here to call?" The answer is not 28.5% as our 5:2 pot odds would suggest, because we know there's at least one more bet coming. In fact, Hero says that he called and faced a $60 bet on the turn.
The thing is,
we knew that a bet like this was coming when we called the flop. We didn't know the exact size, but we knew there was going to be a bet. So really, when we decide to call the flop with another bet coming, we can't fold the turn. The only logically consistent plays are to call both bets or fold the flop--otherwise we are just handing Villain an extra $30 before folding.
As far as the math goes, if we could somehow know that the turn bet would be $60, then really, with RIO, we aren't calling 30 to win 45 and then 60 to win 165--we're really calling 90 to win 135, which is odds of 3:2. So already we have to be good at least 40% of the time if we want to be able to justify calling the flop. Furthermore, this does not mention river action. If we don't know our opponent's tendencies on the river, this can get even worse!
The point of RIO is that you have to know, or at least have a good sense of, how the hand is going to go down before you put that flop call in. If you don't, you'll be stuck in spots where the fact that you put in dead money earlier means you're making marginal decisions to protect your dead money, and throwing good money after bad (or however that expression goes).
The only times it makes sense to fold turn after calling flop are:
1. We aren't sure whether Villain will bet again. In other words, we think Villain has enough hands we beat that he'll shut down on the turn with that it is OK to call one bet and fold to future action.
2. We realized in the middle of the hand that calling the flop was a mistake, and we're folding the turn so as not to compound that mistake.
Reason #1 actually leads me to this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willyoman
I believe that with RIO, such as with the KJo spot, there will be an inverse relationship between pot size and your hand equity.
This (the underlined) is a statement that is very often true about a lot of situations in LLSNL. A lot of times people will bet a relatively weak range, then on future streets they'll shut down with the weak hands and continue betting the strong ones. As this happens, the strength of their hand rises with the size of the pot, and this creates the inverse relationship between the pot size and our hand equity.
What I'm trying to say, though, is that while this statement is often true,
it's not RIO. It's actually the opposite. And in fact, the worst RIO spots are the ones where this is not true, or where it's true in a weird way.
Let's use the above hand as an example, broken up into 3 parts.
1) Let's suppose that in that flop spot, Villain's leading range is AQ/KQ/QT/Q9 (ignoring QJ to simplify the math). Then let's suppose that on the turn, Villain checks QT and Q9 and only bets AQ and KQ.
Clearly on the flop, we are good half the time, and on the turn (ignoring the times we improve), we're good never (if Villain is betting). So what's the right course of action in the scenario I just outlined? Obviously it is to call the flop and fold the turn if Villain bets again. Half the time, Villain checks and we win 75 (or more if Villain calls a value bet from us). Half the time, we lose 30. This is a case that would validate Willy's point that as the pot size goes up, our equity goes down. It's also a spot where we can call and then fold later because the situation has changed in a predictable way. That means this is NOT a RIO spot. Our true odds are exactly our pot odds because we can confidently fold the turn if facing another bet and we're confident we won't face another bet from a hand we beat.
2) Now let's change it by assuming that Villain has a range of AQ/KQ/QT/Q9 and we know that he double barrels all these hands and always checks the river (and let's assume that we won't see a J, T, 9, or 2 clubs on later streets). That means that as the pot size goes up, our equity does NOT go down. It would seem to go against Willy's point. And yet, this IS a RIO spot because our flop pot odds are 5:2 but our true odds are 3:2. It is a RIO spot where the correct play is to call two bets and see the showdown, but it is a RIO spot nonetheless.
3) Finally, let's look at a case that makes it weird. What happens if Villain continues on the turn with AQ/KQ/QT and shuts down Q9? So first of all, obviously this is a spot where there's an inverse relationship between your hand equity and the pot size. On the flop we have 50% equity; on the turn, it's 33.3...% when facing a bet. However, if we again assume Villain checks the river with his whole range, the correct play is once again to call down, right? If the turn pot is 105 and the bet is only 60, we're getting odds of 165:60, way better than 2:1. So we can call the turn, since when we get to the turn, we'll win the existing pot of 105 25% of the time, lose 60 50% of the time, and win 165 25% of the time. All told, that's an EV of 67.5-30=
37.5.
Since we called 30 on the flop, our total EV on the flop call has to be 7.5 since we're calling 30 to make an average of 37.5 later on. So here, as with case 2, we should call down.
But now let's compare the 3 EVs:
Case 1, where we call flop and fold turn, playing perfectly: we win 75 half the time and lose 30 half the time. Our EV is
22.5.
Case 2, where we call down because Villain's range doesn't narrow: we win 135 half the time and lose 90 half the time. Our EV is
22.5. (By the way, it should not be surprising that this is the same as the first case, since compared to that case, the only difference is a bet going in at 1:1 odds with 50% equity.)
Only in Case 3 does our EV go down. It doesn't go down enough that it's -EV to call down, but the fact that now our turn bet is going in at 33% equity instead of 50% slashes our EV.
My point, I guess, is that
the negative effects of RIO do not correspond with how much our equity drops from street to street. When our equity drops a ton (in this example, to 0) on the turn, RIO barely applies (in this example it doesn't apply at all) because we know we can safely call one bet to fold to future action. Only when our equity goes down part of the way, so that the turn decision is closer, does RIO really mess with our EV. It can also impact our EV in other ways, but to me this is the weirdest.