playing 4-8. i'm in sb. 8872J. everyone folds to button, competent btn raises, i call, bb calls. no read on bb.

2 : 3 : 1

87432. instinct is to draw then evaluate. and i think plan to pat any 9 or better made hand and lead as i can't assume btn will auto bet here.

thoughts? thanks!

Is he a competent button or he won't auto-bet? It can't be both.

The button will always auto bet here given he is a card ahead.

If it went 2/3/2 you can still go for c/r when you go two to pat, it’s likely one of two will improve or button will sometimes bet UI

Btw pre draw is marginal. Calling 2788 is okay. Once big also calls think there may be a desire to draw 3 instead to 27. Don’t think the extra 8 blocker sways that decision

i'd fold this pre. as played, i think it's an easy c/r pat.
i'm not really up on predraw ranges tho so not sure what my ranges are in the sb vs, any position, really.

yeah honestly i was thinking pre was a bit marginal. i've been seeing this spot come up more and more (i.e. an 8 with a 23 etc.) and thinking i'm capping my hand's value and making it tougher for me to play later streets.

gotcha guys on the auto bet thing. had some weird idea in my head at the time of posting lol

i think 823 is def a cc vs btn and maybe co and fold vs earlier. big difference between 823 and 872.

ya, totally. not a great example by me.

I’d probably fold the 2788 unless the button was opening literally all the time. I didn’t want to be called a nit lol. But the BB needs to bear most of the burden of defending. Anyhow I’d defend 843 and 743 from SB though.

Maybe that’s up for debate though. Think the deck is usually live in deuces and more realization of equity.

I’d 3b pre vs a btn open

why so? does the paired 8 move you to that decision? say, if bb calls, do you draw 3 maybe?

I don’t like a 3bet here

i think it makes sense to 3bet all 3card hands in sb vs btn, whereas still flatting them in bb vs btn, just trying to get the bb's overlay. i can't figure out how to do the math of 2card vs 4card/pats %, but either way isn't a disaster if he caps since he's most likely only a card ahead.
my guess is it's really close, whether flatting sb vs btn or 3betting is better. like 3betting might be better for good players and flatting might be better for beginners like myself.

kinda like, most hands you coldcall sb with are hands you'd open utg, and most hands you open on btn are 2cards and rougher 3cards, so drawing a parallel to lhe, i'm 3betting my full utg range in sb vs a btn open too. if i knew how to do math tho, i wouldn't have to resort to this sort of pseudo-logic.

I don’t really think you should flat vs btn opens in general and I think folding this hand is too tight vs most btn ranges. I would 3b 872 sb vs btn as well. I would certainly think of drawing 3 if the bb calls.

thanks, this explains a lot.

I'm fine with 3 betting SB, or flatting, or a mix of two but if I had a 3bet only strategy 2788 wouldn't be in it because it's too weak

You are in much worse shape against a 1cd draw than the equities would indicate otherwise because a) hot/cold equity is overstated in D2 vs D1 because the D2 needs to improve to a degree on 1st two draws to realize and b) positional advantages further sways it because the IP player can freeze or know when to stay pat with a ten/jack or plays to make OOP break

The need to improve reduces your hot/cold by a factor of around 80-85% while positional advantage is obviously impossible to translate to a % I would guess it is worth more than any value placed on the blocker 8 (if you are placing value on that). Blocker helps you 2-3% but only if the other player needs it.

You are going to run into a 1cd draw around 11-12% when you include the big blind which isn't a huge amount but your hand isn't that great against anything. It's a lot to deal with and at the end of the day we are just trying to chop up one small bet. And the best hand we can make is a #10. So I don't like a 3 bet. You made me type out the long version lol

do you know what % of the time we're against a 2card draw? i know 3:2 is less bad than 3:4 but still think there should be a lot of them. like, we're still getting 10% equity from 2 card draws, an overlay, plus higher chance of winning the pot. whereas 11%(?) of the time we're losing 30% equity hu or 3handed. and our equity doesn't improve at all if we let the BB's 2cards in. if btn has 3card, and sb has 2card, we're still only around 34-35%

Of a somewhat standard 48% open range 2CDs are around 30% of the 48%.

Your equity vs that range is probably around 46% or so but that’s before positional disadvantage gets factored in. Then we haven’t even talked about reverse odds.

ok thanks. how'd you figure out those odds?

Each 1cd combo is around .3%, 2cd combo 1%, 3cd combo 1.8%

Put together a range of hands and just sum it up.

Equity vs a range is just a weighted average. After so many years of looking at numbers I can just eyeball it and get pretty close.

i don't think i'm understanding what your %'s mean. does 1cd combo = 4card hand? and .3% of what? sorry if these questions are dumb

Oh I could have explained better. 2347 is 1cd combo, .3% chance of being dealt

268 is a 2cd around 1.00% of being dealt, add another 1% for 237, etc etc

27 and other 3cd are 1.9% or whatever I typed

Write out what the ranges are for an opener and just sum up %s to get at opening range % of hands being played.

By looking at these I can do various equity against a range calcs in excel or quickly come to an approximation as I have done here in this thread

oh ok. thanks. that helps a lot.

You are welcome man

% pat hand is published in a lot of places including Super System 1. It is .70% for an 87 or better low.

It's about right, I have a few more in there but I morphed UTG and HJ into one category. I have up to 268. Don't forget 8762, because it's not counted when you just put in 762 and you will often break that 8762 to play 762.

My UTG/HJ is at 21.1%

Very useful exercise.