Badugi, midstakes live

I open a34 tri + a paint in the co
Bb who’s the spot calls

(5 small bets) 2-1, I brick
I cbet and call the x/r

(4.5 big bets) Pat-1, I brick
Bb bets and I call at 5.5:1

(6.5 big bets) pat-1, i brick
Bb bets

Should I bluffcatch or do I have enough badugis in my range to pay off

Depends how he is a spot, must spots I think of in Badugi just call down too light with bad tris and try and hit something.

If he’s a lagtard spot that’s a little more rare but happens but he was D2 which I think makes it less likely it’s a snow imo

I think it’s a losing call, just as a side note you also have a23 and a24.

He plays too many hands and draws to every thin hand possible.

I’m not sure how often he snows here, but I feel like if I fold this, villain may have a profitable raise and snow everytime (or is this thinking mistaken?)

Sounds like a typical spot. In practice I don’t think he’s snowing very often if at all here. You dont want to be making call downs based upon what he theoretically could do to exploit you, only what he is capable of doing. And the option of making a snow play may be profitable but just calling again and drawing may be higher EV from perspective of villain.

If you are any good with spreadsheets you can basically solve for how often the snow sequence has to work out for him to be profitable and then try and determine with what you need to call down with to not be exploitable in theory

But sometimes you should raise the turn with a tri as good as yours in this spot

I'm no good with excel, but I can attempt to do gorilla math to estimate frequencies. After hero cbets the flop, there's 5.5 small bets (2.75 big bets) in the pot.

Villain is going to risk 3 big bets whereas hero is going to risk upto 2.5 big bets (0.5 big bets on the flop, 1 big bet on the turn, and 1 big bet on the river).

Assuming hero always goes to the river, there will be villain's 3 big bets + hero's 1.5 big bets (0.5 big bets on flop and 1 big bet on turn) + 2.75 initial big bets. Villain is risking 3 big bets to win 4.25 big bets.

The bluff has to work 3/7.25 (41%) of the time to be profitable. I guess since hero gets to draw at a badugi 3 times, hero should be showing down over 41% of the time. Am I correct to think if villain tries to snow here, it would most likely always be a mistake? I think hero can just muck a good tri on the river and not be exploited.

This is all over simplified and hero can make a badugi on the turn and has the option to raise. But I'd guess the numbers are close to this ballpark.

i guess there's more to it...

since hero just flat the xr, villain can put hero on a d1. Hero only has 2 shots at a badugi now, which makes the xr snow play not as horrible...

I think you are on the right track and at some point probably later this month I can help out

But it’s reasonably complicated, like sometimes villain lose less, like if he gets raised on turn

Also he would have some EV if he chose to D2 and play it straightforward. So your attempts to stop him from snowing doesn’t have to reduce the EV of his play to be zero, threshold would be is he shouldn’t have a lot more EV by snowing as opposed to just trying and making a hand

Ah ic what ur saying. Ev of him d2 or d1 is higher than the ev of him simply snowing. So snow freq is even less than what I think it might be theoretically.

Also would love some more help later this month.
I’ll attempt a few more tries at re-inventing a broken wooden wheel in the meantime!

Well just to make sure we are on the same page, on the flop he can fold (EV of 0), draw at something, or initiate a snow. Given the pot odds he is getting and his equity share of money in the middle let’s just say we know his EV by continuing in the hand (from his current viewpoint) is around .50 big bets. If we allow him to snow from that point where he would have an EV of say around 1.5 big bets that would be a problem to address

Yeah we can definitely play around with some stuff, but I’m up to my neck in some 27TD stuff I’m currently working on..

I’m still lost...

Folding has ev of 0, and
let’s assume d2 has ev of 0.5

Snowing helps increase the ev of the aggregate of villain’s pat hands, because villain can value bet more and hero needs to station more now.

If we assume snowing has an average ev of 0.5, villain is prolly indifferent between snowing and d2 right?

I think what ur saying is usually the ev of d2 is a lot higher than the ev of snowing. And by this I infer practically no villain is going to snow here.

However there also must exist hands that benefit more from snowing than drawing right?

Gl with that and also thanks for the help/comments as always

Thanks and no problem bud!

I guess the main point is that in theory we don’t need to reduce the EV of snowing from the perspective of the villain to 0 if he has a positive EV on the flop from just calling and D2ing. That’s the important point and really only the definitive point I’m trying to make. Well I guess I’m also saying that if we are worried about being exploited by snows we shouldn’t make snowing so much more profitable than simply drawing.

I’m not saying I know that D2ing has a higher EV than snowing. It’s possible snowing has a higher EV against certain opponents, ranges, and cards they have seen.

In practice though, I highly doubt players you would consider to be spots are thinking about this though.

To answer your last question snowing 45 where you have seen all of the 4s is certainly a better snow than A2 and have no blockers

Does that mean 45 hand is more profitable than drawing, maybe so and that type of hand is one we would test. But calcs are complicated as you can surmise.

In the games I play, villain as described will have a badugi nearly all the time when he goes 2-pat otf. It will usually be a bad badugi because most badugis are bad and his D2 range is too wide, so you have an option I didn't see mentioned; you can 3b his c/r and see if he breaks. If he doesn't break, you can still pat behind otf and bet turn when he checks. He will likely either break there or throw his hand away, and if he doesn't, you can draw with an easy fold on the river UI.

If he breaks the flop we draw, if he pats flop then breaks turn, some people prefer to pat the good three, some people take the equity edge and draw. The advantage to patting the tri is that a bet won't need to go in on the river, but if you read villan as UI you can bet anyway. If he folds you don't have to give away how you played the hand, if he bluffcatches you probably still win.

Yes if he goes D2 to pat his median badugi is a T9 thus sometimes we should raise on the draw

I advocated mixing in the turn raise every once but 3betting the flop and doing what you suggest is good as well and glad you mentioned it. I think it has more break and fold equity as when doing it on the turn many opponents will call and see what we do

However by waiting until the turn we have the opportunity to make a good badugi and get to raise him for value. So it’s a trade off and feel like we should do a mix of both

wow this flop b/3b bluff play has never occurred to me. how frequent would you say to do this? I feel like if I choose to do it with this hand, it feels like I'll overdo it. I feel like this specific hand is way too strong to turn into a bluff on the flop. Perhaps a better candidate would be something like 456 or a67?

if you do make a badugi on the turn, what is the weakest badugi you'll raise with? What if I make say a24[J-K] or a24[8-9]?

are there any strong badugis you're just calling and patting?

probably a 9 here since it's so smooth, don't see anything to do with a T or J other than just call and pat

It is extremely hard to improve a hand in this game, and with a good 3-card you should strongly prefer to show it down against another 3-card hand if possible, rather than take heat, draw to a rare badugi and fold the river, which is the most likely outcome vs a fish D2 that c/r/pats flop.

This is the sort of thing you can do specifically against a weaker player who draws to poor D2 hands, therefore likely makes a bad badugi, but can break it to something like 345, 456 or whatever. You should know who in your lineup will have hands like this, and against these players you can do this reasonably often until you get caught, then you have to lay off for a while.

I think a smooth Nine is a snap raise here, Ten call down, bet if checked to on river, Jack just show down regardless. The reasoning here is that while there are ton of Jacks, there are still lots more Tens than Nines, and a relatively small number of Nines and better hands.

Yeah, it's probably a raise regardless of our three other cards with nines due to the fact that when our opponent has a very bad badugi such as a Q or K or queen mostly our only chance to collect two bets is to raise the turn. He will often call to see if we are making a move and then possibly c/f river. But if we just call and pat he may just fold these hands anyway so we get just one bet


When we have a bad nine we have around 62% equity against his D2 to pat range and can in theory value own ourselves slightly if he caps with better. But he's not capping a 9 and may not cap an 8.

But when we have a good nine, meaning his nines are no good we have around 73% equity