Hey Carl!

I have some questions about ur article. You say the following:

"I think that some players are fearful of the reverse implied odds that small aces have when they are against larger aces but it is the equity against a range that we are concerned with here."

Does this mean that u consider RIO to be a theoretical fallacy? Or is it that u have such good control over ur opponents that u can play the hand with really high precission?

If we are going to realize the hot'n'cold equity we gonna have to call twice on many boards, with say A2 UI? That seems creepy vs an UTG range?

These recomendations are for high stakes game. I guess u would play tighter if the rake was higher?

Anzer zee queztionz!!

Still no answer to this question? Yeesh!

Carl probably didn't see the thread. I sent him an e-mail.

From the article in question (NOTE: the link below will be invalid in three months when the article is removed):

Defending the Big Blind in Six Max Limit Play, Part 1

Define large.

First, exactly how many hands were played in a 6-handed LHE game where the hero defended the big blind from an UTG raiser (after the four intervening players have folded)?

Second, exactly how many hands did the big blind defend with A2o, A3o, & A4o?

I think the 2nd number is the relevant sample size we ought to be concerned with. I expect that that number, even if you have access to databases of hands played by others, will not be very large.

Another problem is: did the hero defend his big blind from a solitary UTG raiser with A2o, A3o, & A4o 100% of the time? If not, then some sort of selection was made as to whether or not to defend with a weak offsuit Ace versus certain players in certain situations. And that selection would be determined by known information about the UTG player and prevailing table conditions. In other words, the decision to defend or not would be dependent, and that dependency would likely have skewed the database results in such a way that defending with weak Aces would appear to be more profitable.

Even if the hero defended with A2o, A3o, and A4o 100% of the time, what we need to know is: how many times the hero defended the big blind from a UTG raiser who is known to be a solid opener in that position? Surely not all of the entries in your database(s) for defending with A2o, A3o, & A4o are against solid players. In fact, a substantial percentage of those database entries must be against weak/loose players. So, before you reached your conclusions, did you filter your database to exclude samples involving weak/loose players who raised from UTG?

After all, what we are considering is whether you would lose less money by defending with a weak Ace than you would lose by merely surrendering your big blind by folding.

Weak offsuit Aces just don't seem to fare that well, even when played on the button (by raising after the earlier position players have all folded). See the relevant entries in the spreadsheets on pages 19 & 25 in the book Winning in Tough Hold'Em Games by Grudzien and Herzog.

Hi Guys,

Sorry about not replying, only just read an e-mail from Bryan and as you can probably guess....I dont frequent the forum due to time restrictions and basically being active on another forum and I simply dont have time for two. I know that has upset a few people on here in the past but its not intentional believe me,

I have good control over my opponents??.......I wish

Yeah...that probably sounds a little odd as I have just read that back and I can see where you are coming from. The statement should have said something along the line of "in my experience, some players refrain from playing smaller aces in situations where it is clearly profitable to do so as they fear domination"......or words to that effect.

A2o vs UTG only just barely qualifies and in some circumstances depending on UTG range or post flop style may not be profitable so I can see where you are coming from here.

Actually while I am here, I will also point out that its been a while since I have actually played limit at all so there may be differences to what actually applies now. I try to conduct the articles in such a way so that those differences are minimised although I do still follow the games very closely but mainly out of theoretical interest.