$10 Ignition SNG – blinds 25/50

UTG (Hero) - 1745
UTG+1 – 1350
UTG+2 – 753
BTN – 1247
SB – 2388
BB – 1517

Hero dealt A 3 4 J - raises to 150; 3 folds; SB 3bets to 500; BB folds; Hero calls 350

Pot = 1050
Flop = 5 2 2
SB bets pot 1050

I think there's little chance he actually has a 2 when he leads out (player pool would definitely try to "trap" here with a 2), but I should have a lot of 2s in my range, so c-betting really doesn't make any sense to me. That said, what is the worst hand you would expect Villain to have here? Not sure there's much question about what hero should do, but welcome any opinions on the hand.

I mean I guess it depends on villains 3bet range pre. But it should be mostly AA+low ,A2,A3 which can all get it in for 1.2SPR.

Obviously we are also getting it in with our hand.

You could fold pre.. stacks are pretty shallow

I think its very reasonable for villain to lead trips as well, especially if he does not have a low draw

Maybe even opening pre is not good but pretty sure should fold to 3-bet from SB. OTF I'd pot my entire range as villain, since stacks are so shallow. You are both very 2-heavy though. Worst hand villain can have is AALx imo.

Hmm... cannot imagine not opening a top 5% hand here. Could possibly fold to 3bet if I was 99% sure it was AA I guess. Agree that spr is too low to worry about leading ranges that much.

Source for AJ43s being a top 5% hand? I can see that it has 43,47% equity against real top 5% hands.

I think you could open under 15% range in this exact spot and for me it's not clear if this hand is top 15%.

It of course has bad equity against the rest of the top5% since that is so heavily AA.

That said, it still is a decent enough hand to open IMO, especially in a game where people are fairly unlikely to shove on you.

Could you explain the numbers in the chart? If AJ43s is top 5%, boy, that 5% is a crowded place.

http://pokercoder.blogspot.com/2006/...-of-hands.html

In general, it is a little too focused on raw equity. But it's a good enough approximation IMO, especially when stack sizes are short.

Spreek’s view is a little more elegant; I just have a download of all 16432 hand ranks (6handed). FWIW here are some others nearby:

800 (AK)(AQ)
801 (A3)J4
802 A(Q2)5
803 (A5)(92)
804 (AQ42)
805 AJ(J3)
806 AA97
807 (AQ)(72)
808 AK(K6)
809 AAT8
810 (AJ)(54)
...
822 A(Q4)3

Doesn't it seem a bit odd that a hand like that is top 5%? I understand that AAxx is not that huge, but that is already 2,5%. Then there are AK2 and AQ2 and so on. AJ34 being top 5% wouldn't even cross my mind.

Yes, it does play poorly against good hands. Don't you think one of the qualities of a strong hand is that it plays good against hands that will likely give it action?

I think it is a bit strange for sure. For example, you wouldn't expect AK2x which has 57% equity vs AJ34 to be lower rated at 5.2 percentile on average. But I think it is an artifact of a system that perhaps overweights the importance of being effective in multiway pots.

But the vast majority of otherwise good hands do poorly against AA in pure equity terms. In that respect, if anything this hand is probably better than average (for example, AJ34 vs AA has higher equity than AK2x vs AA).

AJ34 does do unusually badly against the other strong hands that are not AA though, and admittedly that is a concern. But I think it is less so when we are so short.

Certainly this.
Yes, it's very good to have 3 wheel cards vs AA. Also A2 loses it's value if villain can't beat our low anyway.
And this is exactly why in my hand rankings AJ34 is at around 15%.
Intuitively I disagree with that. At this depth, villains should be more prone to 3-bet more hands that we are doing poorly against. Of course, maybe in practice they call too wide and give up too much OTF, which is certainly a good reason to open this hand and GII ~any flop.

I understand why you think that AJ34 is not quite a top 5% hand, I think that's certainly reasonable.

But it is far better than a 15% hand IMO. Just taking a naive range of hands of all combos (certainly not all of which I think are better than AJ34, especially the rainbow hands, the trips hands, etc.) of (AA, A2, AK3, AQ3, A[JJ-KK][4,5]) we only get to roughly 10.5%.

In my opinion, we can place AJ34ss quite comfortably in the top 10% of hands, although perhaps 5% is too optimistic.

RE: being short stack, you may be right as you are certainly a better PLO8 tournament player than me. But I would have thought that as stack sizes get short, we become relatively less concerned with having somewhat poor equity vs the very best hands we might be up against, and relatively more concerned with having good equity vs the rest of hands and good chances of stealing the blinds.

In the same way that for example, a hand like 88 in holdem goes way up in value when short despite doing very poorly against the top 5% of hands.

I accept the possibility that I am undervaluing this exact hand type, due to it being a bit dominated against most holdings that want to get it in pre at 10-30bb depth. If I'm using ppt correctly, against the 10,5% range you gave AJ34s has 47,3%. Not bad, not great. I fail to see how AJ34s could be a top 5% hand under any normal circumstances though, given that it's an underdog against a typical 10% range.

Well yeah, it is similar in some ways, but the difference is that there are hands that want to GII that 88 does well against.

I'm glad we got into this conversation, despite it having not much to do with the actual hand. I wasn't intending to label opening this hand as a mistake, rather saying that you don't NEED to open this hand and folding is free. I'm such a nit.

great discussion. i don't even play these types of games but this kind of knowledge is always awesome to pick up.

It's top 3% on this Russian hand ranking chart I saw.....

Not opening this hand would be a big mistake. AQ34 does not do well against a 10% range either but I don't think you would be as quick to argue that it wasn't a top 5% hand. AJ34 does not do well against absolute premiums but there are still lots of hand within a top 10% range that it crushes. Even if it were only a top 15% hand which is crazy to think opening under 15% of hands in this spot is almost certainly too tight.

AQ34s is not a top 5% hand IMO. Was it quick enough?

Why is opening ~15% in this exact spot too tight? I think with this stack situation we should tighten up a bit if CL is still active.

What top 10% hands does AJ34 crush and how do you define crushing?

Hands like any A234 or any A with 3 of (2-6) suited to the A or are top 10% hands that OPs hand crushes as well as there being some other combos of AT A92 and A82 that OPs Hand does really well against. Keep in mind OPs hand is only a top 5% hand because it’s suited to the A which makes a big difference. As far as why I think you should be opening at least 15% of hands here well the first reason is it’s a 6 max sng which pays 2 places so with 6 players still remaining we shouldn’t be all that concerned about ICM. The second reason would be according to PLO GTO opening ranges which should be quite similar to PLO8 a top 15% hand would be an open here at these stack sizes. The third and probably most important is that any 10$ PLO8 sng is bound to be full of loose passive players especially on this site so it’s hard for me to imagine that this wouldn’t be a profitable open for any good player.

Fully expected TS2 to come in here and tell me to fold pre - not you!

So speaking of the actual hand, when you say worst villain should have is AAL but that you are shoving your whole range, are you saying you wouldn’t 3-bet AAHH, AKK3 double-suited, etc?


Agree with all of these reasons especially the 3rd one, which is the reason I opened here. I don't even think folding some flops is disastrous - giving away some equity sure, but seems like a small price to pay <~10% of the time.

True, there are some weaker hands than Hero's holding. Not many though.

It tilts me when you call that a top 5% hand. Certainly a sooted A is good tho.

Ah, I thought it's MTT for whatever reason. Changes a bit.

Well, I don't think PLO GTO ranges have much to do with the situation at hand. I disagree a bit on general, I think you can play really tight EP and give away nothing, especially if nobody understands how strong your range is when you open. Calling folding a big mistake is nonsensical in my view.

Balancing
Probably not AAHH, but not sure. AKK5 for example I guess, and GII flop. So yes, that is weaker than AALx. Shouldn't matter much though, I think it's just a clear cut get in with your actual hand.

Ignoring limping as an option, i think folding this hand pre-flop is reasonable. Not because its a bad hand, but because it plays badly vs additional bets AND when called. Its a classic hand with good hu and multiway equity that frequently will fail to realize that equity on many board textures or due to pressure.There are so many ways for hero to bleed chips opening this utg and as one of the healtheir stacks hero could easily be better off picking better spots.

I think both min raise, 1.25 raise and limp make this spot more interesting from a theory perspective, though again, i think the major problem for hero is the 15 - 25bb stacks.

It tilts me more when you say that its not despite every site on the internet that does Omaha Hi Lo Hand rankings saying that it is.