I don't think anyone is trying to "constantly justify them by saying we play sofaking good or that it is important in the metagame or whatever" in this thread. At least I'm not. What I am saying is that there are some players who can play this particular hand in this particular spot profitably. There aren't many, but they are out there.

how many of them are from minnesota?

Ill do it but once I flop the ace I'm calling all bets. Oh please stop using the its not close line without sayin what your cutoff is.

Anyone who is posting in this thread that says that they fold and "it's not close".........probably should be folding.

I actually do fold here in practice but I am not convinced its right or wrong but I am usually going give more credit to the opinion of winners who play primarily in a 2 3.

I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I think having this crappy a hand from the worst position is going to be a loser if we had a large sample and the best full ring limit HE player in the world gets to play it postflop.

All--

I fold this hand preflop. Rare that I'd play it for more than one bet.

Also, there are a lot of things that make there be more than two kinds of players. One's quality as a player is not determined by the number of hands he can play. (Which is not necessarily to say that anyone in this thread is claiming exactly that.) Of course, a player with certain postflop skills can turn some preflop folds into calls or raises. But I wouldn't say that's the genesis of too much of the expert's edge. (And a lot of the expert's edge is finding "extra" folds before the flop.)

All my best,

--Nate

playing primarily in a 2/3 is irrelevant. this isn't something you learn by experience.

My point was that a lot of the people saying that is close play 2 3 regularly while some of the people saying it isn't close play a 1 2. My guess is that the 2 3 players have spent more time thinking about this spot out of necessity.

and my point was that this isn't something you learn by experience or by thinking about it.

ok so how do you learn it? SOMEONE PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE SHOW THEIR WORK

And so by "thinking about it" I mean ev calcs, stoving etc. obviously or do you mean to say that there is no way to ascertain whether a borderline hand like this is profitable? Also, My point isnt that I think that it is profitable or it isnt. Just that it is closer than others in this thread think and I will tend to side with people who play in the 2/3 on a regular basis who are proven big winners in that structure rather than those who play a 1/2 structure in arguments that are mostly conjectural. Imo, the sb in the 2/3 is a very common spot to misplay (especially for tags) and those who beat the games probably play the small blind well.

All,

In retrospect, I think I was pushing it a little bit by calling here. In general, the players in these games are so easy to play against that I tend to err on the side of playing too many hands, but I do think I've taken that a bit too far recently.

Maybe when I'm A-gaming it I can play this hand profitably. (And certainly this particular lineup of opponents would be much better than the standard ******s I'm up against.) Maybe I can't, though. I'm not sure. But I wasn't playing my A+ game at the time, so it would be a bit disingenuous of me to use my "expert" play as the reason I called. The gap between my A- or B+ game and that of my opponents in this hand isn't as big as my A+ game, and noticably so.

So, I don't know. I am getting like 9.5:1 here, and my opponents are ******s, but the fact that I wasn't playing one of the one in six or so sessions where I'm on my A+ game should be reason enough for me to fold these super-marginal-at-best hands.

But I do call a lot from the blinds - more so than most people on this forum. And I generally feel fine about it.

Very well put.

i assume stinky is referring to running simulations to get at an estimate. Which obv would be a huge waste of time for almost anybody, since this spot will vv rarely come up. In general, ppl like mitch and i use our "experience" (i.e. pt db's) to decide on correct pf play but thats cuz we usually only worry about common hu spots where we can amass sig sample sizes.

also, i expect that if you poll ppl who play in similar games with similar (winning) styles about their cutoff here you will get at a rough estimate for correct play. Thats cuz game def has darwinian element to it, even if ppl are unaware of why they do what they do.

BTW, my cutoff is ~A8o here. Would imagine the ev is relatively flat function in number of players 4-9.

Were you sitting next to each other when you guys wrote this? Did you switch off on the same laptop so you could...(nah, I wont go there ) But tell Kirby to check the ego, one time, please.

If you fold it FINE, if you play FINE. Frankly it's a slightly negative EV situation in a shoebox at this price if not neutral but it really depends on the game yo you play in and YOUR style of play. Frankly, I play a less variant style OOP, and fold here, but guess what, you'll find me call w/A8o here more often for sure.

Now for the Vegas 30 game, in this situation, it is going to be more of a fold. In the Commerce game you guys are playing, sure I can see you calling in the right situations especially when you play w/the same players all the time.

Changing my answer. I think the immediate is less important than the fact that we don't c/r the AJ9 flop with A7.

I would rather play this hand against the types of dummies that show up in Vegas than LA. Aggression being higher is going to mean more reverse implied odds, and opponents are generally more difficult to put on small ranges of hands, also increasing your reverse implied odds. The fewer one pair flops I can get away from without putting in very much money - or even any at all - the more this hand costs me to play.

I think that most people should fold here, if you fold, you definitely are not passing up on much. If you play good postflop, I know you can play this spot profitably. I know quite a few people who would call here and show a profit with it. It's that simple.

As far as the ego........I was merely saying that if you think this spot is "not close" you are dead wrong, because it is close........so take it easy Joe.

It's really about the PFRs range given a raise after limpers like this in a Vegas game because it's more likely to have extremely dominated.

I hear ya, I was reading too much into the black and white text (common problem of mine) as I obviously agree with you w/my A8o statement.

All--

There's an important difference between "very wrong" and "clearly wrong." I'd say this preflop call is the latter but not the former.

GuyOnTilt's posts from a few weeks back are pretty salient now. There was a time when this forum was more than just people interpreting others' posts in highly uncharitable ways and then insulting them.

--Nate

Please elaborate on the difference between these two phrases.

PokerBob--

"Very" refers to the magnitude of the expectation. "Clearly" refers to the degree of certainty a player could or should have in the rightness or wrongness of the action.

Giving you 101-100 on a coinflip would be clearly wrong, but not very wrong.

It is hard to give an example of something that is very wrong but not clearly wrong, because any specific agent or collective of poker knowledge that is sufficient to determine that something is very wrong is also sufficient to determine that it's obviously wrong, in some sense of "obvious." There's a narrower sense in which it refers to the immediate epistemic access of a particular agent. E.g., plays that are clearly wrong for DeathDonkey in badugi might not be clearly wrong to me.

--Nate