Top pair revisited
The other day I made a post titled Don't fall in love with top pair. More recently Ed Miller has a post about Going Broke with One Pair. The two ideas are related, although not exactly the same. Falling in love with top pair often leads to going broke needlessly, but the converse is not so often true. There are plenty of circumstances besides inappropriately falling in love with top pair which might lead to going busted with top pair. Ed's post uses one of those other situations as an example to illustrate his thesis.
His thesis appears to be
I'm not sure that I'd say going broke is ever the right thing to do, although it might sometimes be a common result from doing the right thing.
Ed didn't mention my prior post in his, but making a reference to somebody elses blog isn't the sort of thing I expect from Ed anyway. He's just not that kind of guy.
Some of Ed's post is based on some misconceptions he has about poker history and the source of the phrase "Don't go broke with top pair" as an adage that is heavily adopted by many players. He doesn't seem to understand the motivation for the original adage.
That's not really the source of the adage. The source of the adage is that it's a solid truth in the context of the games that gave rise to the adage. Those games tended to be deep money cash games. In deep money games it's important to keep pots small with vulnerable hands. To relate it to some comments I've made on my mathandpoker blog, (I'm having some database errors on that blog, so that link might not work) what becomes important in deep money no limit games isn't EV, it's risk-adjusted EV. Risk-adjusted EV is a concept from mathematical finance that's based on mean/variance efficient frontiers.
The way to control risk in deep money no limit games is to keep the pot small enough so that you can easily get away from vulnerable hands if things go badly for you.
Ed gives an example of a short money game where the hero got all-in on a red flop of 566 with a pair of black queens. Flush draws, straight draws, three sixes, overcards, all kind of draws that put his hand at risk and at best he has a 2-card redraw if he's beat.
As a prelude to the hand history he says,
That's nuts.
It turns out that the villain had a black AJ and the QQ was far ahead. But with that flop, there's no way to put a typical villian on a black AJ unless you've shown a history of being willing to lay down pairs on drawy looking flops and he's shown an ability to overplay weak draws. Without that information (which I didn't see anywhere) this is not at all an example of when an ovepair is more than enough to get all-in with. Not even close.
While it turns out I actually agree with Ed that in the situation as given it probably is right for the hero to call a check-raise on the flop with all his chips (which is how he got all-in), the reason it's probably the right thing to do isn't because his hand is worth it, it's because he didn't have many chips.
There was $3.30 in the pot preflop, hero bet $2 and the villain goes all-in for $2.50 more. Sure call an extra $2.50 once the pot is over $7. But not because you have a hand to go busted with, becuase the money is short and you're getting a price.
The didn't go busted anyway when the villain rivered an Ace, he had the villain covered.
Ed seems to have completely missed the point. About the only time top pair (or an overpair) is a hand to go busted with is when you're short stacked and the pot has gotten big relative to what chips you have left. Or, as is the actual case in his example, when you're not really going broke.
His thesis appears to be
Going broke with just a pair brings on a bevy of emotions, from guilt (for ignoring such a simple rule), to embarrassment (for losing so much with such a modest hand), to despair (as in, “Why the hell can’t I figure this game out?”).
The thing is, all that angst is often thoroughly misplaced. Sometimes it’s not only ok to go broke with one pair, but it’s the right thing to do.
I'm not sure that I'd say going broke is ever the right thing to do, although it might sometimes be a common result from doing the right thing.
Ed didn't mention my prior post in his, but making a reference to somebody elses blog isn't the sort of thing I expect from Ed anyway. He's just not that kind of guy.
Some of Ed's post is based on some misconceptions he has about poker history and the source of the phrase "Don't go broke with top pair" as an adage that is heavily adopted by many players. He doesn't seem to understand the motivation for the original adage.
I think the main thing that trips people up is a common poker fallacy. It goes like this: “I see bad players do that a lot, so it must be a bad thing to do.”It’s similar for going broke with one pair. Bad players do it a lot. It’s part of what makes them bad. But that doesn’t mean that’s it’s always a thing to avoid.
That's not really the source of the adage. The source of the adage is that it's a solid truth in the context of the games that gave rise to the adage. Those games tended to be deep money cash games. In deep money games it's important to keep pots small with vulnerable hands. To relate it to some comments I've made on my mathandpoker blog, (I'm having some database errors on that blog, so that link might not work) what becomes important in deep money no limit games isn't EV, it's risk-adjusted EV. Risk-adjusted EV is a concept from mathematical finance that's based on mean/variance efficient frontiers.
The way to control risk in deep money no limit games is to keep the pot small enough so that you can easily get away from vulnerable hands if things go badly for you.
Ed gives an example of a short money game where the hero got all-in on a red flop of 566 with a pair of black queens. Flush draws, straight draws, three sixes, overcards, all kind of draws that put his hand at risk and at best he has a 2-card redraw if he's beat.
As a prelude to the hand history he says,
Sometimes one pair is more than enough to get all-in with, and if you go broke, you go broke. An example of this is today’s Q&A.
That's nuts.
It turns out that the villain had a black AJ and the QQ was far ahead. But with that flop, there's no way to put a typical villian on a black AJ unless you've shown a history of being willing to lay down pairs on drawy looking flops and he's shown an ability to overplay weak draws. Without that information (which I didn't see anywhere) this is not at all an example of when an ovepair is more than enough to get all-in with. Not even close.
While it turns out I actually agree with Ed that in the situation as given it probably is right for the hero to call a check-raise on the flop with all his chips (which is how he got all-in), the reason it's probably the right thing to do isn't because his hand is worth it, it's because he didn't have many chips.
There was $3.30 in the pot preflop, hero bet $2 and the villain goes all-in for $2.50 more. Sure call an extra $2.50 once the pot is over $7. But not because you have a hand to go busted with, becuase the money is short and you're getting a price.
The didn't go busted anyway when the villain rivered an Ace, he had the villain covered.
Ed seems to have completely missed the point. About the only time top pair (or an overpair) is a hand to go busted with is when you're short stacked and the pot has gotten big relative to what chips you have left. Or, as is the actual case in his example, when you're not really going broke.
posted by Gary Carson at 3:50 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home