- Fold
- Raise
- Call
- Raise 10%, Call 80%, Fold 10%
- Fold 80%, Call 20%
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A#25: Reads: you have no idea what your opponent holds, but you do know that he's not very aggressive. This means if you call then he's probably not re-raising you light; instead if he RR's, you can assume he has a big hand. Without knowing anything else about your opponent, we can put him on one of two ranges if we limp into the pot: if he RR's, let's say he has strong hands like AA-99, and AQ+. If he doesn't re-raise you, he has ATC minus [AA-99, AQ+]. We can also make an assumption that he's a calling station because he isn't aggressive, but this is far from definitive given how few facts the problem actually stated.
Estimate: 8d-4c is a weak hand, but if you complete and he doesn't RR, you will be getting 3:1 on your money. 8d-4c against a random, non-[AA-99, AQ+] hand is only a 60:40 dog.
Decide: Our hand doesn't have value or SDV. Also, we may not have much if any fold equity against a possible calling station, so a bluff line is out. This leaves fold or draw. Neither is horrible or great, so it really just comes down to equity. At 3:1, we only have to be right 25% of the time to break even. Our equity is significantly more than this, so we should draw.*
Implement: We said that we had little to no fold equity, so raising our draw buys us little to nothing. It also just bloats a pot OOP with a weak hand.**
Answer: Call
All-in for now...
-Bug
*This matches Dan Harrington's general advice that when heads-up you're almost always getting the right odds to limp in from the SB if your opponent likes to check behind. (The trick, however, is not getting married to your hand if you hit a pair and get any real resistance; you're really trying to either take the pot away on a scary board, or get value from 2-pair or better hands. And remember, you will also be OOP, so proceed cautiously.)
**Our current line is a draw; i.e., try to hit a flop. We might, however, switch to a bluff line on a board that our opponent is afraid of. For instance, we could rep a weak ace or king on a board that comes with either a rocket or cowboy.
I realllllly don't like calling with 84o as a HU player, even if it is supposed to be the right answer.
ReplyDeleteThe question is also probably one of the most vague of the questions on this test.
As a heads up player(though I play mostly cash, I have some experience w/ HUSNG's)
Although your BU opening range should largely be based on the effective stack size(strategy greatly changes from 75-50BB, 35-50BB, 25-35BB, 20-25BB, 15-20BB, 10-15BB, and <10BB.)
Since it just says middle stages of a SNG I'll just put the effective stack size at around 25-35BB. Against a good opponent at this stack size you'll probably start open folding some hands(and start a limping range), and 84o seems like a good hand to open fold from the button.
Since we are assuming our opponent is not very good 84o can probably do somewhat better depending on his tendencies. Limping seems like the naive answer since we are getting a good price to get in the pot but if our opponent is bad minraising is probably better.
If our opponent has a tendency to fold too much from the BB then open raising 100% of hands is totally reasonable, (why try and limp with 84o and hope you hit when you can probably just win the pot now and not give him a chance to hit).
If our opponent is a station preflop but folds to cbets too much you can find a reason to raise pre to build the pot and then usually cbet and expect to win more on average than if you just completed.
To me the only argument for limping in a spot like this is if he just calls down 3 barrels a ton w/ like king.
Then you can complete and play fit or fold after, but even if you hit like an 8 or a 4 on most flops you it's going to be fairly uncomfortable to value bet, and honestly against this type of opponent I'd just open fold 84o and wait for something better. It's HU! we play every hand, it's almost guaranteed that we get something better our next button.
So even if the correct answer on this test is supposed to be call, I def disagree with, at least with 84o.