R to the Third Power

As a Hold’em player you have to expect the occasional Runner-Runner getting your chips from you. You philosophically remark that people like that are your bread and butter and you won’t tap the glass. I guess it is marginally better than paying for the person’s address to one of those on line sites that do that kind of thing; then going there and fire bombing his car after using the previous info to cancel his car insurance. I don’t have that problem. Mine is worse. At the Stud tables, runner-runner is a pretty common experience. If you get to 5^th street, you’re often the beneficiary of such cards. But that is the Runner³ that I am talking about. This is what I am talking about:

This is a .25-.50 table on Full Tilt. It is the 2^nd hand I played that session. The down cards aren’t always shown in the order they are dealt. But, the eventual winner either had K5 or K8 from the betting. I had AA. I had Aces Up on 5^th. The door betting was 3-bet and the other player bet and I raised on 4^th. From that point, I bet when my heads up opponent checked. The showdown leaves me trying to make up about half a buyin.

Now Aces Up isn’t a great hand and will be beat with regularity at the stud tables. If you can’t live with that happening, maybe model airplanes would be a more enjoyable hobby. From the betting, it was obvious though that my opponent was likely behind when I got the queens on 5^th street. A good player might have folded. It was a nice pot at that point; so, it is hard to really beat him up; although, the betting really defined my hand and put him well behind.

The fact that people hit these kinds of hands isn’t unusual. In fact it is a fairly frequent occurrence at these limits with often 4 or 5 players chasing with hands that are pretty obviously behind. That is different from this situation. But the type of player isn’t.

Here’s some odds:

K was 63:36 dog at the door and slightly less (66:33) on 4^th and that dropped to 78:22 when I paired the queens.

With those odds and the pot what it was, it was something you can chase with. You have to expect this – more in multi-way pots than here. But, it smarts a bit extra because of the heads up aspect. He was a 4 to 1 dog with the 4-suit and two odd cards and made it work. I’d have expected a coin flip with more in the pot. Aces up isn’t a huge stud hand.

There are a lot of big hands in stud. If you’re just coming to it from Hold’em play, it will be a shocker. I’ve seen and had quads crushed. I’ve see concealed hands that looked like garbage be very solid hands. If you can’t live with that stud is a very frustrating game.

If you are a Hold’em player, the number of R³ hands that hit will tilt you when you start playing stud. The fact is that the pot odds allow/insist on chasing. If you like to chase, stud is a great game to do it in and not grow gills. You need to maintain an even keel when it happens to you and you do it to another. There are a lot of comments in the chat from players that don’t understand that.

You chase also from reads. A lot of players will push really ratty hands. You want to keep good notes on the people you are playing. There is a fine line between always accepting the pot odds offered and trying to avoid loss. Avoiding loss is THE MAJOR COMPONENT in most successful sessions. Notes will often provide the extra basis to make the chase.

Stud requires the most thought. There is no form of poker that gives one more information. Just like I said that chasing is possible … it isn’t always the wisest move. Figuring odds is much harder. My opponent in the hand above really was a much worse dog than the odds I showed above indicate. Why? Look at the exposed cards. He lost two out from the exposed door cards when a jack showed up on 5^th street. And, I had two queens up which clobbers his 4^th street card. That was 4 less outs than the raw odd listed above provided. So, as fish go, I’d make Flojo27 a bottom feeder and my notes now make me want to see more showdowns with just fairly decent hands against that player based on this hand and several others.

ADDENDUM:

I thought I’d mention a few programs that I find handy:

TCLOCK enhances the default clock in Windows.  It is very configurable and has an alarm/scheduler that I’d hate to be without.  There are a number of incantations for this.  I linked to one that is Vista compatible.

LAYOUT is a DLL that allows you to save icon locations on your screen. If you have a game or such that changes resolution or a driver update mungs your layout, you can restore a saved layout.  The link explains it more and then provides a download source.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am and is filed under Journal, Other poker. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.