"Card Player" magazine online inaccuracy?

Today at Cardplay.com the tip of the day is this:



Question
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A $15-$30 game. You are in the small blind holding 7d-6d. An early and middle player limp and then a middle player raises. Everyone folds to you and you call. Everyone else calls. There is $150 in the pot and five players. The flop is: Tc-9s-4d, giving you a gutshot straight-draw. Everyone checks to the raiser, who bets. What do you do?



Answer
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Fold. You have a gutshot straight-draw, an 11-to-1 shot, plus a backdoor diamond draw. There is $165 in the pot, so you are getting 11-to-1 pot odds. But your draw and your play have some serious difficulties. The gutshot you are drawing to is not to the nuts. If you catch an eight, then someone with queen-jack or even jack-seven has a bigger straight than you. With four opponents, this will happen more often than you think, costing you a ton of money in the process. The other problem is that you are being bet into with three other players yet to act, so one of them might raise. Don't be fooled by all the checking into thinking they must be weak, since they may have been “checking to the raiser.”


This isn't correct. You have more than 11-1 equity against AA or KK here. I think you actually have 3-1, according to Poker Stove. I agree, though, QJ isn't going to muck so you may be drawing to a backdoor flush, which I think does indeed have about 13-1 equity against QJ and AA if all your diamonds are live. [On the side: I'm not arguing about your position here...the reason you muck is because you know that there's a maniac on the button, not because of your horrible equity - a reraise from you on the flop probably won't run off QJ, it will buy you info, but it will scare away chasers].

Somebody back me up here.

(This tip of the day is an excerpt from some Middle Limit Holdem book.)

I can't do the math of others, but I have to agree that this would be a check and fold. I may call 1 SB on the flop just to see if I improve, depending on the table. However, with the cards you have, and the board, I would want more than the low end of an ISD to play further.

And the "Checking to the Raiser" point they make is a great point that I didn't think of. Seems the situation they set up is a perfect situation to fall into a trap.

it was already a mistake to cold call with 76s

Originally Posted by hypermegachi

it was already a mistake to cold call with 76s

Depends on the blind format.

$5 Small Blind this is a loose call
$10 Small Blind it's closer to in line.

I'm certainly calling from my big blind.

I think this is a fold, mostly because the limpers are a threat to check/raise this board as it is likely to have missed the PFR. The call is probably worth .5 BB, but certainly not a full BB.

I'm really not disagreeing about the move to fold (I should have made that more clear). At higher limits, chances are that at least 1 of the 3 "check to raisers" is probably going to come out firing hard. Most medium limit games (esp. 15/30, esp. at the Bellagio) are very, very aggressive.

I just think that the author has a grievous mathematical error in his analysis. Gutshots simply aren't 11-1 dogs. They are, according to FTR pot odds charts, a 16.5% to win the hand with 4 outs. This translates to 5-1 equity. (i.e. AA is going to win 83% of the time heads up against a gutshot on this flop). Pokerstove bumped this 16.5% equity up to 23% I think because of the backdoor flush. Clearly, this hand is stronger heads-up than the author thinks.

Folding is correct here for billions of reasons. However, if you could see the hole cards of the 3 players between you and "the raiser," knowing they would fold, you would be making a mathematical mistake (a purely mathematical mistake) by folding.

God, knowing that a backdoor-flush + gutshot has this kind of equity....it makes me feel like holdem is a crapshoot.

Update: I ran some new flops through pokerstove and here's how the equities pan out.

Player 1: AsAc
Player 2: 6d7d

Flop 1: Tc 9h 2s. Player 1: 81.31% Player 2: 18.68%
Flop 2: Tc 9h 5s. Player 1: 79.69% Player 2: 20.30%
Flop 3: Tc 9h 5d. Player 1: 76.36% Player 2: 23.63%

By throwing in a backdoor flush and a backdoor open-ended straight, the player increased his equity by 5% apparently. The straight-up gutshot is approximately 2% higher than the FTR charts for a 4-outer because you could also catch running 6-6 or 7-7. Interestingly, if you replace player 1's hand with QdJd, you get 81%-18% equity split on this flop, which identical to having aces!

All-in-all, I believe pokerstove. [I'll bet Ripp would be fuming about this thread if we were talking about NL.]

Yeah, I need to hook myself up with a copy. The killer feature is comparing your hand against ranges of villians' hands.

Interesting, I would have folded this hand preflop, 4 way pot with a raise on the board = I'm in trouble. Now depending on my competition this may be a call, but 80% of the time its a fold before the flop, My hand has very little value in a 4 way pot.

This also depends of the size of the raise.