pocket pairs and their +EV potential, quick question

[wonderland]

I notice that in stove, pocket pairs, just about any from mid upwards, are a 55% favourite over AKo.

If there's a laggy player and they bet aggressively preflop and we put them on such a hand, if they go all in we should call right?

Hmm, that said, who goes all in pre flop without at least JJ+

I saw a video recently of someone going all in preflop and the guy had 55 and called. I thought wooah, steady on. But i think he put the villain on AK or some such. The villain DID have JJ and won but the video guy had a lot of good reasons why he called.

Thoughts?

[Zel]

It really depends on your read. If the villain's pattern on raises is usually Pocket 99+, you should not be shoving with pockets.

If the villain raises loosely and with cards like KQ or KA, you can shove all in for the better coinflip, but there's still the chance of you getting beat.

I think calling, or 3betting is the best +EV for pocket pairs. I never fold pocket pairs unless they're giving me a 33% + odds for the pot.

[AFchung]

be careful with small pocket pairs. at best you're a coinflip (about 50-50) and eventually you're going to be running into pairs that dominate you (20-80)

[wonderland]

yeah, good point. I hate coinflip situations. This is coinflip territory even if they have AK.

Infact, i hate getting KK most of the time because I know that any ace WILL beat me because pokerstars has an auto ace-generating algorithm for every flop.

[Robb]

It depends on how many non-pair hands are in the mix, and what the stack sizes are. Here's an example. Hero has 55 in MP and calls EP's open raise of 4 bb's. All folds to 20bb short stack in the SB who raises all-in. Suppose EP folds. Then Hero has to call 16 bb's for a chance to win 29. Hero needs 35.6% equity against villain's range to make the call profitable.

1. Villain's range is JJ+ and AK. Hero folds (call is -EV due to 33% equity).

2. Villain's range is 99+, AJ+, ATs+. Hero calls (+EV since Hero has almost 40% equity against this range).

Case 2 has 52 combo's of unpaired cards vs. 36 paired combos. Case 1 has 16 unpaired combos vs. 24 paired. The big pairs dominate 55, obviously, so the bigger percentage of villain's range that's pp's makes the call worse and worse.

In general, it's hard to see how calling an all-in for more than 20 - 25 bb's with 55 (presto!!) makes a great deal of sense, unless we're certain villain is pushing a pretty wide range of hands like broadways, Ax, etc.

Poker Stove results below:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 33.217% 33.00% 00.22% 22602840 147986.00 { 5d5s }
Hand 1: 66.783% 66.57% 00.22% 45593348 147986.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }


equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 39.450% 39.22% 00.23% 59097208 346980.00 { 5d5s }
Hand 1: 60.550% 60.32% 00.23% 90891584 346980.00 { 99+, ATs+, AJo+ }

[Robb]

I'll double post because the ubernit ratholers on the FR tables are now migrating to 6max (hooray for the good guys). There's a big difference between the all-in 3bet from a 7/6/inf ratholer vs. a 10/9/inf one. We probably have enough equity against the 10/9 version to call down with pp's as low as 77. This depends heavily on the type of mixture of all-in 3bets he plays. Making notes here is very helpful. If I see the10/9 guy 3bet all-in with AJ, I'm calling down pretty light.

Just in general, my advice is to work with poker stove and analyze different situations yourself.

[sarbox68]

Some quick comments...

1) Stack dependent. Obv short-stackers push much lighter, which (for many) means non-pair paint is a nice chunk of their range. That's +EV. You can usually assume that most non-retarded deep-stackers at micro are not shoving very often with much less than QQ+, maybe AK. That's cause a thinking player knows they're risking too much (their deep stack... say 80bbs) for a small return (the pot... prolly 20bbs HU), and are likely to only get called by players that crank them.
2) Read dependent. I'd strongly suggest that you assume a deep-stack PF push is predominantly QQ+ and maybe AK and play accordingly (at the micros) unless you have a decent history of reads otherwise. And that means you've seen them shove lighter more than just once... IMO the reads have the burden of proof, not the other way around.
3) Variance-comfort dependent. Remember, you're calling a shove, not making one. So you got no fold equity to add to your side of the EV equation. In general, with a sub-QQ pocket pair, you're a 2:1 dog w/ 88-QQ vs. vil range of QQ+, AK. Pretend he never has pockets (riiiiight....) and he's only shoving w/ AQ+, and you're still only 56:43 favorite with the same range. That means you will lose your stack 43 times to 56 wins... that's some serious variance -- and depending on how that sh!t distributes, could take a big dent out of your roll. Point is - coin flips is high variance and you need the roll and the stomach for it for what (at the end of the day...) will only contribute 5% or so net over the long term, and for which mis-reads on ranges punish the sh!t out of you and can destroy this small net in a heartbeat....

[wonderland]

yeah, all sounds good.

The equity maths is just too over my head at the moment, just about getting my head around implied odds etc.

But to summarise, i don't like high variance, and like you say, 55% at best... nah. I always fold things like QQ to a shove coz i kinda treat them like a poket pair. I need to spike a set to overcome the inevitable paired A or K. And there is always an ace or a king out there. It's just that i saw this video and thought ...er... should i be calling all-ins like that?

See, someone once said (can't remember) that even a 51% +EV play should be made... but i think it's still coinflipsville. With other erroneous factors in play that 51% very easily becomes 49% and worse.

I'll stick to larger more obvious decisions.

[Robb]

See, someone once said (can't remember) that even a 51% +EV play should be made... but i think it's still coinflipsville. With other erroneous factors in play that 51% very easily becomes 49% and worse.

Not possible to have any reads that precise. Of course, we'd take a 51% coin flip for our stack if we KNEW it was actually +EV. But it's hard to know poker odds much closer than 4-5% either way.

I'll stick to larger more obvious decisions.

^^^this

Imo, the equity math isn't that hard. pm me if you're interested in discussing it further.