Dara O’Kearney with another lesson for recreational players, this time about why they probably fold too much with improvable hands.
Last week I shared some ideas about things amateur players do not think about that most professionals do. This week I wanted to touch upon a another leak that is not just costing casual players money, it probably is causing them a fair bit of stress too.
When considering whether to get their money in the middle of the table or not, recreational players put way too much emphasis on whether they have the best hand right now, when they in fact should be thinking about the equity they need to call.
They tend to fold hands they know are currently behind, but actually have the equity to call profitably. They also put too much stock in having the best hand in the moment, despite being an equity underdog. Not only are both errors, they are often the basis for mental game problems linked to bad beats.
To give you an example, this was a hand that I reviewed with an amateur player, taken from a post flop solver. It is 30 Big Blinds effective, the Hijack opens to 2 Big Blinds with AJ, the Small Blind 3-bets to 6.7 Big Blinds with 66and the Hijack calls.
The flop is Q88.
On the flop the Small Blind bets 5.9 Big Blinds into a 14.8 Big Blind pot. The solver unequivocally told the Hijack to shove over the bet (it actually also suggested a min reraise/get-in a small amount of the time but that’s a discussion for another day).
I’ll spare you the ranges the solver assigned both players, but the Small Blind was given a tight value range and the Hijack had a linear range which included AA-KK, but AK, AQ, QQ and JJ were instead preflop shoves. Ranges aside, my recreational player student struggled with why this was a snap shove with AJo.
Equity vs the ‘best hand right now’
His logic was that because the stacks are shallow, he doesn’t really have much fold equity, so this is basically a call with Ace high. Also he is only getting called by a made hand and/or he could easily be dominated already. Likewise, any draw we hit could be in trouble because of that paired board. He commented he would have been much happier with the 66 in this spot.
Humans tend to put too much emphasis on having the ‘best hand right now’ in these spots, so you see a lot of overfolds. It’s a natural instinct for recreational players to fold their hand when they think they are winning less than 50% of the time.
However, given the effective stacks and the size of the pot, on the flop we had 23.6 Big Blinds behind and could potentially win a total pot of 61.5 Big Blinds. In this spot we only need 38% equity to be break even, not 50% like a lot of players assume. AJo with a Spade had just over 40% equity against the range the solver created. We don’t like it, but this is a profitable spot for Ace high.
The problem with a ‘winning right now’ hand like a small pocket pair here is that if it is behind, it only really has two outs. Our AJo hand has a variety of outs against most hands, even if it runs into an 8 it isn’t dead. It’s better to have hands that can improve in these spots where fold equity doesn’t factor in much.
Understanding this should also go some way to helping rid yourself of bad beat related mental game issues. Just because you had the best hand does not mean you had the best equity.
You can get advice like this every month in Dara’s free strategy newsletter which you can join right here.
More from Dara O’Kearney
source https://casinonewsblogger.com/equity-vs-best-hand-right-now/
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