Hot Hand #11 -- Blogger Razz (Part III)

EDIT: Hopefully you all have heard this news by now, but we have an official poker dominator on our hands here. Go check out Lucko's site for details on last night's tournament win on pokerstars. I think he won a little bit of money to go along with the glory of this victory as well. Huge congratulations to Lucko, the new hero of myself as well as probably most of you out there reading this blog today! Way to go brotha! Now back to our regularly scheduled poker programming....

*********************************************

You guys are too clever.

As usual it was another round of great comments to Part II of the latest Hot Hand post. As a quick reminder, here's where we were as of the last question yesterday:



So I bet out for 80 chips in a limit razz tournament with a Jack-high board on 5th street but also holding a monster wheel draw. Budo smooth called the bet, but then Love Elf (who final tabled the Mookie last night btw, nice job Tina) raised it up with her best board showing, and I asked whether you all thought I should fold or just call.

And here again is where I point out just how clever my readers are. I was trying to mess with you people, leaving out the option of reraising Tina here, but I couldn't get it by most of the commenters. Again there are a group of commenters advocating just a call here, since we still do not have a "made" hand with my Jack-low, and I think that is an acceptable way of playing the hand as well, but as I pointed out in yesdterday's post, that is definitely not the way I play, and I believe that the smooth call here has a lower expectation overall than the preferable move IMO, which is to reraise. Yes I am not yet made, and yes Tina is playing the hand as if she is already "made" with a 9-low, but razz is never as simple as just "made or not made", in particular on 5th street when there are still two cards to come.

In this instance, I have A235J, and Tina is looking at a 9-low. That means that any 8-low or better in my hand will beat what Tina has working so far. And that means that I have two chances to catch any 4, 6, 7 or 8 to automatically be one card ahead of Tina's current hand. In fact, even any 9 puts me ahead because Tina has the roughest of 9s, a 9-8 low showing right now on 5th street. So I can catch any 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9 and be guaranteed to be ahead of Tina's hand right now, unless she also catches good on 6th.

So exactly what are my outs here? Well, there are four of each of the 4s, 6s, 7s, 8s and 9s, for a total of 20 out cards. However, and this is where remembering the discards becomes so crucial in all stud variations, Drizz folded a 6 up on 3rd, Budo also has a 68 showing, and Love Elf is showing 489. So, of my 20 total possible out cards, 6 of them (6, 6, 8, 4, 8 and 9) have already been seen and/or discarded on the board, leaving me a total of 14 cards to hit to make my 9-low. Since I had seen 16 total cards by fifth street here (5 upcards folded on 3rd street, 3 cards in Budo's hand and 3 cards in Tina's, and 5 cards I can see in my own hand), this means there were 36 cards remaining. Thus, 14 out of 36 of the remaining unseen cards in the deck will give me a better low hand than Tina's, and I have 2 cards to come to make that low hand. This makes me significantly more than 50% to win the hand (any of you math guys can confirm with the exact number I'm sure). And that means that I can actually reraise Tina here, as many of you suggested in the comments, even though I am technically "behind" right now with a Jack-low to Tina's probably 9-low:



As an aside, think back to my question from Part I, where we debated the merits of reraising Tina on 3rd street with an A23 to start, or rather just smooth calling, which I elected to do instead of being overly aggressive at the beginning of the hand. Now think about what just happened here -- I just got in a three-bet of a double-bet here on 5th street, where I am the clear favorite to win this hand. Do you think Tina would have reraised me here on 5th street if I had re-reraised her back on 3rd street? I submit the answer is a resounding No -- at least, not if she knows her way around a razz table. And this is the key to why I sometimes take my foot off the gas just a bit on 3rd street in razz when I secretly have a superior starting hand. Double bets on 5th, 6th and 7th are worth far, far more than the one extra single bet I can make on 3rd street when I am holding something awesome like A23. Just something to keep in mind.

So, per the above screenshot I went ahead and re-popped Tina here on 5th street with the favorite (albeit not "made") hand, and one very nice side effect of Tina's raise and then my reraise was that Budo made a quick exit from the hand. With a King showing, and two players betting aggressively on 5th street, Budo made the wise decision and got out of the way. Given that I am making a play directly at Tina's hand here, getting Budo out of there is all goodness for me, since there won't be any chance of him catching perfect on 6th and 7th and stealing this pot away from me with two lucky drawouts.

So 6th street fell, bringing me an 8 for a board of (3A)25J8, and bringing Tina a 7, for a board of (xx)4987. Tina now leads out for 80 chips into the 986-chip pot, and action is to me.

What's the move here? Call or raise? If just a smooth call, why? Should I be worried about Tina drawing out on me with a 7-4 low on 7th street to come? Or do I need to raise here to get the money in before that 7th street card falls?

Conclusion coming tomorrow.