Request Blackjack

The other night after watching a hand in 3-6 Hold’em where no one hit the board for a hand I saw the three remaining player each turn over an Ace high. One had A2os, one had A4s and the last had A6os. Although I’ve realized that Ace-anything usually plays at this level the point was really driven home by seeing three such cases at one time. That is what got me to thinking about the following question: If I were to play something like K-10 suited and the flop came Q J 7 rainbow, what would my outs be. Meaning, can I realistically believe that I have the eight outs for the treetop draw in a game where any ace is played by the majority of the group?

Answer 1:

Whether the LL players play any Aces or fold weak aces doesn’t really affect your outs calculation. Either way the Ace would be gone, you see? You still have 8 possible cards out of 45 that you haven’t seen that can make your nut straight.

Packerfan1
Be the flop
See the flop
you’re not being the flop.

Answer 2:

Yes and no. Ace-anything players tend to play a wide variety of hands. If there are a lot of ace-anything players in, you might want to consider that the combined chances of all those players being in reduces your ace outs somewhat, maybe by one or a little bit more. Still, you have a high quality draw, and if the ace hits you’ll get action.

Answer 3:

Even so, if you get into trying to figure their hands this way: Let’s say that you assume that of your five opponents, on average there are 1.5 aces and .5 nines. You’re still right back where you started: 8 outs/ 47 unseen cards: .1702 6 outs/ 37* unseen cards: .1622 Not a very big difference. Now, I suppose this effect could get magnified for situations where you have several tight limpers, although even then, the range of possible hands for each limper expands as the previous person limps. (i.e., you might not play 87s on the button with one caller in front, but with 5 callers, even tightasses, you would). I think, though, that the potential differences here are relatively small and difficult to measure. This reminds me of another question: Loose-aggressive (Carson) game.

Here is the situation: Tournament, 2 players left out of about 50. First place is TOC Qualifier and $2500 WSOP Satellite Buy-in + $300 in expense money. Blinds are at 2k and 4k, no limit.  P1 and P2 have virtually equal stacks.  P1 has the button and the small blind. P1 has AcQc. P1 suspects that P2 has been stealing for the last several hands. P1 raises 2k to 6k total before the flop, P2 calls. Flop is 3d, Kc, 8h.  P2 bets 15K.

1. What should P1 do at this point? Call, raise or fold and why?

Answer 1:

One problem I see here is that the bring-in raise has to be at least twice the size of the Big Blind. In your situation the raise should have been 8000. Also in order to do a quality evaluation one must know the total amount of chips on the table. The more info you have the better decision you make.

Answer 2:

Well, even if you were to provide the key information of the SIZES of the “virtually equal stacks,” the answer, of course, still very much ‘depends’ on the two players’ understandings of each other. However, as a baseline for discussion, 3d-Kc-8h is on average a BAD flop for Ac-Qc, but even so, Ac-Qc is such a GOOD starting hand, that even with that bad flop, it would still be FAVORED over a completely random opposing hand…

Answer 3:

The point of the other poster was that it’s too small to qualify as a legal raise. A raise would have to be at least the size of the bet (4k big blind required min 4k raise).