Message Board : ED- YOUR 60 SECOND ANSWER SAVES.....

With 9 players and a $5 ante, your being laid 10 to 1 minimum to see a flop.  Any two cards should work here.  If all 9 see the flop you only need to win 5.5% of the time to break even if the action STOPS at the flop.  I disagree with this game being a gold mine.  Most mistakes in poker are people entering pots that they shouldn’t.  The structure of this game completely eliminates that mistake.

BTR- that’s the conclusion i came to- see the flop with almost any 2 cards and i get what you are saying about the ante structure preventing players from making the mistake of seeing a flop they shouldn’t.

JJS- no doubt this is a house game but the other holdem games
( 1-2 L, 1-2 NL and 2-3 NL) also have a $5 rake with pots smaller on average than this game.

at the end of the nite there are usually 2 or 3 players with upwards of a thousand bucks to cash out of this game which is more than the winners at the NL tables. (max buyin is $100).

still there must be a way to have an advantage in this game.
surely some starting hands should be mucked. and even if everyone is getting the price to chase all kinds of draws surely some draws are better than others (some draws should be folded).

so where are the points to seek an advantage? if everyone sees the flop with any 2 cards then thats 18 bets in the pot almost like
your anteing $10 (2 bets) to see your 2 hole cards AND the flop and the real strategy starts at the flop.

i think the advantages are going to be found post flop by determining if the hand will be a high card or draw board and folding or raising appropriately. i think the dead money in this game will be the antes (of which you will have a proportionate share) and the high card and week draws that go to showdown.

OR are the pot odds so high that almost everyone just stays in
to the end and the lucky one wins- almost like roulette where everyone will win their proportionate share and the house wears down everyone with the rake?

the answer may lie in the reasoning that changed early ante
holdem into a blind stuctured game. i’ll bet Ed knows.

tobori

JJS- all the pots are raked $5 by the flop. altho i should know, i’m not exactly sure how they get it to that amount as they start off by raking $2 or $3 after the first bet but it maxes out at $5.

apparently the state put a $5 cap on limit bets and a buyin range
of $60 to $100 on all poker games. the $5 limit max doesn’t make much sense when you can go all-in on the NL tables for a thousand bucks if you want. the card room calls this $5 ante game “high stakes” and i think the reasoning is that this is the way to generate the largest pots with the $5 cap.

i can’t seem to get my head around a strategy either. there is a paradox that the pot odds suggest you play a very extended range of hands yet you are still up against 8 other players and will on average be dealt the winning cards 1 out of 9 times (no one is
being pushed off hands).

i’m trying to apply the maxim “bet more on your winners and less
on your losers” but figuring winners and losers early in the betting with the pot odds offered is stumping me. sometimes i think that
just playing a simple limit strategy will work but then see all kinds
of holes in that created by pot odds.

i’m now searching for the reasoning that created blind bets- small and big as is played today. i’ve read that holdem started off with all players anteing an equal amount but over time changed to blinds. does this ante format simply make the game “a crap shoot”
as everyone will just tend to stay to showdown? but stud and draw poker have equal antes and they aren’t “crap shoots”.

one thing i keep coming back to is that this is still limit holdem and there will still be 1 winner per hand (except split pots) and many of the players staying to showdown must be putting dead money in the pot- but HOW can i not be one of them if i’m getting the rite odds to chase?????

tobori

thanks BTR but these players don’t get pushed off BAD hands for
any amount of betting or raising much less being pushed off paired or draw hands.

i watched this game for a couple more hours today and couldn’t believe (or understand) all the raising going on. the average pot
was about $160 with 8 to 9 players and on about every other hand a bet would be capped at $20 after 3 reraises on at least 1 street. seems once these guys call the first $5 bet that no amount of reraising is not then called.

same catch 22- almost everyone is getting pot odds to call but only 1 hand will win. with all the reraising and still half the table seeing a showdown i am thinking that the correct strategy involves seeing the flop with high unpaired cards 10 or above, any pairs and ANY two cards that could flop a primary draw with the help of 2 of the 3 flop cards. as i saw the game played the money is made by folding rite away if the flop doesn’t provide you with a good draw (8 outs or more- which hands you raise with) and folding hands like high pairs with flops that could offer others draws. it seems contadictory to what i read in books, but weak draws that still have pot odds seem to require mucking (EVERYONE has pot odds).

a side benefit of playing this 1 table (sometimes they offer 2)
is that you are much more likely to collect a bad beat jackpot here than any where else in the room and those jackpots are averaging around $20,000.

i realize responders to this thread have taken time and thought to help me answer questions which you will most likely not face yourselves due to the atypical structure of this peculiar holdem game and appreciate it.
in the back of my mind i feel the answer to the catch 22 in this game does reveal something about pot odds in general in that just because you have pot odds that doesn’t always mean stay in the hand to the end.

tobori

With an ante that big, folding preflop isn’t very attractive, especially in late position in a limped pot. I’d probably still fold trash out of position.

Your main edge will probably come from raising better than your opponents and possibly finding folds postflop when you’re really toast but your opponents can’t resist continuing to the river because of the pot size.

Good news is that with huge family pots, you’ll find lots of opportunities to really pound good draws for a lot of value (that your opponents won’t take advantage of), and hands will likely be relatively easy to read especially on the turn and river, so you can get some edge there.

Also, preflop you should raise and even reraise big suited hands like KQs, ATs, etc.