Q&A #117: Should They Call Him McSpew?

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Should they call him McSpew? You be the judge. Here is jenson from the message board to tell his story:

At least they called me that on another forum when I posted this. I’m wondering if you guys have the same sentiment. I accept it if you do.

I was thinking of Ed’s recent blog posts about ultra loose live games when I made this play. Just to be clear, this is not the type of game where people are pushing all in indiscriminatly preflop, but the stacks are deep and just about every hand is raised to $20 preflop.

Here’s what I posted elsewhere:

I walked into a near empty Borgata poker room this morning and took the first available seat at a 1/2NL table. The table was mostly full of old-timer regulars paying more attention to their racing forms than poker.

Nearby was a raucous table with several players with very deep stacks for 1/2NL. One guy had close to $1,500. Another guy had about $1,000 and several stacks were near $500. Several of these guys had been playing all night. Only one guy was visibly drunk.

When a seat opened at the action table I moved right over. Pretty much every hand was raised to $20 pre flop with up to four or five players seeing the flop. The action was loose on later rounds too with a mixture of players simply calling down light and truly big hands.

This hand happened in my second orbit and I had a modest stack of $160. I’m in middle position with a low suited two-gapper. Two guys limp in front of me and I limp along too. The guy to my immediate left raises to the standard of $20. By the time it gets back to me there were four callers. The pot was now about $100 (initial raise + four callers).

I push for $160. Thoughts?

Here’s what I think.

I don’t think McSpew is quite fair, but I don’t love the play either.

First, let’s look at the play in a vacuum. Let’s say you get called by 77+, AJ+, and KQ. I’ve run limp-shove plays like this one before, and this calling range is at least a reasonable approximation of what you’ll tend to run into. Some players will call tighter and some will call looser.

Jenson didn’t say what low suited two-gapper he had, so let’s go with 96s. Against that calling range, 96s will win approximately 32 percent of the time. Thus, when called (by exactly one player) you will lose on average approximately $32:

-$32 = (0.68)(-$160) + (0.32)($240) = -$108.8 + $76.8

When your bluff works you win $100. You win about 3 times more money when the bluff works than you lose (on average) when it fails. So the bluff needs to work only about 25 percent of the time to be profitable.

Now that calculation was pretty rough. First of all, you could get called in more than one place. Say you get called in two places. It’s reasonable to assume the second caller would be tighter than the first. So let’s assign the original range to the first caller and a tighter AA-JJ,AK range to the second. In this scenario 96s wins about 22 percent of the time. Every time you are called in two places you lose approximately $41:

-$41.2 = (0.78) (-$160) + (0.22) ($380) = -$124.8 + $83.6

It’s a little worse than getting called in one place. But usually when you get called it will be in only one place, and getting called in two places is only a little bit worse. Also, getting called in two places isn’t quite as bad as this estimate suggests because our model overestimates how often the second caller will show up with AA and KK. The second caller will be more likely to hold QQ, JJ, or AK because if he held either of the two big pairs he might have reraised himself. Overall the possibility that you’ll get called in two places shouldn’t affect your decision too much.

Overall, the break-even point for this bluff is probably a success rate in the high 20 percents. I think it’s reasonable to assume the bluff will work that often the first time you try it, so no, I don’t think this play is worthy of the epithet McSpew. It’s probably somewhat profitable.

I have two points, however:

1. In general, all-in preflop bluffs in loose games where five people routinely call nice-sized preflop raises are very profitable. It’s not a surprise to me that my analysis suggested that the bluff might be profitable in this situation. However, it’s not a play you can use again and again. Once you do it once – twice or three times at the most ‐ you’re significantly more likely to get called the next time. So while the play tends to be profitable, you get to pick maybe one or two spots to try it per session.

   So the question becomes not, “Is the play profitable?” but “Is this the most profitable situation to try the play for the session?” In my opinion, this was an ok spot, but not a great one. First, the hand is a little weaker when called than it could be to try the play. I usually try it with hands that tend to have at least a few percentage points more equity when called than 96s has. In loose games this shove does frequently get called the very first time you try it, so that equity becomes important.

   Second, you limped behind two limpers. You’re trying to represent a limp-reraise with pocket aces when you try this play. Yet you limped in behind two limpers. Would you do that with aces? Perhaps you would in this crazy game, but overall I think your play looks less credible than it would if you had open-limped.

   On the other hand, you did manage to catch five people with a full raise in the pot, which makes the situation fairly juicy in terms of pot size. So it’s an ok situation.

2. It’s not clear to me why you’re limping behind two limpers in middle position with a hand like 96s in a game where most of the pots are raised to $20 and you have only $180 in your stack. What scenario are you looking for to make the hand profitable? From a preflop equity perspective, your hand is essentially no better than a random hand. Yet you can fully expect to have to face a raise for 1/9th of your stack. Your hand is unlikely to make a top pair you’d want to go with. Your hand has two gaps, so you have only one way to flop an open-ended straight draw. And if you flop a flush draw you’ll sometimes not even have the best flush draw. So the hand doesn’t profit by getting money in preflop (and you can expect to have to put significant money in preflop), and its relative postflop advantages are questionable at best.

   In other words, 96s just isn’t a very good hand in a super-loose game where most pots are raised preflop to over 10 percent of your stack size. You aren’t on the button. You will likely play the hand out of position to more than one player. This is not a particularly profitable situation. Indeed, what actually transpired is perhaps one of the better scenarios for you.

   Now the limp can’t be that bad because it’s only $2 and when your opponents are super loose it doesn’t take much to make the hand profitable. But limping in from middle position behind two limpers with hands like 96s is not how you make your money in loose no-limit games.

I’ve run many bluffs like the one jenson tried in this hand. They work, and they’re quite profitable. This opportunity was likely somewhat profitable as well. However, if I were in his shoes, I would have passed on this hand (folding it without even limping in). With a somewhat stronger hand or perhaps with better position, I would be more apt to play.

Tags: all-in bluffs, limp-reraising, loose-games, no-limit-holdem, poker, preflop bluffing, spewing, ultra-loose games

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