Playing That 9 Differently in Lowball

We saw play of a 9 a bit back. Jim, a solid player opens. Erik, an action player, raises. Andy, a relative newcomer to lowball, just calls with his pat 8-5 (and wonders publicly later if he ought to have reraised). Loose Lucy, the big blind, comes in for the extra bet and Jim calls the raise. Lucy draws two cards, Jim draws one, and Erik and Andy both stood pat. After the draw, Lucy and Jim both check, Erik bets, and Andy calls. Erik shows a pat 9-8, and Andy takes the pot.

I mentioned at that point that I thought Erik's bet was dumb, because he would not get called by any hand worse than his, but would always get called by a better hand. A friend who used to play $200-limit lowball back in the days when $200 meant something said he thought I was wrong, that Erik should bet his worst hands for the few times he would get slightly better hands to lay down. He said this was the same as using game theory to bet your best hands and a very few of your worst hands in certain situations. For example, when you are against a one-card draw, game theory has you bet any 9 or better (sometimes only any 8), and also has you bet when you pair your top card. The exact betting frequency depends on pot size, and gets more complicated when multiple players are in a pot, but the principle is the same. I agree with the latter situation (betting a certain percentage of your worst hands against drawing players and against players who sometimes lay down pat hands), but I don't agree that Erik should bet his worst hands-in this case, exactly what he holds, a rough pat 9-in this situation. In this situation, a player who has cold-called two bets and stood pat behind a pat hand has done so with the intention of calling if there is a bet after the draw. He probably won't like a bet, but he will call it. A newcomer would not in this situation stand pat with a rough 9 behind Erik. He would not call the two bets initially. He might call with a hand like 9-6 or 9-7 (a hand that at the moment has Erik beat), planning to stand pat if Erik draws, but once Erik stands pat, he would not stand on the hand. He would, instead, break the 9 and draw to the 6 or 7. On top of this, Lucy and Jim both would pass any 8 and if, by some curious quirk, Andy doesn't actually call, either of them would call. They might even overcall after Andy calls. In theory, given that the pot holds eight bets at the time Erik bets, if he can get away with a bluff more than one-ninth of the time, he profits. I contend, though, that he would not succeed even that often. I say that close to 100 percent of the time, in this particular situation, Andy calls. I say this because, again, I do not think Andy would call two bets cold with a pat hand with which he would not then plan on calling one more bet. He just cannot have a rough 9 in this spot. He has to have exactly an 8. And if he's totally clueless, even if he does have a 9, he might get stubborn and call anyway. I see novices do this from time to time.

Well, never mind that. Let's see how else this situation might have played out. This situation is common in lowball.

Jim opens. Erik raises. Andy reraises. (We concluded in the e-mail discussion of this situation that that's the better play. It's certainly how I would play the hand.) Now, Lucy does not call. If Jim opened drawing to a rough 7, he might throw his hand away at this point, fearing a raising war behind him. If Jim has, for example, 7-6-2-joker, he might well fold for two more bets but call one more bet. This, by the way, is a good argument for Andy's raising in preference to calling. He has much higher expected value by having the two blinds and Jim abandon their chips, leaving two bets worth of dead money in the pot. Being a solid player, Jim probably has a hand worth two more bets, though. Let's say he calls. Erik reraises. He is pretty sure Jim is drawing. If Jim had a good pat hand, he would have put in the fourth bet himself. Any pat 9 or better always has the best of it against any one-card draw, so, even with a rough 9, Erik thinks he has the best of it against Jim and hopes that his reraise will cause Andy to break a breaking hand. In other words, if Andy has a pat 8-6 or better, Andy may decide after Erik stands pat that Erik has a pat 7 or better, and toss the 8 in hope of making a better hand. (This is usually wishful thinking.)

Should Andy raise again? Absolutely not. Erik may well have a monster. If Andy puts in one more bet, he'll certainly find out in a hurry. Renowned mathematician and RGP poster Bill Chen said at the end of the e-mail discussion on the original situation, "I believe it's a money-losing strategy to put in enough raises against someone who is playing close to optimally for you to determine it's correct to break your 8-5. You should simply stop two bets beforehand and rap pat, planning to call." That is, if you put in enough bets, you'll find out whether you need to break an 8 and draw to the wheel, but you'll lose too much on the times you're beaten.

That's great lowball advice from Chen, often observed in the breach, particularly in high-limit games. I have often seen two players going multiple raises in the biggest lowball games-$160-limit and up-each trying to make the other blink. One may be drawing all along, trying to get the other to break. Each may have a pat 9. Sometimes one even has a full house or some other snow hand. It's considered the ultimate coup in lowball to play something like four fives and then, when the other guys pairs and mucks his hand, lay it down triumphantly. The trouble with a play like that is the other guy may have a hand with which he'll go a certain number of bets and then quit raising, but still stand pat, intending to call one more bet after the draw if the other guy bets. Or, worse, he may have a genuine hand with which he's quite happy to put in multiple bets. On top of that, sometimes when enough bets go in before the draw, the opponent calls no matter what card he catches-even a pair. So, it's a risky play, leading to huge variance, particularly in a big game. Interestingly, though, as long as both players play reasonably well ordinarily, these aberrations, which don't come up that often, tend to even out in the long run-as long as both participants have big enough bankrolls to weather large fluctuations.

Back to Andy's situation. Erik put in the fourth bet here. Can he have a pat 7 or better? Sure. Anyone can have a good hand-even the live ones, and Erik is no live one; he's just an action player-which is something that even good players tend to forget, as they wonder why their pat 7 lost 12 bets to one player when the same hand would have lost maybe five to anyone else at the table. Can Erik have worse than an 8-5? Again, sure. If he's capable of betting in the earlier situation, he's also capable of putting in the fourth bet to try to drive someone off a hand. And this is the way lots of otherwise-solid players play. They raise out of position with a 9, and when someone comes back at them, they go one more bet, trying to make it appear that they have a good hand. And if they reraise and again get raised, they sometimes get stubborn and put in one more bet. But anyone who knows that they're capable of such a play just follows Dr. Chen's excellent advice and calls at some point, intending to call one more bet after the draw. Yes, sometimes two such players go at each other, and you see more bets go in than normal players would put in if each had a pat 6. It doesn't happen often enough to make money for Erik, though.

So, if Andy put in the third bet initially with his 8-5 and Erik reraised, his proper play would be to call and then stand pat even if Erik stood pat, and call if Erik bet. Although, if Erik had any sense, he would realize that at that point, Andy was going to call one more bet. Erik just gets carried away in times like these. He also thinks that it gets him calls the times he really does have a hand. Yes, it does, but he costs himself more than he earns on the good hands. This is because he gets pat nines far more often than he gets hands that really warrant such action-as much as 10 times as often. He'd have to win 10 times as much on the good pat hands as he lost in the attempts to impress others with his wild image to make the play worthwhile, and that's not likely.

The preceding showed how Erik would have played the hand if Andy had reraised.

Both plays were wrong, though. When a solid player opens from early position, it's questionable whether you should even play a rough 9 when half the field still hasn't been heard from. Yes, the times that Erik is against only Jim with a one-card draw, Erik has the best of it. But that may be offset by the times one of the following happens:

• Erik is against three players drawing.
• One or more players who act after Erik does are pat.
• Jim is pat.

And if even only one or two other players come in for a draw, Erik has only a slight edge. Since he will always call a bet after the draw, and since his opponents will bluff much less than game theory indicates, that alone probably takes away all of Erik's edge in that situation. Couple that with the three preceding possibilities, and playing his rough 9 in that spot is questionable, at best.