Misplaying a 9 in Lowball

Pat nines may be the trickiest hands to play in lowball. Depending on the situation, you may have the best of it or you may have the worst of it with the hand. Sometimes you need to throw the 9 and draw to a better hand. Sometimes you change a situation in which you have the best of it to one in which you have the worst of it by breaking the 9. (To break in lowball is to throw away one or more cards from a pat hand in an attempt to make a better hand. If, for example, you have 9-4-3-2-A, and the player ahead of you stands pat, you might elect to break the 9, trying to make a hand you hope will beat the pat hand. This you might do because you think the pat hand has better than a 9. Lowball players also use the term come off the 9.) Sometimes you change a situation in which you have the worst of it to one in which you have the best of it by making the other player break the 9.

Pat eights are much easier to play, and much more cut-and-dried. The occasion to break an 8 comes up only rarely; most lowball players do not break eights very often. I know that in my poker career, had I never broken an 8, I would be much farther ahead (even though doing so was the right decision a few of those times). That is, I have lost more when breaking eights than I would have had I stood pat on all of them.

The nines are tricky, though, and here's how I misplayed one twice in the same hand. And I knew I was doing the wrong thing each time.

In a Northern California-style $20-limit game, I opened from middle position with 9-6-4-2-A. Ray, two positions to my left, called. Ray often comes in light, so he easily could have had a two-card draw or a one-card draw to an 8. Don, on the button, raised. Don is a very tight player. He would raise on the come (drawing one card) only if that draw were to something like a wheel with the joker, and even then he probably wouldn't do it. He likely had a pat hand. George, in the small blind, came in cold for the two bets. I reraised. When I put in this third bet, it was with the intention of standing pat. Ray folded for my reraise. Don thought long and hard, and finally called. I "put him" on a rough 8. My first mistake was the reraise. Against some players, that would have been the right play, but not against Don, because he hardly ever raises on pat nines. Against two players, both of whom are drawing, a pat 9-6 may have a slight edge, but it does not have enough of an edge to warrant reraising and standing pat. In fact, if one player is drawing to a wheel with the joker and the other is drawing to a 6 that will beat the pat 9 if the player drawing catches a 9, the pat 9 wins approximately one-third of the time. It is a far better play to call the first raise – not reraise – and then draw. When I was faced with the raise, the pot contained six bets. For my call, I was getting better than 6-to-1 – my original bet, Ray's bet, two bets apiece from Don and George, and the big blind. Since by drawing I would win more often than one time in seven, calling – and not raising – was definitely the right play. In fact, if Don could have any 8 or better – a not unreasonable assumption – I would win somewhere around one time in five. I confirmed this later with Mike Caro's Poker Probe. Furthermore, I had the implied odds of one or more bets after the draw, offering me more than the 6-to-1 current pot odds. My actual odds were probably 7-to-1. By just calling, I would get one bet from Don every time I made my hand, and maybe one from George, also. I might get two bets from George if I beat a good 7 for him. I would also win bets after the draw a certain number of times from Ray. Of course, sometimes I would lose multiple bets to Ray, but I would win two or more bets from Ray at least three times as often as I lost that many bets to him.

A 9-6 should be played the way I played it if the first raiser often plays very rough hands and, when reraised, sometimes draws two cards, and if the player who came in cold to draw would do so to hands as bad as eights and rough sevens. But against a very tight player, reraising with the intention of standing pat is a huge mistake. Reraising with the intention of drawing is usually bad against two tight players, because when they put in three bets, they're drawing better than you.

Here's what actually happened:

George showed that he was throwing an 8. Obviously, he had started with an 8-7, and my third bet convinced him that hand was no good, so he wanted to draw to what he thought would be a winning hand. It might not have been obvious to anyone else at the table that George had a pat 8-7 that he was now breaking, but it was obvious to me. If he had an 8-6, he would have reraised when it first got to him. Since he didn't, and since he was now drawing a card, he would not show an 8 unless that was the hand he started with. He clearly was not drawing to an 8, because, with reverse psychology, he would not then show the 8. That is, a small part of his showing the 8 was to make someone think he was drawing to an 8. Lowball players often show the card they're throwing when they are breaking a pair; usually they do this only with wheel cards, though, so as to give away nothing about the hand. He had to have had an 8-7 because he realized how tight Don's play is and did not want to cost himself two more bets. That is, he knew, as did I, that if Don was pat, it was not likely with a hand worse than a rough 8.

But then I had a brain seizure, and made a much worse mistake than reraising, which was only marginally bad. I stood pat. I somehow convinced myself that my doing this would cause Don to break his pat hand and draw a card, but I should have realized that as tight as he played, his reluctantly calling the third bet indicated that he was pat and that, furthermore, it was almost certainly with a hand he would not break. If he had been raising on the come or had a hand capable of being broken, he would have called quickly. He would not like to do so, but he would stand pat. Yes, there was a slight chance he had a smooth 9 and would now break, but that chance was slight indeed, since, as I said, he rarely raised on the come and just as rarely on nines.

As I should have realized, Don indeed did stand pat.

After the draw – with George being the only one to actually draw – George checked. I gave up at that point, and checked, also. Don bet, George called, I wisely folded, and George showed that he had caught an 8 right back. Don showed his 7-6-5-3-2.

Anyway, I would have been much better off just calling Don's raise and drawing a card. While my reraise convinced George to break an 8 and thus draw worse than I, reraising did not improve my chances much, particularly since my beating Don's hand automatically beat George's anyway. I would have gotten a much better return by adding one bet to the pot than by adding two. By reraising, I had the slight advantage of leaving dead money in the pot (Ray's original bet), but my return would have been much better by putting one more bet in the pot instead of two. By putting in two bets, I was getting a return of a bit less than 5-to-1: three bets apiece from Don and George, Ray's dead money, my original bet, and the big blind, plus at least one bet after the draw; that adds up to nine and a half bets for my two bets. And I still would win only about 20 percent of the time.

Anyway, the point of my reraising had been to put more money in the pot when I was drawing the best, so I definitely should not have stood pat on that 9. Even if Don ended up drawing, a 9 against two players is too risky, particularly if one of them is supertight and likely either not to be drawing anyway or to be drawing to better than my 6-4. (He would not raise on the come with worse than a wheel draw, and then probably only with the joker.) I should have pretended that 9 was a king and dumped it. I definitely made two mistakes, first by reraising and second by standing pat on the 9. I still shake my head when I think about that pot and wonder how I could have been so dumb. I imagine everyone can remember some hand he played in which he wonders that very thing, and I'm here to tell you that I'm not immune from stupidity.