Today, I reread the PLO quiz in Pot-Limit & No Limit Poker, and I wondered what people thought of 2 secenarios I disagreed with.
1. Hand #7, UTG raises, one caller, you hold 9944 single suited. What should you do?
call(2) raise(-10) pass(-2)
I don't see folding here as a bad play at all. If you hit your set, the possibility of someone holding a higher set or outdrawing you is high. Especially with 44 you have to be extra careful. Mr. Reuban said that you will hit your set with this hand only 34% of the time. Therefore it's junk the rest of the time.
2.Hand #19
You have A QJ7 and are with a player that "respects you".
Board T 7 4
You check, he bets you call.
Turn A
You bet, he calls.
River 7
You check, he bets.
Raise(2) Call(-2) Pass(1)
I don't see how raising is better than calling here. Reuben puts him on either 10s or 4s full. The way I look at it is you have to be over 1-1 that they would fold there 10's full if they had it. This is tuff, because a lot of the time they might be folding hands like j986 to your check-raise on the river. However, to call, they have to have 4's full or less 1/3 of the time. I really don't understand how raising is the best play here. Help me out please!

Hand #1

Think about what hands people raise with UTG in highstakes PLO games with deepstacks, knowing that most players never play drawing hands up-front. Given the range of UTG hand's, 9944 is a good hand to play in this situation...however your underset point is quite valid...esp. b/c u know utg is raising big pairs here the majority of the time.

Hand #2

1st, your opp. respects your game.
2nd, think about how large a repot bet is on the river and what kind of immense pressure that will put your opp. under. Again assuming deepstacks.

There was a discussion on 2+2 b/n the highstakes players about how Reuban's advice is very bad for a beggining PLO player, however invaluable to an intermediate player. I think this can be applied to the online world as well where stacks are usually very shallow and once they become around 400BB a player usually leaves...I understand the reasoning in Hand #2 but that play is pure suicide in most online games, esp. when ur reads are not as strong as they are live.

I always use a little skepticism when applying strategy written for live deepstack games to the online arena.

Hand one I play because most of the monkeys that I play with have a bug in their software that prevents the fold button from displaying when they have a pair of aces in their hand. It will cost you money if you get oversetted, but if you are deep enough, you should be able to get information without committing all of your chips.

Hand 2, I hate a raise on the river with an underfull unless you are sure it's for value (and I don't really know how you can be sure here). Based on the line shown, it could be, but you are likely just raising out a bluff. You aren't getting a better hand to fold, but a worse one often will.

I don't know about hand 2. If opponent is solid, the only hand he can have, considering the previous play, is 10s full. If he respects us, there is no reason for him to bet 4s full on the river after we check. 7s full of 10s is a remote possibility (he could have 78910 or something like that).

If he respects us, maybe he knows we're capable of making a check-raise bluff on this river, so he will call with the 3rd nuts. I don't know.

If it was me, I would make this raise and when he folded his 10s full face up, I would show my hand and say 'Booyah, biatchh!!' I think this is +ev, because the pleasure you get from bluffing someone off a full house is much greater than the pain from losing a few bucks on a dumbass bluff .

hand 1 mucksville. i like 2 paired hands but only when both pairs >7

hand 2 if we assume that he either has 10s full or 4s full then re i say REPOP. why? there's only one way for him to make 10's full (2 case 10s) and 3 ways to maye 4's full (3 combos of 2 of the 3 remaining 4s). so 75% we are winning...WHATS MORE is that the 25% we are not winning he may fold respecting your raise (repping a's full)

Why would a set of tens just call your gaybet on the turn? I'm thinking more 10-7 here, I probably call on hand 2.

Hand 1, muck it without ironclad reads on everyone else in the hand, and the ability to fold on a 2966A board.

Glad to see that I'm not alone in mucking hand 1. I wonder what DN thinks of these plays.

This has bothered me for a long time. I wouldn't even think about playing this hand here. I'd prefer George's 7532 double-suited.

Knowing the preflop action would help a lot on this one.