Posted by Johnnymac 9:25 PM
OK, I will go ahead and try and finish the thought about drawing hands in a low limit game (hopefully I can do this in a minimum of words):

You occasionally hear people opine that the value of certain drawing hands (ie Ax suited, suited connectors, JTo) increases before the flop in low limit games. This is indeed correct, but not necessarily because these hands have an inherent edge over big hands like AA and AK and KK. Rather, the value of these hands go up because the low limit structure encourages most of the other players to play poorly.

There are mainly two types of players in low-limit games - new players and players who play too poorly to play in bigger games. Many of the latter group vehemently protest against this characterization and instead state that they are in the 3-6 or 4-8 game because they cannot "afford" the big game. This is indeed true, but the reason they cannot afford to play higher limits is not because they are poor - instead it is because their style of poker requires so much calling that they quickly use up their chips and thus in a bigger game they need more money than they would in a smaller game.

Now here is where it gets tricky: the reason that they call so much is because the game is actually too small for them.

I know this is confusing, but most people don't look at a call through the prism of expected value or pot odds - most people look at a call in terms of the dollar amount of the bet. They think, "What the hell, it's only $3" and thus throw that money into the pot because the rush they get from playing the hand outweighs the monetary value of the bet or, more importantly, the punishment that comes from being a loser.

The whole idea of an economic decision process and the incentive and reward strtucture that come from it is the reason why I love poker so much. And, as an economist, I can tell you that it's the reason why playing poker for something other than money is so little fun. There has to be an incentive and the decision being made has to actually count for something or the game is worthless. And this indeed is why low-limit games aren't that much fun for most people who consider themselves serious players - most of the other players aren't taking it seriously enough to make good decisions so the integrity of the game is compromised in a way. The stakes are so low that oftentimes it's like your not playing for money at all.

So how does this relate to the discussion of starting hands? Precisely because the pots get so absolutely big in smaller games (ie the ratio of bet size to pot size) the expected value of drawing hands increases implicitly before the flop. Since everyone else is waiting to win the pot with a drawing hand, it's often correct to join them when the opportunity presents itself.

The trick, then, is learning when the opportunity is really there and when it's not.

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