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dmoore1998 · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject: Starting Hands

Ok so I've been playing Razz for only a week and I'm doing pretty decent, mostly because I know odds and have a good memory for cards already gone. My biggest problem though is figuring out what my "general standard" should be for my first 3 starting cards. Assuming a full 8-handed ring game I have heard most say 3 cards under 6, 7, and 8 respectively. My question is what would be a good strategy if i wanted to play pretty tight, and what would be good if I wanted to loosen up just a bit. Currently my "tighter" game I rarely play unless I have 3 cards 6 or under, and usually with an A2. My looser game I am playing any 3 cards under 8, but at least 2 under 5 (after losing too many pots to 8-6 and 7-5 when i had 8-7 and 7-6). Are people that say they are playing 3 cards under 8 playing hands like 8-7-6...or is that considered loose? I'm "decent" with my play from 4th street on. I just feel like the biggest work I need is starting hand selection because I have a feeling I'm either getting into too many pots or not enough, and I'm really not sure which. Also how often and with which hands do you call the bring-in vs. completing the bet? I'm playing very low limits and am finding that completing doesn't make anyone fold vs. just calling, and since I still need to hit on 2 more cards am I better off just calling and waiting to bet till I've got a made hand? Or do I try to punish people limping in with an 8 or 9 showing against me A25?

I'm looking into some good books on razz, but until then I'd appreciate any thoughts the more experienced players have, I'm finding the razz games here to be quite soft.

jbrennen · Straight Flush Joined: 16 Aug 2005 Posts: 422

About the tightest that I would recommend: playing 7-5-4 or better. If you're not playing hands with a 7 and two wheel cards, you're playing way too tight. A hand of 7-5-4 or better only comes along once out of about 11.5 hands. With a typical ante/bring-in structure, this means that you will need to *average* winning a little more than 1 big bet for every pot that you enter, just to cover the antes and bring-ins for the rest of the hands you're not playing.

As for punishing people for limping in with an 8 or 9 when you've got three cards to a wheel... If you think of it as "punishing" them, you'll be disappointed. Smile

You're not the sheriff of the table, and chances are that if they are a decent player, you're at best a 3-to-2 favorite at this point. You can raise or reraise there to increase your EV for the hand, because you know that you're favored to win. But by reraising, note that you're greatly increasing the variance of the hand, because you'll be giving your opponent better pot odds to stay in the hand as the betting rounds progress. By reraising on 3rd street, you're making it very likely that the pot will be laying your opponent somewhere around 6-to-1 odds to call a bet on 4th street. Then once the 5th street cards are dealt, the pot will be laying your opponent better than 2-to-1 odds to call you all the way to the river. If you brick on 4th or 5th street, a good player will often call you all the way to the river with a mediocre hand, and will beat you often enough to frustrate the heck out of you. And to some extent, you are to blame, for making the pot big enough to justify it.

That's not to say that raising on 3rd street was a bad play, just that you have to be prepared for what happens when you make the pot big early.

dmoore1998 · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:10 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the advice, the "punishing" people for putting their money in with a 9 is basically because these people are NOT good players. Time after time I see them putting their money in (including calling raises) with 9-8-7 or even 10-9-8. That's basically my point, these players are mostly playing anything, and are going to call a bring-in, a complete, and a raise with the same hands. Mostly I'm asking should I be raising, completing, or just calling with a very good starting hand knowing that everyone who is going to play their hand for a call is going to play for a raise also. From my experience so far it really doesn't seem that players are worried too much about odds and are mostly not even looking too far past their own hands. So mostly I'm asking if it's even worth trying to raise on 3rd and make the people who are playing weak hands pay more then to build the pot, and in some aspects i want them to keep calling because of pot odds because it seems once i make any kind of hand, i can see that they are drawing dead or very slim, and it seems if i've got them committed by calling raises then they seem more likely to keep calling even once they cannot win because they don't realize they are beat.

Also I'm not JUST talking about people calling with a bad 9, these people are calling with K's showing in some cases, in one case yesterday calling with KKJ showing on 5th. The suckouts don't bother me so much, more just looking at what would be the most +EV play with 3 strong starting cards, is it raise it up as much as possible on 3rd and just live with the losses knowing I'm ahead and the wins will be that much larger? Or wait til i've made my hand in which case the pot is smaller and I get paid off less because people are more likely to fold with the smaller pot? specifically against players who are super loose.

jbrennen · Straight Flush Joined: 16 Aug 2005 Posts: 422

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