Calling raises with small pairs - effective implied odds

[jeffnc]

Matthew, read with interest your odds book. Now here is a situation that relates to the ideas in the NL effective odds chapter.

2005 WSOP. I believe the big blind is $200, and an amateur raises to $2,000 with AA. I think his stack was about $8,000. (I think at this point someone, maybe Farha, comments that it's a very large raise.) Folds to Farha, who I believe is in the SB. (Someone correct any of this if it's wrong.) He calls with 33. Farha has been very lucky so far and easily has this guy covered.

The flop is some raggedy crap like 7 3 2. IIRC, Farha simply goes all-in. Amateur thinks and finally calls.

What do you think of this? What does Farha think of the raise? He must obviously consider 3 basic scenarios:

1) Amateur has AK or AQ or some such (a possibility given the overly large raise), and Farha can outplay the guy after the flop if no A or K come.

2) Amateur has 88 or some such (another possibility given the large raise) and Farha can outplay him after the flop if an A or K does come.

(I have no idea how you'd distinguish between those since they are directly contradictory to each other.)

3) Amateur has AA, KK, QQ, or AK and flops A or K, and Farha flops a set and win with value.

For 3) you obviously need quite a parlay. First, Amateur must flop an overpair, or hit his A or K. At the same time you must flop a 3. Then you must be able to stack him. Even when all this happens, you are only getting 4x on your preflop call. So this scenario can't be profitable on its own.

How would you evaluate this situation? If you were in the amateur's shoes, what would you do? I'd have a hard time calling that all-in. I would know he wouldn't be doing it with KK. It's pretty unlikely he has AA. What would Farha go all-in with here? It wouldn't be to knock me off AK. It could only be in the hopes that I've got AA specifically. It can't be because he's got a hand like JJ and he's trying to get an amateur to lay down AA. Even if I've got KK I'd be worried Farha had AA so I might not call. His only possible holding must be a set. But then, it doesn't seem profitable to have called preflop so how could he have a set? Confusing!

[mchilger]

sorry for the late response but didn't see the post til now. The hand as I recall, Farha had already doubled up so he had 20K in chips. The raise was to $1000 and I believe the blinds were quite small, something like 50-100. Farha was thinking, my opponent doesn't want to see a flop so I am going to see the flop. If i hit a set I can probably win his entire stack. he hit the set and won his entire stack. The hand smelled like with AA, KK, or AK. With the AK scenario, maybe he just wins a small pot. not something I would do but Farha had the chips to risk. I seriously doubt he would have done this with only 10K in chips.

the title of your post is righton - Farha thought he had very, very high effective implied pot odds based on the read of his opponent. In normal circumstances, you would rarely call a raise that large.

Matthew

[jeffnc]

I wish someone could remember the stack size of Farha's opponent, because even if Farha's read was perfect, I don't think it was big enough even if Farha won it all.

[mchilger]

I'm pretty sure this was very early in the 1st round and his opponent had about 10K. It is tough to argue against it if he won $10K, but I agree that it is very suspect. On the other hand, Farha probably thought 1K is nothing for me and i have the chance to win 10K.

Matthew

[nsidestrate]

The other guy was Anthony Curtis and if he didn't have 10,000 chips, he was very close.