Playing Tens in Lowball

If nines are tricky lowball hands, tens are even trickier. I know some players who never play tens. They're losing a little overall by not playing them, but not a lot. But every hand can add to the arsenal of a winning player. Tens played properly can add to your overall winnings. Unfortunately, most lowball players greatly misplay their tens.

Let's look at some typical 10 plays.

Johnny limps in from first position in a $10-$20 Southern California-style double-limit lowball game. It's a loose-passive game, with a lot of calling and not too much raising before the draw. Jimmy, a tight, conservative player, calls from the next position. Susie folds, and Billy calls. Jack folds, and Walter, on the button, comes in. George, the small blind, calls, and Jose, in the big blind, is happy to come in for "free." George, the first to draw, asks for two cards; Jose takes three. Johnny stands pat, Jimmy draws a card, as does Billy. Walter takes two cards. After the draw, George and Jose pass. Johnny passes, and so do Jimmy and Billy. Walter bets. George and Jose fold. Johnny mutters something about the pot being too big to fold, and Jimmy and Billy drop. Walter shows the two-card 8 he made. Johnny spreads his 10-9 in a vain attempt to garner sympathy from the table, and Walter gets the pot.

This hand had six players. Is that unusual? Yes, even in this kind of passive game, but it is not unheard of.

Let's look at the math of this situation. Against typical draws, Johnny should win about 17 percent of the time. That's a hair above the 16.67 percent that is average. But look at this. In 100 times this situation comes up, 17 times he puts in $10 and wins $60. Of the remaining 83 times, whenever he "keeps someone honest," he loses $30. This is not every time, of course, because sometimes Jimmy or Billy bets and one of the other three calls, and Johnny has sense enough not to overcall. Sometimes George or Jose bets and then Johnny usually folds, worried about the two one-card and one two-card draw behind him. It's safe to say, though, that Johnny does not win even close to as much as 17 percent of the time he does call. Maybe one time in 10 he picks off someone's bluff. The pot would have to offer 10-to-1 to make the call profitable, and it does not. And some of the times he correctly calls a bluff, one of the others overcalls; Johnny never wins those. So, maybe a fourth of the time - 25 out of 100, say - he loses $30. To recap, 17 times he wins $50 ($850), 58 times he loses $10 (-$580), and 25 times he loses $30 (-$750), for a net loss of $480, or $4.80 per hand played. But that loss actually applies only to the exact situation. It's actually considerably worse than that.

Let's replay the situation, giving Johnny the same hand. He limps in, Jimmy and Billy call, as do Walter, George, and Jose. The draw is the same, with one exception. After Johnny stands pat, Jimmy pretends to go into a huddle with himself, and finally taps the table to indicate that he too is pat. After the draw, the first three players again check, and this time Jimmy bets. Billy and Walter fold, as do George and Jose. They know that Jimmy has a monster and was trying to trap someone behind. Lots of players do this, just call an opening limp when they're near the opener. They might justify it by saying, "I couldn't raise one player; didn't want to scare off any customers." Of course, anyone who plays more than once with such a player knows his tendencies and is wariest of him when he calls an early opening limp. In any case, Johnny does not call. Jimmy's play cannot be a bluff, and Johnny cannot beat another pat hand that is not a bluff. This happens maybe a fourth of the time. That is, a fourth of the time that Jimmy comes in behind him, he's pat - even though he doesn't raise. Johnny doesn't lose any more in this exact situation, unless Billy, Walter, George, or Jose raises, in which case he calls, and then Jimmy springs the trap and reraises. Now, Johnny has just lost three bets on his pat 10. But disregard that. The bottom line is that the a priori chances of Johnny winning 17 percent of the time are not accurate. He wins that often only against the exact draws I described. The approximately one-fourth of the time that Jimmy is slow-playing a big hand behind him probably reduces Johnny's winning chances to about 13 percent. And sometimes one of the other players behind him has a rough pat 9 and decides to just call and play pat. That happens often enough to reduce Johnny's winning chances to around 10 percent. So, the bottom line is that his loss per hand by opening from under the gun with a pat 10 is probably as much as $6 per hand. That is, every time he puts in $10 before the draw in this particular situation, he can expect to get back only $4. Heck, the lottery is better than that.

But it gets even worse.

Same hand (boy, you'd think Johnny would learn not to play this hand). Johnny limps in, Jimmy and Billy call, Walter raises, and George calls. (Remember George? He's in the small blind.) Jose folds. Johnny, Jimmy, and Billy come for one more bet. Johnny is lucky this time. Jimmy wasn't slow-playing a pat monster; he had to draw a card, and Jimmy hardly ever raises on the come. He certainly never reraises with an unmade hand. George draws two cards. (Yeah, it's a loose game. George has the joker. What can I tell you?) Now, Johnny pulls the 10 and 9 out of his hand, shows them to the table, and redundantly says, "I was gonna stand pat, but I can't now," and asks for two cards. Jimmy and Billy take one card each, and Walter also takes one card. Johnny doesn't have the joker, and his two-card draw is worse than that of either George or Walter. In this scenario, Johnny should win only about 10 percent of the time, but he's putting in close to 20 percent of the money. Those are terrible odds. If he had known Walter was drawing - but he couldn't know that - he actually would have been better off, although still decidedly in the negative column, by standing pat and hoping for the best.

I'm not going to run the numbers, but suffice it to say that Johnny's situation is just as bad against only three or four other players - and even against two. And in an aggressive game, limping in from early position with a pat 10 is suicidal.

Here's another situation with a pat 10 opening from early position, this time in a $20-limit Northern California-style single-limit lowball game. Big Bill opens from first position. Henry, right behind him, raises. No one else comes in. Bill calls. On the draw, Bill stands pat and Henry draws one card. Bill checks, Henry says, "I paired," and Bill takes the pot. Did Bill play correctly? As in the first set of examples, if anyone else comes in, Bill is really taking the worst of it. Yeah, he won this particular contest, but that doesn't make his initial play correct. Anyone who comes in behind Henry either has an excellent one-card draw or is already pat. And any pat hand that someone comes in cold for two bets with is better by far than Bill's hand. Might someone come in behind Henry with a pat hand and not put in the third bet? Sure, it happens all the time. The player might have a pat 8 and hope that Henry has a 9, and his just calling will hold Henry dead. That is, if the player with the pat 8 reraised and Henry had a hand like a 9-7, Henry might decide to break his hand and draw one to the 7. Thus, the holder of the 8 would be going from a huge favorite (100 percent in this case, if Bill calls and stands pat) to much less of a favorite. He'd still be a favorite against a one-card draw, but no longer the 100 percent favorite he would be against two pat hands worse than his. Many players play this way. And, by the way, if Henry was drawing all the time - that is, if Henry was raising with a good one-card draw - the player who just called with the pat 8 made a big mistake. He gave away that he was weak and he didn't make Henry put in an extra bet while taking the worst of it. And he didn't know what Bill would do. If Bill had a two-card draw all the time, or a rough one-card draw, he might abandon the hand for two more bets - leaving dead money, which increases the expected value of the holder of the pat 8 - but would come for just one more bet. Players do this (don't raise with pat hands) also when they hold nines, hoping that their coming in will cause Henry to break or that their 9 is better than Henry's pat hand. So, many of the times that two players come in behind, Bill has far the worst of it. Northern California games, with their lack of a limp option, tend to have fewer players per pot and fewer players coming in cold for two-card draws.

Let's first look at what happens with just two players. Maybe a third of the time that Henry raises, he's pat. Henry raises sometimes but not all the time with a good drawing hand. So, a third of the time, Bill is beat already. When Henry draws one card, he beats a pat 10 approximately half the time. If he's a good player, he bets after Bill passes with any 9 or better. So, out of 100 times, 33 times Bill puts in $40 and loses immediately. Of the remaining 67 times, he is beat by the one-card draw maybe 33 times. Of those times, Henry does not bet when he catches a 10. But he makes a 9 or better five times out of six, or approximately 25 times out of 33. (We'll be charitable and say that some of the times Henry makes a 9, he doesn't bet.) Bill calls every time Henry bets. Henry knows this, and bets only when he makes a 9 or better. So, when Henry is pat, 33 times Bill loses $40 (-$1,320). When Henry draws and misses, Bill wins $60 (including the blinds). That is, 33 times he wins $60 ($1,980). When Henry makes a 10, eight times Bill loses $40 (-$320). When Henry makes a 9 or better, 25 times Bill loses $60 (-$1,500). That's a net loss of $1,160, or $11.60 for every time he plays this hand.

Oh, and here's another aside. If Henry notices that Bill never calls in this situation, he of course bets every time. This further hurts Bill's winning chances. It's hard for Bill to figure out the exact game theoretical percentage of the time to call. So, either he calls too often, and Henry profits by betting only his nines or better, or he calls too little, and Henry profits by always betting.

But, as in the preceding examples, it's actually worse than that. If Henry is a savvy player, some of the times Bill stands pat without reraising, Henry stands pat right behind him without drawing to his hand. That is, with K-4-3-2-A, he might elect not to draw, knowing that Bill will check and fold. Of course, Henry won't show anyone his hand, because he might want to make that play again. And Bill can't just call every time Henry stands pat behind him, because Henry won't make that play very often. He will do it, though, just often enough to eat into Bill's already small chances of winning. Henry doesn't really mind if Bill catches him bluffing, because he knows that in the future when he has a real pat hand in this same situation, Bill will call him too frequently.

Let's see what happens with more than one player. Typically, when one player opens and another raises, if more players come in, it's usually just one more. This is because of the structure of the game. The typical Southern California pot has more players than that of the Northern California game because of the higher reward ratio afforded by doubling the limit after the draw. So, let's say Big Bill faces two players in this contest. Typically, he wins approximately 27 percent of the time, but he is putting up more than a third of the money. That is, he calls most of the time when there is a bet after the draw. Thus, when he wins, he wins on average $90. (This assumes that half the time, one of the participants is one of the blinds. Otherwise, it would be $100.) But when he loses, he often loses $60, and this is more than half the time that he loses. Say his average loss is $50. So, 27 times out of 100, he wins $90 ($2,430) and 73 times out of 100, he loses $50 (-$3,650), a loss of $1,220, or $12.20 per hand that he is against two players. And it gets much worse against three players, even if one of them takes two cards (which doesn't happen that often in a raised pot).

Even if no one raises, he still has far the worst of it. The best thing he can hope for is that only the big blind calls and that the big blind takes two cards. That doesn't happen often enough to warrant opening from early position with a pat 10.

The bottom line here, then, is that a pat 10 should not be played in any game from early position.

Should pat tens ever be played? Sure. We'll examine that another time. As a preview, though, pat tens are playable less than a third of the time you get them. I'm not talking about a hand like 10-4-3-2-A, by the way. While that is a pat 10, most of the time your best decision is to draw one card. There are times, though, that standing on the 10 is better than drawing one card. Those times, too, we'll look at another time.

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