Beginning HU Rambles

The following hand is from last week, before I tilted off all my money. It seems like a decent hand to use to work out the equity of a river call.

Full Tilt $50.00 No Limit Hold’em – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $50.00
BTN/SB: $90.50

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with 3 J
BTN/SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to $2.50, BTN/SB calls $2

Flop: ($5.00) J A Q (2 players)
Hero bets $3.00, BTN/SB calls $3

Turn: ($11.00) A (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

River: ($11.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $85.00, Hero calls $44.50 all in

Final Pot: $100.00
BTN/SB shows K 9
BTN/SB wins $99.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Villain was one of those players that should be really profitable but just seem to own me all the time. The kind that limps every button and calls all raises. Re-raising this out of the big blind is probably a bit loose but I’m still experimenting on ways to beat this kind of player. Without any luck so far…

On the river I go for a check-raise and get shoved into instead. The board pairing obviously concerns me a little but I cant fold the 2nd nut flush against this guy. So to work out our equity on the call here we have to assign the villain a range. Now I see some crazy shoves at 50nl HU, but I think this kind of player was more the kind who calls down light but doesnt play big pots unless he has a big hand. I cant decide if he would shove every flush he has here, but I think he probably would. So therefore his range is:

66,Ac6c,KdQd,KdJd,KdTd,Kd9d,Kd8d,Kd7d,Kd6d,Kd5d,Kd4d,Kd3d,Kd2d,JdTd,Jd9d,Jd8d,Jd7d,Jd6d,
Jd5d,Jd4d,Jd3d,Jd2d,Td9d,Td8d,Td7d,Td6d,Td5d,Td4d,Td3d,Td2d,9d8d,9d7d,9d6d,9d5d,9d4d,9d3d,
9d2d,8d7d,8d6d,8d5d,8d4d,8d3d,8d2d,7d5d,7d4d,7d3d,7d2d,5d4d,5d3d,5d2d,4d3d,4d2d,3d2d,Ac6h,
Ac6s

Basically this is all diamond hands not including a A,Q or a 6 as they are definitely in his range. A6, is definitely in there, as is 66, but I have left out JJ, AJ and AQ as I think they would have bet the turn trying to build a pot. Versus this range my equity is 61.7%.

EV of a call = [our equity] * [total pot] – [cost of our call]

.61 * 100 – 44.5 = 16.5

So the expected value of the river call is $16.5 dollars. Sounds a lot better than the 44.5 it actually cost me so thats why doing this math is useful as it forces me to look beyond being results oriented.

So a little basic, but hopefully I can keep this going with more complicated stuff as I get more comfortable doing these caluclations.