The Five And Ten Rule
Thanks to EmpirePoker offering two nice reload bonuses recently (15% and 25%), I've again been hitting the NL cash games with good results. In addition to working off the required raked hands, I've been winning a pile of money, and this thankfully more than offsets my abysmal results in the SNGs so far this month: 3 for 18 ITM: W.T.F? Even more aggravating is that I feel I'm playing the same game I played last month with such good results, so it's not like there's something obvious to fix... I really don't know. Variance and suckouts have been harsh in the tourneys, but still, 3 for 18 is a little hard to simply blame on bad luck. Right?
Anyway, back to the point of this post, my bankroll overall this month has become much healthier, and I've been reading Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker. It's a rather scattered read, but there are quite a few thinking points and little ideas crammed into it to make it worthwhile. One of which is described as "The Five and Ten Rule":
You hold 9c8c on the button. Three other players call a quarter, and so do you. The big blind, a solid player, raises $150 more, and two of the three players in front of you call. What should you do?
It depends on how deep the money is. Your position is the best possible, but you don't have much of a hand. A good rule to follow is the "Five and ten rule." When contemplating calling a raise because your position is good, you have a clear call if the amount is less than five percent of your stack, and a clear fold if it is more than ten percent. In between those numbers, use your judgment.
Okay, that sounds cool, but why? The book never explains this any further (that I've seen), and I'm wondering where those numbers come from. Surely someone out there who might stumble upon this post can answer this for me.
posted by Chris @ 3:25 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I have no idea either. I have read this about pocket pairs.. not about any other hands.. but who knows. I think with pockets the implied odds of you getting paid off HUGE when you hit a set are the reason why you make the call. They are also easy to fold if the flop misses.
Right on... perhaps it makes sense that you've heard this about pocket pairs as well... because usually, unless the wired pair is AA, KK, or maybe QQ, the hand is still essentially a drawing hand: even a pair as high as QQ still isn't very likely to win the hand without improvement at a full table.
And I can understand how stack size can come into play, both yours, and your likely opponents. It makes no sense to call off half your stack pre-flop on a shaky hand like 98s or 44... whereas calling a bet of 5% of your stack would be automatic, especially if your opponent is deep enough to pay you off well if you hit what you want on the flop.
But I still think that "five and ten" seems kind of arbitrary... I can't really see a mathematical reason why those would be the magic numbers.
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