Monday, January 21, 2008

Razz: Playing The "Jordan"

The queen door card (first exposed card dealt) hand has been dubbed "The Jordan".
Let's take a look at the odds of playing a similar hand to the one described by Jordan .

Example hand:
Antes= 80
A complete bet from early position of 50 with a 3 up.
A call from late position with a 4 up.
I have a door card of Q and my hand is Q42.
I assume that both players have 3 cards to a 7, at worst 3 to an 8.
Let's look at my best possible position. Player 1 has A38 and Player 2 has 357. They could possibly have worse than this but they could easily have better.
If I run those hands against my Q42 in the razz simulator I see that my chances of winning the hand are roughly 14.55% chance of drawing out. It's costing me 18% of the pot to call and I have 0% deception equity in my door card. In tournament play, if I have a large stack I can afford to see the next card if I choose. It's an easy fold for me, but I wouldn't call it a completely miserable call. It can certainly lead to getting you some loose calls later on which could be just enough +EV to give it some equity. I still think it's a losing propostition overall, but I wouldn't call it a terrible play.