Checking down quads to win high hand jackpot (1 Viewer)

[rjdev7]

Played in a $1/2 NL game the other night (2nd time playing in this game) where there is a high hand jackpot to win a "nice bottle of wine" (according to the host of the game). You have to get to the river showdown to be eligible for the high hand jackpot. Allow me to share with you a strategy that you should NOT repeat.

I picked up 5h6h in the cutoff and opened to $12. Only SB and BB call.

3 ways to the flop of
Ah 5s 5c
Checks to me, I bet $20, SB calls. BB Folds.

Heads up to the turn which is
Ah 5s 5c 5d!
Checks to me and I bet $45. SB calls.

River
Ah 5s 5c 5d 2c.
Checks to me.

A lot of thoughts are going through my head. If I bet here, how likely am I to get called? In retrospect, SB isn't calling the turn with air. I now think they were clearly hoping for a river bet if they have the Ace hoping to either check raise or call hoping to chop. However, in the moment I decided that if I was wrong and they folded I would lose this "nice bottle of wine."

So after some debating in my head, I decided to (gulp) CHECK down quads so that I can secure the bottle of wine.

At the end of the night I rack up my profit, look at the bottle of wine outside, look it up on Google, and realize it is worth..... $10.

So, my friends. My advice to you is to just play your hand and not be influenced by high hand jackpots.... Or at the very least, do your research before you play haha. Lesson learned!


Edit: my only hope is that this bottle of wine somehow holds some unique properties that are hiding behind the mask of a cheap $10 bottle of wine. Like, maybe if I drink it during the next game some epic run good will be bestowed upon me by the poker gods.

 

[moose]

The requirement should only be that you win the hand and SHOW it. Not go to SHOWdown.

 

[rjdev7]

The requirement should only be that you win the hand and SHOW it. Not go to SHOWdown.

Lol I agree with you. That would have certainly changed things

 

[EnjoyLife]

The requirement should only be that you win the hand and SHOW it. Not go to SHOWdown.

Totally agree

 

[Jimulacrum]

Agreed with the folks saying the rule shouldn't require a showdown.

This reminds me of the time I went on a cruise and got drunk enough to get caught up playing that game where you drop coins into a machine, trying to get them to push coins (and other various prizes) off the edge so they fall to you.

There was a Princess Cruises branded die on a keychain, and I had assumed* that getting the keychain would entitle me to some prize (bottle of champagne or whatever), like some of the other objects in the machine. Obviously not mind-numbing amounts of money involved, but I put a lot of time, energy, and quarters into the pursuit of that keychain.

I still have it today, as a reminder to make sure I know what I'm betting on before I bet on it.

Spoiler: *

Don't do this.

 

[HaRDHouSeiNC]

A bottle from the bar for comped drinks?
wow classy

usually they have a running jackpot

 

[detroitdad]

The requirement should only be that you win the hand and SHOW it. Not go to SHOWdown.

This...........That is the rule at my house.

 

[JMC9389]

Was this the wine in question?

 

[rjdev7]

Was this the wine in question?


View attachment 761875

 

[Josh Kifer]

Was this the wine in question?


View attachment 761875

Five bottles of wine to the winner! Prize - 2 buck chuck.

 

[LotsOfChips]

LOL - I've also seen it where you had to use both hole cards to complete the quads, so just be thankful that you got the wine at all with only one hole card in use.

 

[rjdev7]

I at least knew the hand qualified. Agree that would have been horrible, not to mention super embarrassing.

 

[DrStrange]

Non cash prizes are worth close to zero. More so if you don't know exactly what the prize is. In this case Hero might have missed a $75 - $100 river bet ( that also would have won the prize) vs getting a sure thing prize with a check down.

Seems to me the bottle of wine needs to be worth ~~$100+ to Hero - not fair market value but something Hero would have bought and enjoyed for himself. That is a pretty high bar to reach to give up the potential cash value on the river bet.

Sometimes the house promotion is so sweet that Hero can't pass it up. Like giving a free river card to a potential straight flush to win a million dollar bad beat jackpot. But there the value is all in front of us. The cash prize is clearly defined and Hero can make some sort of estimate of his chances.

Not such a good deal for an unknown bottle of wine.

DrStrange

 

[Quicksilver-75]

Uhhgg. Lol. That is why we implemented a rule that recognizes a valid high hand if, at any time a bet induces a fold, then requiring the pot winner to show his cards. If he doesn’t want to show, that is his right but the hand isn’t counted towards the HH.

 

[Bluegrass Poker]

A bottle from the bar for comped drinks?
wow classy

usually they have a running jackpot

Non cash prizes are worth close to zero. More so if you don't know exactly what the prize is. In this case Hero might have missed a $75 - $100 river bet ( that also would have won the prize) vs getting a sure thing prize with a check down.

Seems to me the bottle of wine needs to be worth ~~$100+ to Hero - not fair market value but something Hero would have bought and enjoyed for himself. That is a pretty high bar to reach to give up the potential cash value on the river bet.

Sometimes the house promotion is so sweet that Hero can't pass it up. Like giving a free river card to a potential straight flush to win a million dollar bad beat jackpot. But there the value is all in front of us. The cash prize is clearly defined and Hero can make some sort of estimate of his chances.

Not such a good deal for an unknown bottle of wine.

DrStrange

I assumed this was a home game from the OP which explained the quirkiness of the rule and prize.

 

[JWC]

Agreed with the folks saying the rule shouldn't require a showdown.

This reminds me of the time I went on a cruise and got drunk enough to get caught up playing that game where you drop coins into a machine, trying to get them to push coins (and other various prizes) off the edge so they fall to you.

There was a Princess Cruises branded die on a keychain, and I had assumed* that getting the keychain would entitle me to some prize (bottle of champagne or whatever), like some of the other objects in the machine. Obviously not mind-numbing amounts of money involved, but I put a lot of time, energy, and quarters into the pursuit of that keychain.

I still have it today, as a reminder to make sure I know what I'm betting on before I bet on it.

Spoiler: *

Don't do this.

Twenty plus years ago I went to a casino in Virginia City, Nevada. They had a $1 flip-it machine. I saw a guy playing, and he had $35 worth of tokens in front of him. I thought that I would complement him, so I said some like you must be doing good to have $35 in tokens. He looked at me and said nope, that was all that he had left of the $500 he started on the machine with. I always wondered what type of person could stand there long enough to lose $465 on one of those machines.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Twenty plus years ago I went to a casino in Virginia City, Nevada. They had a $1 flip-it machine. I saw a guy playing, and he had $35 worth of tokens in front of him. I thought that I would complement him, so I said some like you must be doing good to have $35 in tokens. He looked at me and said nope, that was all that he had left of the $500 he started on the machine with. I always wondered what type of person could stand there long enough to lose $465 on one of those machines.

A masochist with $500 to burn, evidently.

When literally burning the money fails to produce the desired result, the next step is to pay on a per-iteration basis to repeatedly perform a tedious, meaningless task with virtually no chance of a positive outcome, until everything is gone.

Some guys like to pay a lady to punch them in the nuts. To each his own, I guess.

 

[Stufflymcstuff]

the action on the flop and turn combined rule out almost everything other than Ax unless the guy is a rank amateur whose debuting on celebrity poker showdown with 30 minutes of coaching from phil gordon. ax is probably 2/3rds of his flop call range (given that you hold the case 5), and he's folding almost all of the rest to the turn bet. Ax is easily 70-90% of his range going into the river. i say closer to 90% but let's be really anal and break it down to see how much the wine has to be worth for this check to make sense.

i think he folds worse than an ace almost all the time for bet sizes >= $50 and calls Ax almost all the time for bet sizes <= $100. in which case you definitely prefer larger sizes (let's just say $100 for arguments sake), in which case the ev is shown below - all based on a wine value of $100.

if 70% of his range is Ax,

100*.7-100*.3 = $40 better to bet

if 80% of his range is Ax,

100*.8-100*.2 = $60 better to bet

if 90% of his range is Ax,

100*.9-100*.1 = $80 better to bet


if 80% of his range is in fact Ax going into the river, you'd need to "value" the wine at > $400 (ie: would be willing to buy one for that much) for a check to be preffered.
if 90% of his range is Ax (which i think is the closer estimate for most players), you'd need the wine to be valued at more than $900 to check!!

 

[Chris Manzoni]

High hand bonus should never be required to go to showdown. Will incentivize soft play.