Hypothetical Heads-up Question

Lafortezza

Stolen from 2+2 forums as usual:

You are playing a billion dollar heads up No Limit Holdem head up freezeout against a weird fellow who has legally promised that he will move in every hand while turning his cards face up for you to see before you make your decision to fold or call.

The game is honest and he is legally bound to his promise. The blinds are one dollar and two dollars. You are a multi billionaire who is not worried about the money. There will be no rematch.

You fold the first three hands, all worse than his, and on the fourth hand he turns over a seven and a deuce and puts in his billion plus four (blinds from the first 3 hands) dollars.

Here are four possible hands for you.

I. Two aces

II. Two sixes.

III. AK offsuit

IV. 94 offsuit

Please answer the following question choosing one of the choices below WITH NO EXPLANATION. If you choose, you may add how certain you are that your answer is best.
Which of the hands should you call with?

A. All hands

B. No hands

C. I only

D. I and II only

E. I and III only

F. I, II and III only

Just post a letter and possibly your degree of certainty.

So don't post a full answer until plenty of people have answered with their choice!

kencleary

C

Jaden

None. The hammer will prevail!

Lafortezza

My first reaction was A. All hands.

Imposter

E

Drakar

C

ionapaul

E

kencleary

Question in white text:

Why would people call with AK but not 66? You're further ahead with the pair than you are with AK surely?

Iago

A...although I'd really prefer to have the 7 2

Juan Pablo

C

87% with AA, 72% with 66, 66% with AK, 62% with 94, you will have many oppourtunites where you will be more than 80% ahead with the blinds at $1

Vamos

F

AmarilloFats

At first I thought C..now I'm a B Man.

AA is "only" a 88% fav against..Why not use your practically unlimited time to wait for a btter opportunity like AA vers A6...!

ionapaul

AmarilloFats wrote:

At first I thought C..now I'm a B Man.

AA is "only" a 88% fav against..Why not use your practically unlimited time to wait for a btter opportunity like AA vers A6...!

Aha, but if you were a multi-billionare who 'is not worried about the money', would you really wait for possibly hours for a AA vs. A6 situation? Your time is money, my friend, gotta take the weirdos cash ASAP then head over to Cheetahs (assuming this is Vegas) for action of a different (and better) kind...:)

Lafortezza

Right, whats the best choice in terms of EV?
My first answer was to call with all the hands because you're ahead of 72o with each of them and since money is no object who cares if he outdraws you every once in a while.

But since Poker is all about teh long term value whats the correct answer?

AmarilloFats

"aha". Fair play IonaPaul..I merely considered the odds..Not the fact that the billionaire could be off getting ceann from Condoleezza Rice or whoever

mewso

Call with them all. You're getting even money and you are winning more than 50% of the time with all hands. Add to that the fact that you don't care about the money...

DeVore

Why do I have the strongest suspicion that the blinds from the first three hands make some fooked up difference to this rather contorted question...
Something in the line of "He'll be left with 8 chips and will go all in each time afterwards.... yadda yadda arse ****".

Since the money is of no concern, I guess the only interest is in winning. But how long is Mr Billionaire prepared to wait to win? How are we supposed to know that etc?

I dunno that there is going to BE a right answer to this but I would say C at a reasonably high level of certainty personally...

DeV.

karlh

C....

odds in white:

AA 88%
66 72%
AKo 68%
94o 63%

POKERKING

A

okidoki987

If I was a MULTI billionaire I'd go A.
Of course if I won, he would have the blinds from the first 3 hands I folded!
Otherwise C to have a better then evens chance of winning.

Lafortezza

Answer:

The best odds you can get for a headsup hand is KK vs. K2o where his 2 is suited with one of your Kings. Can't remember the exact odds off the top of my head.
With stacks of ~$1bn, and blinds of $1/$2, you can afford to wait around for the hand where you have KK and your opponent turns over K2o.

The probability of this exact deal is [(4/54)*(3/53)]*[(2/51)*(2/50)*2] = 1/76,675. However since the blinds are so small compared to your stack, you can afford to wait for this spot. The probability of this deal not occurring after 1,000,000 hands is [1-(1/76,000)]^1,000,000 = 1/516,000. After just 2 million hands, the probability of this deal not occurring is already 1/2x10^11. But since you only lose $1.5 per hand, even after 2 million hands you would only have lost .3% of your stack.

I didn't do the maths by the way.

Aren't you all glad I was bored in work today and brought this to your attention!

][cEMAN**

I'd say C

ionapaul

No billionaire is going to hang around for an infinite amount of time waiting for that deal, particularly one who doesn't care about the money...I wouldn't hang around for that specific deal if €10,000 was on the line!

I think for the purposes of reality* this situation should have featured two computers playing against one another, the first a snooty multi-billionaire machine with all the bells and whistles, the other a malfunctioning mainframe with rodents chewing on its wires, and the million or so hands could be dealt in a few seconds...by another computer of course, quite possibly that evil one that Arnie helped John Connor destroy.

*:)

bohsman

But then he'll still have half a billion left assuming you finally hit KK v K2 with the 2 suited to one of your kings very late on so youll only be back to better than even and then youve to wait to get the kk v k2 again hoping to get it before he goes over half a billion again sounds like a lot of patience for half a billion and then youve got to pay all the dealers luke as you seem to like the maths so much how long would this game take.

Lafortezza

Too long if you're dealing.

mewso

Hyzepher don't just close this thread, burn it out of existence.

accensi0n

C

Eoin

I know this has done the rounds, but according to this site, 72 is the "best damn hand" in poker. So, fold 'em all.