Razz - Two Critical Concepts
As we’ve seen in the other articles in this series, razz is not a particularly complicated game. It does have its nuances, to be sure, especially on the later streets, but it pales to either Hold'em or 7 stud in terms of sheer complexity. That said, there are a couple situations that come up routinely which almost every new and intermediate player routinely misplays - partly because they haven’t thought the situation through, but also because the concepts which guide proper play in these spots is counterintuitive. Let’s take a closer look.
Concept 1: If, on fifth street, you have a made eight, you may be a favorite against one other player who is drawing to a six, but you are a money underdog against two players who are each drawing to a six.
This is something you see all the time; a player will have something like (4s 5s) 2h 7c 8h, and he’ll be up against two opponents who are showing Ac 3s 6d Jd and As 3s Kh 6d respectively. At this point the hero correctly reasons that since he is in the lead with his made eight he should pump the pot as much as possible. However, he is only about a 28% favorite to emerge on seventh street with the best hand. Since he would need to have a least a 33% chance of winning to be a ‘money favorite’ against these two hands his situation is not nearly as good as it may first appear. Of course, it would be criminal to fold here, since the dead money in the pot makes playing the hand to at least sixth street a no-brainer. But just ‘being in the lead’ does not mean he should necessarily be betting or raising.
Concept 2: If you catch bad on fourth street, and your opponent catches good, then you should almost always fold unless the pot has gotten huge.
We brought this point up in an earlier article as well, but it bears repeating here since it comes up so often and so many players refuse to follow this simple bit of advice. It is, obviously, extremely frustrating to start with a great hand, and then be forced to fold it on fourth street just because you caught one lousy card. There is less than a 25% chance that you’ll catch a low card (that doesn’t pair one of your existing cards) on fifth while your opponent catches a bad card on fifth, and even when the cards break this way you’re usually only back to being about even money to win the hand. If you routinely make this fold you’ll have a huge leg up on your opponents, as most of them will lack the discipline to routinely make this play.
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