When do you fold KK pre-flop?

[LinusKS]

The other day I lost a big pot in a nl cash game with KK v AA.

Now my general rule of thumb is if I can get all-in preflop with KK I'm going to do it, and if the other guy has the AA, well, bad luck on me.

But I was wondering, do other people have a different thought on this?

I'm not asking about the weird situations, like certain tournament bubble plays. And I'm not asking about when you have a perfect read on someone, since I rarely have a perfect read on the internet.

Are you giving up $ by always (or nearly always) calling all-in with KK?

Thanks.

[whiskeytown]

I can't say for sure if I would ever fold KK preflop in a standard NL ring game (and I'm the biggest weak/tight player on 2+2) - unless I had the button and it got raised 5 ways south of sunday b4 it got to me...and even then, I'd consider a flop.

it is the 2nd biggest hand in poker, period....there is only one hand out of the 169 that dominates you, and any callers are virtually going to be -EV time after time.

post flop when the A hits....well, gl - but not preflop, no - not if I can go into my pocket and buy in again.

Don't forget - your win rate isn't 1.5 BB/hr spread over 60 hands....it's generally 5 or 6 big ones and 55-60 ones you muck/fold - by mucking KK preflop, you're taking the big ones out of the equation - and you will probably still get action from QQ/JJ and AK/AQ - so by all means.... repop that [censored] all in.

RB

[dogmeat]

You have to know your players.

I have folded KK preflop exactly one time in my life, and I shouldn't have.

If you are playing somebody that you know to be very tight, and they come over the top with a large reraise, there is a chance they have AA. If you watch a number of limpers and your very-tight player goes all-in, there is also a chance they have AA. However, I think I would probably still call the single raise. Good Luck.

You will get more responses if you use the NL forum.

Dogmeat /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[SevenStuda]

When your playing Limit-Poker, usually never, unless an opponent opens his cards and shows AA.

-Dimitri

[DcifrThs]

100% you are losing your ass!!!!

if you're UTG and raise to $15 (2/4 blinds- assume all have $500) and get 3 callers then the button makes it $40 you make it $75 all call and then the button moves in he has AA almost 100% of the time. fold.

-Barron

[DcifrThs]

you're missing the point here ... if you know the guy has AA you can get away without committing your stack. you only call if you have the odds to flop a set....KK equals 22 if you know the guy has AA and i know you're capable of folding 22 to a massive bet.

that is also why if you have 500 behind as does the whole table and UTG makes it 15 and he's a tight good player and he gets 3 callers you DO NOT MOVE IN with KK...only aa will call.

-Barron

[whiskeytown]

unless he has a monster tell the size of Rhode Island, I will NEVER know he has AA unless I'm cheating - (the poster kinda made that point....you never REALLY know)

RB

[whiskeytown]

it's a question relating to NL, not limit

RB

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Limit & NL cash games - never
NL tourney - maybe on the bubble in a super when I'm confident I can fold to the money or in a regular tourney where folding will guarantee me a higher payoff slot at the final table. Otherwise - never.

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
it's a question relating to NL, not limit

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

my post read

[ QUOTE ]
100% you are losing your ass!!!!

if you're UTG and raise to $15 (2/4 blinds- assume all have $500) and get 3 callers then the button makes it $40 you make it $75 all call and then the button moves in he has AA almost 100% of the time. fold.

[/ QUOTE ]

i was clearly talking about nl...

so i don't understand your post...

-Barron

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
unless he has a monster tell the size of Rhode Island, I will NEVER know he has AA unless I'm cheating - (the poster kinda made that point....you never REALLY know)

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

but you can know enough to fold given the size of the bet relative to the size of the pot and be correct way more than the requisite % of the time.
-Barron

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
Limit & NL cash games - never
NL tourney - maybe on the bubble in a super when I'm confident I can fold to the money or in a regular tourney where folding will guarantee me a higher payoff slot at the final table. Otherwise - never.

[/ QUOTE ]

you mean to tell me that no matter what the action, who's giving the action, the size of the bet and the size of the pot all taken into consideration that you will NEVER fold KK preflop??

that cannot be a good strategy or at least one that will win the most money...KK is 22vs. aa ...gotta flop a set or be done...granted its rare as all hell but i've folded kk at least 5 times and KNOW (saw the hand) that i was correct all 5 times that i currently recall.

i only folded them b/c i *knew* the raiser had to have AA. he'd never do it with AK or QQ, bottom line...

-Barron

[whiskeytown]

I disagree...a massive overbet is probably a steal and worth a call....AA will only raise a few times more then you and try to trap you.

don't know what NL games you're playing, but an all in with AA generally looks just like a QQ/JJ when played preflop....but maybe not from what you see on TV

RB

[whiskeytown]

I'm guessing since he placed 5th in a 600 player tourney today, the strategy must work for him.

RB

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree...a massive overbet is probably a steal and worth a call....AA will only raise a few times more then you and try to trap you.

don't know what NL games you're playing, but an all in with AA generally looks just like a QQ/JJ when played preflop....but maybe not from what you see on TV

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

i don't watch poker on tv.

i play the 200nl on party and paradise.

at higher levels things can change, but at the level i play and the games i've experienced, an incremental raising war (2 or 3 raises) followed by an all in is almost always aces. the times ive folded kk in those spots some poor sap with jj or qq or AK ends up calling and falling to those aces.

-Barron

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I don't play NL cash games, so take that part with a grain of salt. There may be a situation in a limit game where I'd *know* a preflop reraise had to mean AA and nothing else, but I haven't encountered it yet, so yes, in a limit hold'em game, I would never fold KK before the flop.

I suspect in a NL tourney, if I get too concerned about aggressive play meaning AA, I'd cost myself more money by occaisionally folding KK than by always playing it (the exceptions in my original response aside - I'd fold AA in those extremely rare but easily identifiable cases). By the time the number and amount of the reaises and reraises got to the point of me thinking "wow, this can only mean AA", I'd would either have already put all my chips in the pot or be too pot-committed to fold.

[Michael Davis]

I don't play NL cash games often either, but I do play 8 SNGs at once quite often and KK vs AA happens a lot more than you would think.

Listen to Dcifr on this one. The incremental raising he is talking often ends with AA pushing. Also, if somebody makes a big raise and somebody else comes over the top, it is almost always AA or KK. 95%+.

If you are playing SNGs, you are correct to never fold KK preflop. In a cash game where you stack is a much larger size compared to the blinds, you are going to lose way too much money playing this way, unless you are against idiots (and, if you are playing on Party, you probably are and will have to consider your opponent playing TT like it's AA).

-Michael

[Triumph36]

It seems to me the only way you lose big by not folding KK pre-flop is if your opponents can get away from KK pre-flop when you have AA. Otherwise, that money you lose will be coming back to you sometime.

[LinusKS]

Yes. The problem I have there, though, is that pot odds start to become a consideration.

In other words - to put numbers on it - if we each have 100 chip stacks, the pot is 4 when it comes to me, and I raise to 8, and he comes over the top to 16, I reraise to 40, and he goes all-in, we're talking about a pot of

4+8+16+40+84= 152,

and it costs me 52 to call.

In other words - if my math is right - I only need to win this hand one time in three to make money with this call.

Can you really be 66% sure he has AA here?

I'm not saying that you can't, it just seems like a high degree of certainty to me.

[LinusKS]

Let me put it like this (and please somebody who knows more about math than me, help me out):

If you thought the chance that someone who didn't have AA would play this way was 2%, and the chance that someone who DID have AA would play like this was 100%, and you know the chance of having AA is .45% (this is the tricky part), that means:

The total field would be 2.45.

That means there's less than 20% chance of AA.

Obviously, the 2% chance of someone without AA playing like this must be too high. If you drop it to 1%, though, that still means two times out of three your opponent will hold some other kind of hand. You have to drop it to less than 0.5% before it becomes a 50/50 propisition - which still makes it correct to call.

You have to drop it to something worse than 1/300 before it becomes clearly correct to fold.

That may be not too far from the facts - I honestly don't know.

I'm guessing that it probably depends on the number of bad players at the table - since I think few good players would play this way without AA (and since I'm discounting KK for the sake of the example.)

I do think, though, that if you thought you were sitting at a fishy table, the chance that someone without AA would make this play could well be significantly better than 1/300.

[LinusKS]

Edit: I do think a very good player might be capable of playing this way, if he thought he was playing against other very good players himself.

[Michael Davis]

Linus,

Including the variable of how often AA likely it is for a random hand to be AA doesn't make any sense here. If there is only a 1% chance of your not being against an AA given that an opponent played the hand a certain way, you should fold.

You should not be scared of being up against AA until somebody demonstrates the possibility. Once they do, the fact that they were unlikely to have AA when the cards were dealt out doesn't matter.

Try using your calculations and figuring out how to play 77. Since it is unlikely anyone is dealt a hand that beats your pocket pair of sevens, are you also going to be moving all-in every time with this hand?

-Michael

[LinusKS]

Well, I'm no expert, but there are a lot of hands that beat 77 - or at least tie with it. I'm not going to add them all up, but if you include all the two card holdings, both cards above a 7, plus all the pairs above a seven, seems like that may well come out to over 50%.

If you perform the same calculations, that's:

a field of 52, with a 50/52 chance they actually have a hand that's as good as, or better than yours, with only a 2/50 chance their hand is worse.

So, no, under those conditions I wouldn't go all in.

I think the unlikelihood that someone actually has AA must be taken into consideration when you hold KK, because you're comparing two unlikely events - 1. that someone would bluff AA (or over-value their hand to that extent) and 2. that they actually have it.

[Cleveland Guy]

I'm not sure I could ever fold KK in a ring game. In a tourney I have a couple times.

The highest PP I ever folded pre-flop in a ring game was QQ.

Playing .50/1 NL (50 Max). I get dealt QQ in MP. Raise to $4. Re-raised all in by LP to $12. Re-raised again all in ($60) by the SB.

I had about 35-40 left, and folded. I was fairly certain at least one of those 2 players had at least AA or KK, and the other probably had AK.

Turns out I was right - but the flop was Qxx. Biggest pot I never won, oh well, still knew I was dominated.

[fimbulwinter]

i agree with whiskeytown here. yes, pushing 500 over a 15 dollar bet is stupid (because you only get called when beat) but overbetting (say a $100 all-in against a 15 dollar raise) is great +EV in my opinion, especially if you've got the table image for that sort of thing (aggro, loose, crazy or tricky will all get QQ etc. to call). if you've got the goods to reliably read someone for AA preflop at an agressive table, then fossilman better watch his back.

fim

[fimbulwinter]

he was being tongue-in-cheek. in NL a minraise, especially a minraise with KK like you described, is much like an asexual hooker: none of the bang for all of the buck.