$55: JJ facing a raise with 13bb

[Isura]

Flat calling seems much more appealing to me now. I figure the chance of smaller pairs and overpairs about cancel out, and the rest is mostly 2 overcards. He'll miss with overs 2/3 of the time, so I stand a good chance of taking it down on the flop against these hands, or force him to make a tough call with 6 outs. I can also fold on an ugly board and still have 8.5bb (meh, this sucks too though). What's your line here?


#Game No : 2559998532
***** Hand History for Game 2559998532 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $50 Buy-in + $5 Entry Fee Trny:14967903 Level:4 Blinds(50/100) - Friday, August 19, 02:29:08 EDT 2005
Table Table 11239 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 7
Seat 2: acmorgan ( $625 )
Seat 3: Norman___ ( $1155 )
Seat 4: poker2367 ( $3470 )
Seat 6: airductor ( $1020 )
Seat 8: testbatsmen1 ( $1335 )
Seat 9: LT_64 ( $930 )
Seat 10: oneadamtwelv ( $1465 )
Trny:14967903 Level:4
Blinds(50/100)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to testbatsmen1 [ Jh Js ]
Norman___ raises [300].
poker2367 folds.
airductor folds.
>You have options at Table 15635 Table!.
testbatsmen1 is all-In [1335]

[psyduck]

These types of threads are hard because so many plays are possible, and it's not easy to judge which play is better than the others. I think that's the reason that it hasn't received any responses till now.

With JJ, this is how I play it at this blind level. However, you must realize that you don't have *MUCH* FE, since about 1/4 of the villain's stack is already in...

Now this begs the question: what about TT? 99? I think I'd take the path of calling with TT and evaluating on the flop, and I'd fold 99.

Meh. Good thread.

[MegaBet]

Yeah, in general I call and see what the flop brings.

Wow, hard hand, but I still say a push is almost mandatory here...calling IMO is really sort of bad because you let this guy take away the pot with 99 or something if Q,K, or A falls. If the blinds were smaller, I would probably call, but the blinds are already so big, and you just got dealt JJ, and your stack needs to grow at this point...I think of it like this: You need to make those Ax hands fold here, as they are just too dangerous to take a flop with blinds so high. If your opponent has QQ, KK, or AA then so be it, U are a huge dog (but wow, so many people hit that damn set on my big pairs). BUT, if your opponet has 1010 or under (1010-88 just might call too), you are a huge favorite to win. Against the "Ace high" hands, you love AJ on down, while coinflipping with the advantage against AQ or AK. The main difference here tho is that your push gives you the best chance at defeating those AQ or AK hands from a laydown, while perhaps garnishing a possible call from those AJ or A10 hands (a stretch, but have seen it).
SO assuming you are not folding this hand (I DO NOT like a fold here) I believe you should push the JJ, especially since it is so huge a favorite over so many pairs that might call you, and still a slight favorite to Ak or AQ (AQ might even fold). If he is lucky enough to have QQ, KK, AA, then you are good and screwed. Again, I say push mostly because of the size of the blinds and the size of your stack (which will grow considerably if he folds or if he calls and you win, both of which are impossible if you fold). So many of these posts are about "getting away" from a hand especially after someone pulls a move like this and gets called by KK or AA. But always remember that the ultimate goal in the tournament is to gather ALL the chips, and your position puts you in a good spot to grab some more...I say push.

[45suited]

I really don't see how nobody has mentioned what I view as the obvious determining factor in this hand: your read of the UTG raiser.

Under no circumstances am I a huge fan of the cold call. Seems like you'd be spending too much of your stack when the flop is too likely to come with overcards.

If this guy has been pretty active, I'd push pre-flop. If not, I don't know, maybe I could force myself to fold pre-flop. (Obviously there are players who you could put on a tight enough range here to make a fold correct.) I honestly can't say if I haven't been subliminally influenced by the tone of your post though. You know that I'm a big fan of your posts (always tough questions like this one) but I think in this case you're giving away too much with your pre-hand commentary (the first sentence).

But I can say this for sure. With your stack, I'm not a huge fan of cold calling. If villain had been raising alot of pots, I'd push. If not, I think that I could actually fold. Remember, your opponents wouldn't know that you just folded JJ.

Tough hand... Again, no offense intended, but I think that you could get better (less biased) responses if you did not include the commentary that seems to give away what happened in the hand.

[Isura]

[ QUOTE ]

I really don't see how nobody has mentioned what I view as the obvious determining factor in this hand: your read of the UTG raiser.

[/ QUOTE ]

I unfortunately didn't have a solid read on the guy. He was a bit active preflop in levels 1-2, but nothing to note since. FWIW, I've noticed that 55s are significantly more aggressive preflop than the 20s-30s. I have seen players open with hands worse than AT or KQ in this spot.

[ QUOTE ]

Tough hand... Again, no offense intended, but I think that you could get better (less biased) responses if you did not include the commentary that seems to give away what happened in the hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

No offenese taken. Actually, I don't even remember what he had anymore, so hopefully this reply is less biased.

I do like pushing now though. Another factor to consider is my relative position. It would suck to have someone cold call behind us, or even worse, push. So a push seems about right in this case. I don't think folding is possible without a good read, these 55s seem pretty wild so far.

[45suited]

Yeah, I definitely lean toward pushing, I just hate cold calling here. I'd actually fold before cold calling.

It just surprised me that nobody mentioned a read of the raiser, which to me would be the most important factor here. But readless, I'll push this.

[Pepsquad]

You have to push here and tip your hat to AA-QQ. You're not folding and cold-calling allows the right price for a variety of hands yet to act. You're getting called 80% of the time here but my guess is you'd be surprised just how often your hand is good.