Pocket 9s Flops as an Overpair with OESD - Facing Serious Action

Party Poker (6 max, 5 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

6-Max Party $100NL .50/1.00

Hero: $334.28
Villain: $93

Preflop: Hero is SB with 9/images/graemlins/club.gif, 9/images/graemlins/spade.gif.
<font color="#666666">3 folds</font>.

Villain in CO raises to $4, button folds, Hero calls, BB folds - heads up pot.

Flop: 8/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, 6/images/graemlins/club.gif, 7/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>

Pot is about $9, Hero bets $8, Villain raises to $25.

Firstly, is cold-calling out of position with 99 the right move preflop? Thoughts on reraising? No real reads as of yet, Villain seems fairly aggressive and capable of open raising medium pairs, KJo, etc.

Secondly, and more importantly, thoughts on coming over the top on this one? Seems like I'm about a 1.6:1 dog to an overpair or set, and about a 4:1 favorite against two big cards. It seems like there's alot more combinations of overcards than pairs, but it generally seems less likely to me that unpaired overs would raise me on the flop like that, even if Villain is somewhat LAGgy.

I guess I need some advice as to what factors I should be thinking about here to make the decision, and how other people would go about putting Villain on big pair/set vs overs - and in your experience how often you see people make that play with say AKo at these stakes.

Seems like the only options out of position here are to fold or push, is this "correct"? If I was checkraised in position against a LAG in a similar spot would a call be a reasonable play?

I know there's alot of questions here, so any and all input is appreciated.

[stu-unger]

pre flop i like the call oop. raising can put u in a nasty spot if he calls and u have to take a flop. i think i like either check/call, lead/3bet, or cr all in on this flop in that order. if u check call u are able to keep the pot small and possibly pick off a continuation bet. as played i think this is probably a fold, maybe im wrong. if u know villain will fold a big pp here ~60% of the time u can push but thats just my opinion.

[amoeba]

I don't think villain has to fold that often for push to be profitable right?

[gol4pro]

You've got 10 outs against any PP.

Shove.

[j0wlev]

agreed.

Seems like folks like the push - and incidentally I did push, he turned over JJ and his hand held up, oh well.

Let's say that I decided to take a check/call line. I have significant trouble playing this appropriately for the following reasons:

- If he does have bigger pockets, and the turn and river brick, I'm calling PSBs across 3 streets which doesn't seem to make sense.

- If he has overcards, but a big card hits the board on the turn or the river, I have a hard time knowing whether or not I should continue calling.

Either way it seems like I end up calling several bets with the worst hand, or passively checking down the best hand without a solid way of knowing where I'm at in the hand.

I run into this trouble alot with mid-pockets, any general advice on how to handle them in general OOP?

[amead]

Hmm, re: fold equity.

I've never done this before, but I think that the fold equity that you need to make this decision isn't all that high.

When faced with the decision to push, the pot contains 42$.

After villian's raise, he has 64$ left behind him. To push, hero needs to call 17$ and push an additional 64$ - 81$ total.

When hero wins, he'll pay 81$ to win a pot of 106$ (42$ before hero's push + the 64$ villian has behind).

When hero loses, he'll lose $81.

Assuming folks get all-in, hero will win 38% of the time, and lose 62% of the time.

Therefore, hero's equity in the pot when he wins is 38% of 106$, or roughly 40.30$.

When hero loses, we're talking 62% of 81$, or 49.60$.

So, I think this shows that this push is -EV of about 9.30$. I don't know if my math or methodology is correct, but that's my educated guess.

So, now we need to determine how much fold equity we need to break even here. Since there was 42$ in the pot that he could potentially fold his opponent out of, he'll need to make that fold happen enough to earn 9.30$. I think this means that he'll need to make his opponent fold about 22% of the time (9.3/42).

Now, at this level, I don't think an overpair to hero's 99 folds much of ever, but I suppose it is possible that villian is on a couple big cards and is trying to defend against hero's OOP overcard snap-off attempt.

I'm not sure this gets us to 22% of the time, but it gets us closer. Odds that villian is fighting back to OOP's preemptive strike on a rainbow smaller card board + the chance that villian is making a move with air (real small, likely) makes this a very, very marginal decision in terms of EV, I'd say.

Possibly tiping things in favor of the push in my mind is the fact that at these stakes, everyone remembers the guy that shoves his whole stack in. For metagame purposes, this could most likely eek out any -EV that the push itself held from a statistical standpoint. Especially if you're looking to keep an aggressive table image for future action.

My two cents /images/graemlins/smile.gif