How good a hand is J9s?

[blubster]

How good a hand is J9s?

Should I be playing this hand? I play 5-10 and hardly ever play J9s, unless I'm in late position and there has been many callers which is almost never. I cant remember the last time I played it.

My question is should I be limping in with this hand in middle position if no one has entered or possibly rasing it middle position if no one has entered?

Just curious how some of you winning players play it? Do you limp with this hand in middle position, or do you raise and if so about in what position do you raise if no one has entered?

Appreciate any input.
thanks

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today

blubster

[LetsRock]

Just like everything else, it depends.

Unless I have a very loose passive table, I muck J9s in all but the latest (or blindest) positions. You seem to know that you need lots of callers to play this hand correctly, so being able to predict "many" limpers and few (hopefully no) raises after you act, allows this hand to be played occasionally from earlier position. It's tougher to play post flop since you don't have position, but if you're able to not get yourself into trouble with a partial catch on the flop, it can be played from anywhere - sometimes.

[stoxtrader]

My thinking on J9s is that its not a good hand but can flop a very good hand or draw, so it is only worth playing cheaply and with many limpers - I will complete in the SB against 2+ and I will limp with it in the cutoff or button if there has been 2+ limpers and no raises....

That said, my stats say I suck at playing this hand. out of 12,500 pokertracker hands I've been dealt j9s 37 times and I lose an average of .12BB/hand on this. I've put money in the pot 37% of the time with this hand, raised 0% of the time, won at showdown *only* 33% of the time and gone to showdown 21% of the time. I win 8.11% of the time I am dealt this hand - looks to me like I don't know how to fold this one post-flop....

[onegymrat]

I feel that this hand is similar to hands like 10-8s, Q-9s, and whatnot. Generally, play these in late position, or blinds of course, if you are confident that you can get in with no raises preflop and you have a few loose-passives at the table. These type of hands can get you potstuck and get you in lots of trouble. I call them "chipburners". You will always have kicker problems with them if you hit top pair. Also, another reason I call them "chipburners" is because in a normal low-limit game, you are going to run into K-xs and A-xs very often. So even when you have the odds to play your flush draw, many times you will still lose.

As far as raising with them, I don't see raising with these type of hands at all unless you are: open steal-raising in CO or button with a soft table, or on the button after a few limpers to vary your game in which you have already been playing tight-aggressive poker with premium hands. So to play them or to muck them makes very little difference to me.

[David Steele]

Isn't this kind of poker tracker analysis uninformative?

Consider that you are losing .12BB avg over the 37 times you got the hand. That would total 4.4 BB. Now suppose you won one pot tomorrow with the hand, it is bound to be a bigger pot then 4.4 BB and you would suddenly be on the plus side. Do you now like the hand?

[dm34]

Sklansky has this as a group 4 hand - in other words, it's ok to play from early. I don't actually know anyone who plays it like that, though.

[Nottom]

I'd play in most truepoker 1/2 games from EP, but most games aren't loose-passive enough for me to like it enough to play from EP.

[stoxtrader]

I agree that that statistic alone that I lose .12 BB/hand with J9s is uninformative over 37 hands, but better over 200 hands. In any event, I think that the rest of the statistics, *combined* with my strategy for this hand is informative. no?

[David Steele]

Oh sorry I wasn't criticizing your post, you are certainly welcome to give your oppinion on the strategy and so the post is informative.

It is the statistical data that is not informative.

I don't think there is enough data on that hand to draw your conclusion about playing it before the flop. In fact I don't think the data tells us anthing at all.

BTW Normally if I can't play J9s utg in my game then I will be looking for a better game.
D.

[WillMagic]

Of course, it depends on the game, but let's just take your reasonably loose-passive 3/6.

I won't play it from early position.
I'll play it in MP if there are three or more limpers in front.
I'll play it in LP if there are two or more limpers in front.
I'll complete half a bet from the SB, and I'll call a raise from the BB.
I'll never call two cold with it, and I'll never call 1.5 cold from the SB.

That's about it, I think.

Will

Will

[LetsRock]

The whole point of this kind of analysis is to "prove" that despite the occasional big win, the cards in question are profitable or not. One big win or loss on a given hand shouldn't skew your view on the big picture.

Your response indicates that you approach the game from an "any 2 cards" angle; it's true that at any given time any 2 cards could be the winner. But that doesn't make it statistically correct to pursue "any 2 cards" most of the time.

While 37 times is probably not a large enough sample to get a diffinitive conclusion, his number indicate that his play of these hands has consistently lost him money.

Based on this info and your interpretation of the data these cards are 37:1 for him to break even. Now how do you like your hand? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Piers]

If you examine the Poker Room EV charts you notice that J9s is minus EV in early postion, about neurtral EV in mid postion and marginly plus EV in late postion. Deduce what you want from that.

[David Steele]

This data would include, for example, a total live one calling a tight aggresive's UTG raise with the hand. I believe this data was discussed in the past here but I don't remember if it was way off base for some hands or not.

What we really need is a huge database of winning players combined experience with the hand if we are going to use statistics to help decide this.

D.