Folding 99 pre-flop for a raise

I've folded 99 twice in the past two weeks when two different early position players raised pre-flop. In both hands, the pre-flop raiser was a player who I had only seen raise pre-flop with premium hands (Group 1 & 2) and usually pairs. The players weren't necesarily good overall players but they were tight pre-flop as far as their raising standards. In the first hand, I was in middle position and everybody folded to me. In the second hand, there were two callers to me in the cutoff.


My dilemmna is this: Is folding 99 to "legitimate" early position raises a +EV play, especially with few callers? Or have I set my pre-flop standards too high/tight? I seem to have an arbitrary dividing line. I would almost always call with TT but have little problem mucking 99.


I've been thinking even more about this in the last couple days since reading a chapter in John Feeney's new book "Inside the Poker Mind" titled "Do You Pass the Ace-Queen Test?". In that chapter, John argues that cold-calling pre-flop raises with AQo (the bottom hand of Group 3) and worse hands is a sign of poor pre-flop play. John wants these kinds of players in his game.


With other pairs the decision is easy but 99 is in a murky middle-ground along with TT and 88.


So, how do you play 99 when an at-least-respectable player raises pre-flop from early position? Or even middle position with at least one limper ahead of him?

On the first hand, if your sense is that the early position raiser will only be raising with premium hands, folding the 99 is correct. You're in middle position. If someone calls behind you (or worse, reraises), your sandwiched in between with a tough hand to play.


In the second hand, with 3 players already committed to the pot, you can certainly play since the pot figures to be 5 or 6 handed.

You can get out cheap if the flop in unfavorable, but stand to win a big pot if you snag a 9.

There are many more unpaired hands that people raise with from early position than paired hands. Unless you're certain that a player ONLY raises with AA, KK, QQ i'd play 99 for a raise and hope the call will entice others to join in for what might become a big pot.


If no A, K, Q come on the flop you might very well be holding the best hand going into the turn and there's just so much pressure those overcards can exert out of position.


If the flop hits ugly then it's usually an easy fold.

First off: NO hand that is clearly worse than the opponent's is more than barely profitable head's up. Respecting the opponent's standards is a key key to winning at holdem. There is no shame in folding a hand clearly worse than the opponent's. So if you feel like folding go ahead and don't lose any sleep over it.


The key to this situation (and if fact most marginal situations) is how well you can do after the flop. Are you likely to fold the "best" hand later? Are you likely to pay off with the worst hand later? Are you confident when the flop comes J63 and the opponent bets? Are you paranoid or confident? If you are confident in your read of the opponent than 99 is marginally profitable against a tight raiser so long as you have position.


- Louie

Against a solid player who open-raises from early position or who raises from middle position after another player limps in, I believe it is generally correct to fold pocket nines against a "solid" player. The reason is that a solid player in these situations will almost always have AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ, AJ suited, or maybe KQ suited. Against almost half of these hands you are a huge dog. Against the other half, you are a marginal favorite. This makes you a long term money loser in my opinion.


However, very few players are really "solid" by my definition of the term. Most players raise on some weaker hands. Occasionally, an expert like Mason Malmuth will open-raise from early position with a hand like nine-eight suited (See "Hand To Talk About" from last month's postings). Against opponents who play this way, you may be giving up too much by folding pocket nines.


John Feeney's A-Q test was an interesting essay that generated a big thread about a year ago on this forum. I agree with John that against a "solid" player, A-Q should be folded for a raise. However, against most players, I believe you are giving up too much by folding A-Q. I have seen many players raise with A-J offsuit or A-T suited as well as K-J suited and even K-T suited. Against a player like Mason Malmuth who sometimes open-raises from early position with a suited connector in a full tabled game, I would never fold A-Q.

Jim,


Just because Mason made this play one time utg doesn't mean you should be calling his early raises with AQ off. He makes that play as an image play. Obviously it worked since you now willing to call him with AQ off everytime. I don't remember what percentage of the time he said he makes this play. But I'm sure it is extremely low. I think you would be making a big mistake

playing AQ off to his early raise.


Welcome back btw.

Can anybody remember what month the Feeney "Fold AQo for a raise" post is in? I'd like to go back and read through it but the archives are so huge it could take all day to find it. I don't even know the title.


Can anybody help?

But pokerguy, if you read Feeney's essay, he makes a point about folding AQ against an early raiser because an early raiser will have a Category I, II, or III type hand (HPFAP categories). He states that AQ is only superior to 27% of these hands. As an aside, given that you have AQ, it is superior to 38% of these hands.


But John goes on to say that: "This does not mean that AQ is never playable against a raise. Sometimes it is. Among other factors which bear on your decision are your position and that of your opponent, his likelihood of being on a steal or semi-steal, his raising standards, and your opponent's skill level."


I agree that AQ is a fold against some players. But not against a player who will occasionally raise with a suited connector especially in early position. You have position over your opponent and may have him badly dominated if he is raising on QJ suited, JT suited, T9 suited, or worse. In the "Hand To Talk About", Mason had 98 suited. No way am I dumping AQ against someone who open-raises even a small percentage of the time when he may be holding a suited connector.


I have also talked to a number of good players here in Vegas and California as well as some other poker writers and they take issue with the "AQ Test".

Dynasty, I started the thread about a month or two after John Feeney came out with this book entitled "Inside The Poker Mind". My guess is that it would be in the June, July, or maybe August 2000 archives under the Texas Hold'em General Theory section but I am not sure. It was a huge thread and virtually everybody got involved including Malmuth and Sklansky. Steve Badger was posting on 2+2 back then and he labelled the advice of folding AQ to an early raise as being "one of the worst pieces of advice he had ever heard" or something like that. Obviously, I do not agree with Steve on this at all but I think John's "AQ Test" essay was very controversial. The real value of the essay was that it forced many players to re-think the conditions under which they would cold-call an early raiser with AQ.

Jim,


Mason would fall into the catergories of a player you would want to fold too when you have AQ off. Just because he makes this play once in a blue moon. Doesn't mean you should not fear his early raise. The player that you would not fold to are bad players that raise with garbage consistently.


Not only will Mason normally have a very strong hand. But will also play it well. Why do you want to mess with a solid player's early position raise. Either your dominated. Or the times you are good you'll proabbly only get the minimum off them.

But when a player wins a pot after having raised preflop from early position with a hand like nine-eight suited because he makes a flush at the river, you have to ask yourself: "How times has he been doing this and we never saw his hand because he folded when the flop missed him and he was bet out of the hand?" Is this the tip of the iceberg?"


I cannot help but believe that a player who happens to win once in awhile playing this way must be doing it a lot and we simply never get to see his hand when he misses. He will miss a lot more often than he will hit. Putting it another way, he has to be doing this a lot in order to have be able to show down a hand like this once in awhile.


I am much more prone to fold AQ offsuit for a raise against a player who only raises early with AA, KK, QQ, JJ,TT,AK,AQ,AJ suited, or KQ suited than one who occasionally raises on other hands as well.


Keep in mind, that when calling with AQ offsuit your big fear is being dominated when an ace or a queen arrives. This is less likely to happen given that you have an ace and a queen and one shows up on the board. For example, you have AQ and the flop comes Ace-high. You are dominated by AA and AK. But given that two of the four aces are now accounted for, there is only one way for him to have AA and only eight ways for him to have AK. This means that he is much more likely to have KK,QQ,JJ,TT, AJ suited, or KQ suited than otherwise.

"The reason is that a solid player in these situations will almost always have AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ, AJ suited, or maybe KQ suited"


IMO, if a guy can be counted on to have nothing other than these hands when he raises in early position, he is not as solid as someone who will show these hands 85% of the time but will show some other funky but reasonable hands the other 15% of the time.


But the fact that he puts in a funky raise 15% of the time is not enough to turn my AQ into a call. A reraise (perhaps 15% of the time?) maybe but not a call.


My question to you is this: If you think that the raiser's requirements are such that it is profitable for you to always play AQ, do you not think that 3 betting will often be the better play? After all, you have position and preflop strength coupled with position is better than position alone.

I think you have a borderline decision with 99 when you can't expect to get the "standard" set-flopping value, i.e. when you expect less than 5 opponents. The way I see it, the smaller the pair, the more you must rely on set value to justify playing it pre-flop, and the bigger, the less. There are (admittedly rare) situations where I might even fold QQ, JJ, or TT, but realistically, I almost always take the flop with these hands. I fold nines or lower in many of the situations similar to the ones you described, where you only expect four or less total players, and the raiser has standards that are fairly "by the book." As for the EV of folding them (I assume you are concerned about folding when folding presents you with a negative EV situation), I think you probably aren't making much of a mistake here. Those times you ARE giving up EV by folding, it is probably only by a small margin. Those times you correctly folded, it's probably a good thing, because to make folding correct, the raiser needs to be fairly likely to have a bigger pair, otherwise you would probably want to take the flop. (This assumes that you KNEW the raiser had two overcards, and that you were about a 6:5 dog). However, the difficulty of knowing where you are at with a hand like 99 also makes it easier to fold it. What do you do with flops that are T, J or Q high? A, K high flops are pretty easy, you just fold. The others are troublesome. I think the extra difficulty of playing them, especially with exactly two or three opponents, makes folding them to a legit raise with few players perfectly OK.


Dave in Cali

when you DO find Feeney's AQ thread, you will probably find that it is SO long that it has its own separate archives... The debate was FIERCE, and sometimes a tad eeeny weeeeny bit on the BITTER side.. So go get you a bottle o' pepto bismol first!


I am in the "Feeney group" against perhaps 20% of the regulars at my local fairly small cardroom. The rest, I generally reraise if no one else is in, or just call in other circumstances, like when there's limpers, or I'm in the SB or BB.

"He states that AQ is only superior to 27% of these hands. As an aside, given that you have AQ, it is superior to 38% of these hands."


Jim, to be precise I state that AQ is "clearly superior" to 27%. Your post prompted me to go back and try to reconstruct how I came up with the 27%. After a few misses, I think I got it. (There is some subjectivity due to questions like, "Which is better, AQ or 99?") I suspect you're ranking some hands a little differently than I did. I stipulated that AQ was not "clearly superior" to TT or 99 (heads up). I also included the other AQo combos as hands to which AQ is not clearly superior. Anyway, when I go over it now I find it stays, coincidentally, almost exactly at 27% whether you account for holding AQ or not. (You end up with 24/89 in one case, 20/73 in the other.) But I could have an error in there, or could be missing something.

I decided to find it myself.


Texas Hold'em (General)- May 2000 (almost at the bottom)


Ken Poklitar

Btw, I think there were actually two or three threads (though I could be mistaken). I think a couple of threads came not long after the main thread, including David's primary posts on the subject.

The initial post on 5/30/00 has many messages deleted at the author's request (I forget the one specific author). Unfortunately, this ruins the flow of the discussion since it seems that one author was the primary advocate of calling with AQo in a raised pot. The "back and forth" discussion ends up being all "back" and no "forth".


I haven't read the posts which were started in early 6/00 yet.

Ah yes, that would be Badger.

Hi John!


Here is how I derived my 38%. You are "dominated(???)" by AA (3ways), KK(6 ways), QQ(3 ways), JJ(6 ways), AK suited (3 ways), TT(6 ways), AQ suited (2 ways), AK offsuit (9 ways), 99( 6 ways). These total 44 possible hands. You are "superior(???)" to AJ suited (3 ways), KQ suited (3 ways), JT suited (4 ways), QJ suited (3 ways), KJ suited (4 ways), AT suited (3 ways), and AQ offsuit due to your superior position (7 ways). These total 27 hands. Therefore, of the 71 possible hands, you are "superior" to 27 of them which is 38%. Note these are all Group I, II, and III hands.

Certainly three-betting has the advantages of perhaps isolating the raiser with position. The problem is that against what I consider to be a "solid player", AQ is dominated by 30 of the 43 possible hands which is about 70% of the time. I don't know if it is worth three-betting someone who rates to have me in bad shape this often especially since there will be percentage of the time when I will get four-bet. This is consistent with Feeney's argument where he advises folding AQ offsuit (he uses the number of 27%).


But suppose a guy will raise from early position with a Category IV hand about 33% of the time as stated in HPFAP? (See examples on page 23 of HPFAP). This adds another 49 hands he will be raising with say 33% of the time. When this is the case, there are another 16 hands (49 x .33) you dominate. Now a case can be made for at least calling and maybe even three-betting since you are about even money to have a better playing hand.

Ah, okay, I put AQo in the other group (the combos AQ is not clearly superior to), since it was the same hand with the only a positional advantage. I would not argue with listing it the way you did. After all, the positional advantage is very real. But I wanted to look at hands over which the AQ had a clear superiority in terms of domination/higher cards, and opted to go the way I did.


Btw, you reminded me of a tiny error that was in the first printing of my book, but which I think was corrected in the next. I had it at 27%, but it should be 28%. (The 27% came from neglecting to subtract the two suited combos from the remaining AQ combos in looking at the AQo combos.) So 28% or 38%, depending.

Notice though that bringing it back toward a fold is the fact that a lot of decent players only raise in early positions a minority of the time with KJs, QJs. and JTs. And they may limp some significant percentage of the time with the big suited hands in groups 1 and 2 as well. So the % of raising hands that have you in trouble goes up, at least with these players (who may not be quite as common as they were a few years ago... I'm not sure).

I would fold the first hand here, simply because of position and the amount of people in. Mid pairs play best multiway, so I would call this hand with 4-5 limpers alread committed and I was in late position.


Billy