Call, fold, or raise?

[gcDanno]

$20 stars tourney, top 36 paid, 80 players left. Blinds 400/800. You have 18k chips in the SB, which is about average. You have A/images/graemlins/club.gif Q/images/graemlins/spade.gif
MP player - first one in min raises to 1600.
Your only read on this player and the BB was that they both were fairly loose.

All fold to you. BB has you both covered with 20k.

What is your play?

[SossMan]

Hard to say without a better read on the raiser. I'll assume his chip stack is about the same as yours. It would make a difference if he had a very large or much smaller stack. However, my default play against an unknown but "loose" player, would be to reraise about 3x his bet (T4800).

If he has you beat, you will very likely find out preflop. You can still get away pretty easily if he rereraises.

This is a pretty aggressive play considering you are out of position, as this hand can be pretty tough to play from 1st position. But, I am generally more aggressive. I think a case can be made for calling and seeing a flop. I would just as soon define his hand a little better preflop before seeing a Q high flop and not knowing where I stand.

[cferejohn]

You say MP is loose, but is he aggressive. Has he been raising lots of hands or mostly just calling raises? When he raises, is a min-raise the norm, or is this unusual.

If he has been aggressive and a min-raise is pretty standard for him, I would feel pretty confident that I have him beat. I'd reraise to something like 4000. If he pops me back all-in I'll fold. If he calls, I'm leading out another 4K, reguardless of the flop (I'll merrily call an all-in raise on an A-high or Q-high flop).

If he has been loose-passive and when he has raised has not raised the minimum, I'd strongly suspect a big pair and fold.

I don't think I would ever call here. BB is likely to call the min raise with anything other than total garbage, and then you are playing AQ 3-way out of position. I'd rather just fold than do this.

[cferejohn]

SossMan and I gave pretty similar advice here, except he advocated a raise to 4800. I would opt for a little less (~4000) because if he will fold to 4800, it's nearly certain he will also fold to 4000.

Generally, I find I can reduce my raise sizes as the blinds get large because people are getting poor implied odds to call and players realize that this raise means that it's quite probable that one or both players will be shoving all their chips in on the flop, and this should get them to fold hands where they'd rather not do that (medium pairs and mediocre aces).

A quibble, I suppose...

[SDA004]

I dont see why its even a question of whether you raise or not. I don't think a min bet tells you much about his hand other than its not 72off if he's a "loose" player. Its a definite re-raise situation.

[fnurt]

It seems mandatory to play back here. He could just have so many hands.

[SossMan]

If you make it T4000 preflop, assuming the BB folds, you are giving him about 2.7:1 on his call. If you make it T4800, you give him 2.25:1 on the call.
I think that you are right...the difference is that when he pushes, you save an extra T800. He will more than likely fold most of the hands for T4000 that he would fold for T4800.
I like the T4000 more.
My standard reraise has usually been 3x their bet. I guess the stacks relative to the blinds in this situation dictate that you can get away with raising a little less and accomplishing the same goal.
I stand corrected. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[jw2k]

Well, I've been having problems playing an "average stack" at this stage of the tournament (N players = 2x N paid). I've been busting out on coin flip (and 3:2 favorite) situations in the last 5 tourneys. So what follows may be tainted.

Unless he has routinely been min-raising preflop, he's probably on one of the 3 hands you don't want to see. At best, you've got a coin flip situation when he calls with his small pair (and he will most likely call).

[gcDanno]

Terrific advice that I wish I had followed. Yes, raisers stack was equal to mine.

What I did was wrong, and it was to just call the hand. The problem was that this allowed the BB to have pot odds to call with a K7. Flop was 77x.

ARG!