Bah...

[Ben]

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (10 handed)

CO ($56.45)
Hero ($83.95)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J/images/graemlins/heart.gif, K/images/graemlins/club.gif.
UTG folds, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 folds, MP2 folds, MP3 folds, CO calls $1, Button folds, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($3) J/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, 8/images/graemlins/spade.gif, 3/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="blue">(3 players) </font>
<font color="CC3333">Hero bets $4</font>, BB folds, <font color="CC3333">CO raises to $8</font>, <font color="CC3333">Hero raises to $12</font>, <font color="CC3333">CO raises to $55.45 (All-In)</font>, Hero folds.

Should I have raised PF? I thought about it but didn't because I hate playing hands like KJo out of position when I hit something like...oh...a jack.

So do we hate the limp or the minraise more?

-Ben

[Prevaricator]

Don't raise preflop with KJo out of position. It's not a very good hand.

[cornell2005]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't raise preflop with KJo out of position. It's not a very good hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

its a perfect place to steal, id raise almost everytime here. your bluffing most flops here anyways if you dont raise, might as well raise preflop instead

[Prevaricator]

What exactly do you raise here with KJo in the sb? 8? 10? If you raise to 6 then they will probably call, and if you raise more then you are putting too much money into a small pot out of position that you'll probably end up losing money in the long run. What's wrong with just limping, and then if a K or J or QTx flops then you bet out. People aren't going to make plays at a blind unless they have something, and if they do, then you can play it the way he did, and safely exit the pot.

[cornell2005]

[ QUOTE ]
What exactly do you raise here with KJo in the sb? 8? 10?

[/ QUOTE ]

no just your normal 4xBB raise or whatever

[ QUOTE ]
What's wrong with just limping, and then if a K or J or QTx flops then you bet out.

[/ QUOTE ]

if you always do this you lose money on the hand. you cant always bet with made hands when it gets this shorthanded. if you do, your leaving potential money out there. it would be different if there were 5 limpers behind you.

try it a couple times and see how many people actually call your raise, and if they do, bet out again and see how many of those call your bet. in the long run its worth it if the table is weak enough (likely here) and you only have 1 or 2 possible in the pot

[Prevaricator]

This is party NLHE 10 max, its not short handed.

You won't lose money if you only play flops that hit from the sb since it only costs you 1/2 bb to call; even with 1 limper, you are getting 5:1 on your money. If we accept what you say, you mine as well raise QJ, and JT from the sb since you are banking on the hope that they will fold anyway. A lot of the time too, if you limp/bet they will put you on TP or 2 low pair, but if you raise, they put you on high cards on the rag flop. Also, a lot of weak party players limp call with any pair up to tens, and AT, AJ, KQ, AQ, etc, any position, and you dont want these hands calling you down. You need to know whether or not the guy is a calling station before you make a play like this at a miniscule pot.

[gavrilo]

Yeah I gotta agree with Prevaricator on this.

[cornell2005]

in this case theres 1 limper behind in the CO and all folded to you. thats what i mean by shorthanded. its not the right term though.

you dont ever raise from the Button or SB when all folded to you with 2 marginal cards?

theres a huge huge amount to be won on taking advantage of the weakness of these types of tables, if you only play strong hands in this type of perfect stealing position i think you losing profit

[cornell2005]

[ QUOTE ]

You won't lose money if you only play flops that hit from the sb since it only costs you 1/2 bb to call; even with 1 limper, you are getting 5:1 on your money. If we accept what you say, you mine as well raise QJ, and JT from the sb since you are banking on the hope that they will fold anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

it all depends on how many people there are still in the pot. of course i would never raise kj or j10 from the sb with 2 or 3 limpers. but against 1 or 2 possible opponents your just losing profit if you only bet made hands. bottom line. and kj is a great and to be pulling this type of move with. i would do it with much less too against most/some nl50 type players.

[ QUOTE ]

A lot of the time too, if you limp/bet they will put you on TP or 2 low pair, but if you raise, they put you on high cards on the rag flop.

[/ QUOTE ]

people dont always / shouldnt put a preflop raiser on only high cards when a rag flop comes. if they do, they better be ready to call down the river, because theres at least a 50% chance hes holding pockets. most arnt willing to take that risk, hence the profits to be made by auto betting a decent percent of flops you preflop raise.

if a high flop comes out, its even better if you raised preflop. say a high flop comes out and you missed it. you can bluff pretty effectivly because he knows you haev either very high broadway cards or a high pocket, so theres very little hadns he could possibly hold that he can play you with. you win say 80% of these and get played at and lose 20%. (made up figure, but not far off)

last, technically theres not many hands the CO limper should be calling your raise with here. the obvious exceptions are mid pockets. thats even better for you, bc he misses 7/8 of the time, so you take down the pot post flop 7/8 of the time. theres also not a high chance the BB will have a hand he can play with you either.

Overall its a small pot, but if raising in these types of situations is +EV, which clearly it is sometimes is, it doesnt matter how small the pot is. theres alot of other arguemens that can be made about why to raise and not always play made hands in steal positions, but im sure most have stopped reading by now.

[cornell2005]

oh sorry one last thing
[ QUOTE ]


You won't lose money if you only play flops that hit from the sb since it only costs you 1/2 bb to call; even with 1 limper, you are getting 5:1 on your money.

[/ QUOTE ]

while that is true, its not the point here. you arnt playing not to lose money, your playing to win the maximum. if it was in respose to my statement, then i meant you will lose money if you limp in from the button or whatever with all folded to you and only bet when you hit your hand. that is -EV

[scrub]

--If I wanted to play the pot aggressively I'd checkraise the flop. It's much easier to know where you stand.

--There's a lot to be said for playing this pot very passively. If he's got you beat he's going to be afraid to bet so much that he loses you. If he's bluffing raising is going to make him stop or make him bluff hard enough to get you to fold the best hand. Sometimes going check/call check/call check/call if the bet is small, check/call, check, value bet when checked behind on the turn is better. You're out of position so you can't take a free card at any point during the hand, so the smaller the pot is the better.

scrub

[BlueBear]

Min raise doesn't accomplish any thing here, there's absolutely no chance that CO will fold, also gives the CO a chance to re-raise you all-in. Say CO calls, how would you play a turn if a blank turns up? I would not be willing the bet out over half my stack at this point here.

In the absense of information of the player, these sort of min-raises of early position bettors do indicate that the CO has a fair to good hand. As the position is not good, I would proceed passively from here, call the min-raise, see what CO does on a turn, and will fold to a substantial bet.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

Your min raise is poop. I would much rather check/call this hand for a couple reasons

1) If you're behind, you'll lose just a small portion of your stack, probably the same amount you lost on this flop, but at least you'll see a showdown. But if he goes over the top on the turn, you can fold and lose mininum.

2) If you're beating him, he'll be betting your hand for you and you probably extract the maximum from him, especially if he's bluffing.

I think the correct line here, is
a) check/call, check/call, check/call if you think the price is good.

b) check/call. if he checks the turn behind you, value bet the river, or check/call again if you want if you think he'll bluff off a couple chips or bet a weaker hand than yours.

[1800GAMBLER]

Hey.

I'd say if you raised this preflop it would be a +EV way of playing it. To be honest, i think if you raised x,x and bet the flop here it would be profitable. Yet i think if you complete with KJo here it's more profitable than raising to steal with it.

Postflop, when you reraised it i thought wtf. Yet that reraise just saved you your stack. It's a good raise for information. If he just called i'd 2/3 pot the turn and check the river.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
Yet i think if you complete with KJo here it's more profitable than raising to steal with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very important point that I think a lot of posters missed earlier in the thread. I've made a ton of chips completing with K-paint or A-paint in these situations--the other player has a hard time giving you credit for good top pair HU and tends to lose more than he or she would have otherwise.

In terms of the discussion of steal raising out of the blinds, I think it's a massively +EV play at many tables with "good" online players, but it's most profitable when many players have limped and there's something in the pot worth stealing. Also, the presence of many LP limpers at a table with "good" players indicates that a lot of these players don't have much since they would have raised the other limpers if they did. I wish I had pokertracker data on how successful that play was when I played NL, but I'm pretty sure it payed for my food for at least a week last semester.

scrub

[josie_wales]

Ben,

Looks ok to me. You are obviously going to complete. You are clearly going to lead out at this flop for a pot-sized bet. When he raises you, he could well be raising a limped QJ. I would have re-raised him here as well, but when he pushes, you are looking at a set, or at best QJ /images/graemlins/spade.gif or maybe 10-J /images/graemlins/spade.gif, depending on your read.

Against the set, it doesnt look good. Against the other two hands you are a coin flip.

Josie Wales

[cornell2005]

[ QUOTE ]

other player has a hard time giving you credit for good top pair HU and tends to lose more than he or she would have otherwise.


[/ QUOTE ]

ah yes this is where i went wrong here. thanks