Cold-calling donks

[Guthrie]

I fully understand the reasons for not cold-calling with most big offsuit cards, but I'm wondering if there is some latitude in a game full of donks. Last night I was in a loose game with lots of preflop raising with nothing. I'm planning to call in the CO with KJo when the guy on my right, who had shown down hands he should have never entered the pot with, raises.

Conventional wisdom, I suppose, says fold. But if the guy hadn't raised, and I called, and it was raised behind me, I should have called the raise. In both scenarios I'll have two bets in the pot with a decent hand. What's the difference? Keep in mind that this is a game full of donks, not one with people who have some idea what they're doing and some reason for raising.

[imported_The Vibesman]

Wouldn't this be a spot for an isolation reraise? Depends on the other people in the pot and how many are in, their tendencies, etc.

I think one of the big arguments for not cold-calling is that if you are going to play against a raise, you should be comfortable re-raising, esp. w/ a top-pair type hands. The exception of course being speculative hands when there are enough people in the pot to give you good odds on your money.

I think KJ is a good example of the type of hand you would like to get heads up, esp. against an opponent who raises w/ nothing.

[tiltaholic]

how many people are in the pot before your friend "raises with nothing"?

KJo can be a decent hand or a marginal holding depending on the situation.

[MrWookie47]

If there's one guy betting or raising with any two, reraise KJo to isolate yourself with him. If everyone is betting and raising with nothing, play like a nit and wait for your good hands. You'll get paid off handily.

[jrz1972]

If you think a 3-bet will get you HU, then you should 3-bet. If there are already a bunch of loose limpers in the hand, that isn't going to work though.

If you can't get it HU, just fold. Yes, the donk might have trash, but donks are sometimes dealt AK or KQ too.

[Jacob_Gilliam]

If you really wanted to play KJo, you would reraise, not call. ut you shouldn't call because although they often have nothing, sometimes they do have something, and it's hard to play profitably KJo for two bets. If you had that hand and you knew for sure that someone behind you was going to raise, you should fold. You call the raise because it's better to call one more bet than fold, not because you want to play KJo for two bets.

[Saint_D]

KJo is top pair type hand. You can also hope to hit a nut strait, but most of the times this hand wins it's with top pair good kicker.

calling is pretty terrible. What if the button calls? Yuck. Worse, what if the BB raises? Double yuck. You would really hate to be up against Ax if an ace and a king hit the board.

Based on your reads I would re-raise or fold, but never call. If you are pretty confident you can outplay the loose raiser post flop, raise and isolate him. Top pair hands are easy to evalute on the flop against one player.

You would call here if you had a reason to want overcalls. I can't think of a hand you would do that with here though.

[Henke]

I know you said you fully understood the reasons for not cold calling with offsuit big cards, but I just want to put some numbers to it.

You are dominated by 5.7% of the starting hands, and to be 50/50 to dominate him, he must raise with hands as weak as K8o. That roughly translates to about 30% of the hands. So if you believe this is true, then you can profitably call here. But of course, raising is better than calling for two reasons. First, (repeating what has already been said and you probably already know) you want to get it heads up, or at least limit the field. The second point is that you're exploiting the edge when you have it. Say there are 2 limpers before he raised. Assume you cold call, and so does button. BB and limpers call. 6 ppl see the flop for 12 small bets. If you now hit your hand, and it's checked to you, you won't be able to win much more money, because anyone with a single overcard and say a bdstr8 is correct to call you. When the pots get huge pf, the money earned is most of the time earned pf. The exception is if you have a strong draw, which is unlikely with KJo.

"You have KJo on the button..... Even against an aggressive raiser who will raise many hands, you cannot risk calling. The losses when you are dominated outstrip the wins when you are not. Having the button is not enough to make this call profitable." (Miller+Sklansky SSHE 257)

They go on further to say re-raising would only be a good play if you were near certain it would result in heads-up. And that's extremely rare on small stakes games.