When do you fold KK pre-flop?

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
unless he has a monster tell the size of Rhode Island, I will NEVER know he has AA unless I'm cheating - (the poster kinda made that point....you never REALLY know)

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

but you can know enough to fold given the size of the bet relative to the size of the pot and be correct way more than the requisite % of the time.
-Barron

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
Limit & NL cash games - never
NL tourney - maybe on the bubble in a super when I'm confident I can fold to the money or in a regular tourney where folding will guarantee me a higher payoff slot at the final table. Otherwise - never.

[/ QUOTE ]

you mean to tell me that no matter what the action, who's giving the action, the size of the bet and the size of the pot all taken into consideration that you will NEVER fold KK preflop??

that cannot be a good strategy or at least one that will win the most money...KK is 22vs. aa ...gotta flop a set or be done...granted its rare as all hell but i've folded kk at least 5 times and KNOW (saw the hand) that i was correct all 5 times that i currently recall.

i only folded them b/c i *knew* the raiser had to have AA. he'd never do it with AK or QQ, bottom line...

-Barron

[whiskeytown]

I disagree...a massive overbet is probably a steal and worth a call....AA will only raise a few times more then you and try to trap you.

don't know what NL games you're playing, but an all in with AA generally looks just like a QQ/JJ when played preflop....but maybe not from what you see on TV

RB

[whiskeytown]

I'm guessing since he placed 5th in a 600 player tourney today, the strategy must work for him.

RB

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree...a massive overbet is probably a steal and worth a call....AA will only raise a few times more then you and try to trap you.

don't know what NL games you're playing, but an all in with AA generally looks just like a QQ/JJ when played preflop....but maybe not from what you see on TV

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

i don't watch poker on tv.

i play the 200nl on party and paradise.

at higher levels things can change, but at the level i play and the games i've experienced, an incremental raising war (2 or 3 raises) followed by an all in is almost always aces. the times ive folded kk in those spots some poor sap with jj or qq or AK ends up calling and falling to those aces.

-Barron

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I don't play NL cash games, so take that part with a grain of salt. There may be a situation in a limit game where I'd *know* a preflop reraise had to mean AA and nothing else, but I haven't encountered it yet, so yes, in a limit hold'em game, I would never fold KK before the flop.

I suspect in a NL tourney, if I get too concerned about aggressive play meaning AA, I'd cost myself more money by occaisionally folding KK than by always playing it (the exceptions in my original response aside - I'd fold AA in those extremely rare but easily identifiable cases). By the time the number and amount of the reaises and reraises got to the point of me thinking "wow, this can only mean AA", I'd would either have already put all my chips in the pot or be too pot-committed to fold.

[Michael Davis]

I don't play NL cash games often either, but I do play 8 SNGs at once quite often and KK vs AA happens a lot more than you would think.

Listen to Dcifr on this one. The incremental raising he is talking often ends with AA pushing. Also, if somebody makes a big raise and somebody else comes over the top, it is almost always AA or KK. 95%+.

If you are playing SNGs, you are correct to never fold KK preflop. In a cash game where you stack is a much larger size compared to the blinds, you are going to lose way too much money playing this way, unless you are against idiots (and, if you are playing on Party, you probably are and will have to consider your opponent playing TT like it's AA).

-Michael

[Triumph36]

It seems to me the only way you lose big by not folding KK pre-flop is if your opponents can get away from KK pre-flop when you have AA. Otherwise, that money you lose will be coming back to you sometime.

[LinusKS]

Yes. The problem I have there, though, is that pot odds start to become a consideration.

In other words - to put numbers on it - if we each have 100 chip stacks, the pot is 4 when it comes to me, and I raise to 8, and he comes over the top to 16, I reraise to 40, and he goes all-in, we're talking about a pot of

4+8+16+40+84= 152,

and it costs me 52 to call.

In other words - if my math is right - I only need to win this hand one time in three to make money with this call.

Can you really be 66% sure he has AA here?

I'm not saying that you can't, it just seems like a high degree of certainty to me.

[LinusKS]

Let me put it like this (and please somebody who knows more about math than me, help me out):

If you thought the chance that someone who didn't have AA would play this way was 2%, and the chance that someone who DID have AA would play like this was 100%, and you know the chance of having AA is .45% (this is the tricky part), that means:

The total field would be 2.45.

That means there's less than 20% chance of AA.

Obviously, the 2% chance of someone without AA playing like this must be too high. If you drop it to 1%, though, that still means two times out of three your opponent will hold some other kind of hand. You have to drop it to less than 0.5% before it becomes a 50/50 propisition - which still makes it correct to call.

You have to drop it to something worse than 1/300 before it becomes clearly correct to fold.

That may be not too far from the facts - I honestly don't know.

I'm guessing that it probably depends on the number of bad players at the table - since I think few good players would play this way without AA (and since I'm discounting KK for the sake of the example.)

I do think, though, that if you thought you were sitting at a fishy table, the chance that someone without AA would make this play could well be significantly better than 1/300.