playing QQ in a 22 with a raise in front

[Slim Pickens]

$22 buy-in. No read other than the initial raiser has been fairly aggressive so far, as has the rest of the table behind me.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t15 (7 handed) converter

SB (t1570)
BB (t1975)
UTG (t805)
Hero (t775)
MP2 (t650)
CO (t325)
Button (t1900)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].
<font color="#CC3333">UTG raises to t100</font>, Hero ???

Initailly, I would hope the gut reaction is to go all-in, but I had a different idea something like this. My choices are fold, call, raise less than all-in, or all-in.

fold: yeah right
less than all-in: pot committs me and gives A-anything and K-anything odds to call
all-in: play the hand with an unknown edge, probably heads-up against the initial raiser
call: likely see a flop for 100 chips, but give the initial raiser a free shot at flopping a king or ace if that's what he indeed has, then getting to act after him on the flop.

Here's why I like calling better than raising all-in. Does it make any sense?

If UTG has AA or KK, I'm probably busting. There's no way I can put anyone at a 22 on a tight enough range based solely on a 100-chip UTG raise to fold an undercard flop. People love bluffing with missed overs and I love catching them. I don't see a lot of trapping with flopped pairs of aces. On an ace-high flop, I can be fairly confident that if UTG leads out for a decent bet, I've been outflopped and can fold. If UTG leads out for a pointlessly small bet, I raise, probably winning the pot there. A king-high flop is a little trickier, but I think it plays about the same. An undercard flop (about 2/3 of the time) is the real beauty as I can expect to clean out missed overs by either raising a decent-sized continuation bet, a raise which often gets called for some reason, or check behind on an otherwise-drawless board and do the same thing on the turn, when missed overs are more likely to call my raise thinking I'm bluffing the same missed overs they have.

My argument for calling rather than raising all-in is this. When I win, I win less, but when I get outflopped by overcards, I lose less. It's a tighter distribution, so even though calling might be less +cEV than raising all-in, I think it's more +$EV based on the ease of playing this hand postflop. Anyway, thoughts?

SlimP

[introv]

The problem with calling is that you have 5 people to act behind you and I wouldn't want to see a flop 4 or 5 handed with QQ. I'd reraise for sure. If I thought he'd call all-in with ax or a lower PP (and he probably would) then I'd be moving all-in.

[Bigwig]

Calling is fine.

Personally, I'd make it all-you-can-eat time.

[gildwulf]

I would push this. I'm fine with just picking up the pot there (130 chips or whatever is still a huge chunk of your stack) and if you get called at the 20s, they could have anything from Aces to KJo...who knows. Gamb00l baby...

[Slim Pickens]

[ QUOTE ]
The problem with calling is that you have 5 people to act behind you and I wouldn't want to see a flop 4 or 5 handed with QQ. I'd reraise for sure. If I thought he'd call all-in with ax or a lower PP (and he probably would) then I'd be moving all-in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I like seeing flops with 3-5 people holding QQ. I'm looking for an undercard flop and getting great odds to do it. As long as they're paying dearly to see the flop, they can fish all they want, and 100 plus a cold call should be plenty to discourage crap from calling.