[stoxtrader]

I love this hand. You have two important things here i'd like to touch on, one is pre-flop where i have a different opinion, but by no means think your play is a big mistake, if it is a mistake at all.

secondly, the post-flop play, first, why c/r, and 2nd, what to do next.

Pre-flop I'm glad you spend some time talking about it.

My opinion, and I've been blasted a bit in Mid-high limit for this is that coldcall in SB is very rarely correct. Against a very aggressive stealer who plays hard and fast and often too showdown (roma, mirages, sansone, alfonse) the arguement for cold-calling is that you will get excessive action when you hit your hand, enought to justify losing the intiative/folding equity/getting it HU.

The hands do do this with would be QJs, QTs, Q9s, for sure, those would be sweet spot hands for CCing, also JTs and T9s.

So the question becomes how much do you make by playing fit or fold (which is what you are basically doing, I think making plays at this point unimproved would be -EV), and does it justify the price you pay to see a flop, when also accounting for the times you make a hand and lose.

This is as far as I've gotten without doing real work on it, though i do plan to spend more time/work on thinking about this specific problem. My gut is that, EVEN in situations that line-up for the CC, losing the initiative, and letting BB in cheaper generally are too much to give up.

I realize 3 betting Q9s also has it's drawbacks, but this is what I would do against anyone that steals 40%+



Postflop:

I think a viable line is to just call the flop, and c/r a non-club turn, boutros puts you on a 6 because the c/r is a better play with a 6.

you can rule out QQ/KK/AA for boutros 99%, I'm not sure if he would ever CC those hands in BB closing action when he oculd face two players with an additional bet, I know I would never do this, and I doubt he would too.

His range is still pretty wide here though:

lots of Qx, 33,66, flush draw, and even 54, Q6, and Q3 (calling these if they are suited closing action pre-flop getting 5:1 given buttons style is something I would do).

I would call and check the turn here, but am trying to justify why. Being OOP certainly makes everything tougher, and to get the true answer you would have to assign probabilities to his ranges, AND predict what he would do with each holding.

I would think he is just as likely to call 2 with a flush draw as 3 bet with it, so you can slightly discount that holding of his, but it is still viable. I'm not even sure how I would play a FD if I were in his position and it would depend on exactly what cards I had.