99 is a pain ...

[Rev. Good Will]

Last night playing in Party's .5/1, I ran into 99 several times, in late PF positions with alot of limpers (one in CO, one one the button, and one on BB). I always thought popular theory says to raise with that hand... but why? 99 to me seemed like a marginal hand, raising only to push other players out. At a multi-hand, loose game, is it worth raising PF with these med-high pairs, as any overcards on the flop could easily spell out doom?

[PokerProdigy]

I agree that in these situations it seems like just limping is the correct way to play, because against so many players you probably need to flop a set or all undercards (which is unlikely and still scary as any overcard on turn or river could spell disaster) to continue with the hand.

If anyone disagrees (or agrees) let me know because I have been asking myself this same question for awhile.

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
99 to me seemed like a marginal hand, raising only to push other players out. At a multi-hand, loose game, is it worth raising PF with these med-high pairs, as any overcards on the flop could easily spell out doom?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would tend to raise anyway. 99 is a strong enough hand that it will flop an overpair or better 28.5% of the time.

You've got a pretty good hand in a multi-way pot, excellent position, and you want to build a pot so that players might be willing to draw to second place hands (drawing to overcards, or a 5-outer for two pair/trips) if you hit your set. I understand that there's a fear of making the pot so big that even really weak draws, like gutshots, can hang around for an extra street, but the gutshot comes on the turn only 4/45 = 9% of the time, and even if it comes, you usually have a good chance of redrawing to a better hand on the river (10/44 = 23%).

Just don't fall into the chip-spewage trap of automatically betting/raising the flop because you were the preflop raiser. (This also includes making loose calls!)

If the flop is AQ6 and it's bet in early position with a few callers, just fold it! Similarly, if it's checked around to you, strongly consider just checking, espcially if your preflop raise bought the button for you (there's another reason to raise).

[Rev. Good Will]

bump to get more responses... I GOTSTA know [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]