$109s - QQ Hand

[Irieguy]

While your reasons for not raising preflop are cogent, I don't like them at all.

1. The tard with AK: this is a pattern recognition thing. AK doesn't raise to 45 UTG+1 very often. That's a tentative raise, and most donks don't play AK tentatively. I see min-raises with it, and over-raises with it. But a less than pot-sized raise from AK there is not something that a great player, nor a poor player will do too often. I'd scratch that fear from your list. It's just not a common betting pattern, not by a longshot.

2. Knowing how to get away from ace-high flops is much different than planning to get away from an ace-high flop. An ace is coming on a random flop less than a fourth of the time, and it's much less than that if there's one or more out. So why plan so heavily on this situation and why convince yourself you'll fold before you define some hands? The key to playing an ace-high flop with an underpair is getting a read on the ace. You can do this with both preflop and post flop pot manipulation. You have a little more work to do here preflop, and a hell of a lot more work before you resign yourself to folding to an ace-high board.

3. C-bets come from players who have betting impetus. If you take betting impetus preflop, you almost eliminate the c-bet. So, just change the point in time where you charge your opponent for overplaying his ace: instead of sticking his c-bet up his ass, you can charge him preflop and let him just give up post flop.

4. There isn't any betting sequence possible that would allow somebody to still have chips on the flop and not believe their JJ/TT is good on a baby board. Have you ever seen how pretty JJ is?

So, your preflop call is highly sub-optimal here in my opinion. In fact, I would say that you turn this hand into a negative EV hand playing it this way... and if you are playing QQ for a loss, you are doing it wrong.

Re-raising is a must here preflop. The amount of the re-raise is a pretty interesting discussion, too, and I think the correct amount lies in a very narrow range.

Irieguy