Crabs at Ocean's Eleven

[mike l.]

"Tommy, I don't understand why you'd want to reraise preflop. 33 is an underdog to AKo and AKs. You may put the initial raiser on the defensive but if he has a legitimate raising hand, it's likely he will be ahead after the flop. And postflop, he's likely to call you down when it's heads up."

im not tommy, just a student of his. one of about a thousand on here. anyway, a cutoff here after all these limpers can have a lot of different hands theyre raising w/. hands that play well multiway, hands they perceive to be good in this position even if theyre not really (i know a lot of 20-40 players that would auto raise here w/ KTo and a lot of suited hands as well as any pair and too many unsuited aces). also some limpers and blinds will fold when it comes back to them for 2 bets cold or fold easily on messy flops if they hit less than top pair and perceive strength. tommy's reasoning is probably something more along the lines of constant shows of strength in the best position and constant shows of unwillingness to gamble in bad positions. for instance he once relayed to the list what he considered an ideal way to start out at a table: auto-fold the big and small blind and then raise on the button without looking.


"I'd probably coldcall preflop. I should learn to muck in this situation."

wrong. this is a very easy call here. you will get at least 5 to 1 and that's more than good enough implied odds to flop a set which will be worth far more than the about 8 to 1 you need to flop one. plus this is a very easy hand to get away from when you dont flop w/ that many players in. mucking here is a mistake.

[mobes]

I think you played fine except for setting yourself up for the checkraise on the turn.

[andyfox]

A counter-argument:

Calling before the flop is the common play, because it's what most everyone does. But it's not the break-even play. Most everyone loses, and most of them lose because they do things like cold-call raises with pocket 3s.

Folding before the flop in this situation comes with so many bonuses, short range and long, that it stands out to me as the best choice. Forget about hitting sets. Forget about letting the blinds in or not. Forget about this hand and this flop and these players, forget about everything except the gains, the gains that cannot be known until the fold is made, over and over, for years, until you train everyone in the world to check to you in the catbird seat, because they know when you cold-call a pre-flop raise or 3-bet, you're not going to be caught with a crappy pair of 3s.

[Tommy Angelo]

Nice post! lol

[Tommy Angelo]

"33 is an underdog to AKo and AKs."

I'm not sure what you mean by underdog. Let's take a different situation. Full table. One guy raises, someone behind him reraises, and it comes down to those two players, heads up. One player has AK and the other has 33. Where do we want to be, and with what? We have four situations:

1) AK first to act

2) AK last to act

3) 33 first to act

4) 33 last to act.

I think 4 and 2 are at least a one-big-bet-per-hand favorite, counting from the flop on, over 1 and 3.

"You may put the initial raiser on the defensive but if he has a legitimate raising hand, it's likely he will be ahead after the flop."

Really?

"And postflop, he's likely to call you down when it's heads up."

Good! It's very doubtful I'll be betting the worst hand. That's part of why I want to be last.

Tommy

[andyfox]

Yeah, not bad for someone who doesn't play, huh?

[img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Love,
Andy

[David Ottosen]

If I always have something better than pocket 3's, I don't necessarily always want to be checked to on the flop. And if everyone knows I have a monster when I 3-bet preflop, I don't think I'm going to be winning pots that are big enough or frequent enough to beat the blinds.

[gaylord focker]

Unless I was reasonably sure the blinds would call, I would fold here. I think the problem most players run into is that somewhere along the line they read the better players can play a few more hands, and therefore everyone thinks they have an excuse to limp in with dogshit. I wouldnt mind reraising if I thought the early limpers would fold for 2 bets cold, but most players dont do that. Even if they do, you're still likely to be heads up with a bigger pocket pair. So more than likely, you just put in 60 dollars to try to hit a set. Or maybe if you are really lucky it will get capped and end up costing you 80 dollars to see if a 3 hits the flop. I dont doubt that raising is a positive EV play for Tommy, but for 99% of the players out there, it is not. Small pocket pairs are just like suited aces, they look great, but tend to cost money in the long run.