Folding 99 pre-flop for a raise

Certainly three-betting has the advantages of perhaps isolating the raiser with position. The problem is that against what I consider to be a "solid player", AQ is dominated by 30 of the 43 possible hands which is about 70% of the time. I don't know if it is worth three-betting someone who rates to have me in bad shape this often especially since there will be percentage of the time when I will get four-bet. This is consistent with Feeney's argument where he advises folding AQ offsuit (he uses the number of 27%).


But suppose a guy will raise from early position with a Category IV hand about 33% of the time as stated in HPFAP? (See examples on page 23 of HPFAP). This adds another 49 hands he will be raising with say 33% of the time. When this is the case, there are another 16 hands (49 x .33) you dominate. Now a case can be made for at least calling and maybe even three-betting since you are about even money to have a better playing hand.

Ah, okay, I put AQo in the other group (the combos AQ is not clearly superior to), since it was the same hand with the only a positional advantage. I would not argue with listing it the way you did. After all, the positional advantage is very real. But I wanted to look at hands over which the AQ had a clear superiority in terms of domination/higher cards, and opted to go the way I did.


Btw, you reminded me of a tiny error that was in the first printing of my book, but which I think was corrected in the next. I had it at 27%, but it should be 28%. (The 27% came from neglecting to subtract the two suited combos from the remaining AQ combos in looking at the AQo combos.) So 28% or 38%, depending.

Notice though that bringing it back toward a fold is the fact that a lot of decent players only raise in early positions a minority of the time with KJs, QJs. and JTs. And they may limp some significant percentage of the time with the big suited hands in groups 1 and 2 as well. So the % of raising hands that have you in trouble goes up, at least with these players (who may not be quite as common as they were a few years ago... I'm not sure).

I would fold the first hand here, simply because of position and the amount of people in. Mid pairs play best multiway, so I would call this hand with 4-5 limpers alread committed and I was in late position.


Billy