AQo, AJo when your re raised ???

[VictorHugo]

Lets say I come in raising with AJo or AQo, and am re raised should I go ahead and just call?

Wouldn't just calling give away the fact that my hand isn't that strong or might be dominated?

Or should I go ahead and cap the betting, and slow down on the flop if I flop something, knowing I might be dominated?

I would like some advice on how to play these hands in position out of position and such... thanks...

[K C]

First of all I need to throw in the famous line "it depends." [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I take it you're referering to limit poker here. If it's NL or PL then the size of the raises are going to matter.

You also need to look at any callers and the amount of people that are yet to act in the hand.

The most important thing is that you really need to have a good feel for whether the re-raiser would do this without a stronger hand and one that would have you in trouble, like a high pocket pair or ace with a better kicker. You're going to need a fairly wild player though to make this worth calling here. As far as capping goes, you either need a maniac here or someone tight enough to be bluffed.

And of course in a lot of cases you're going to want to throw away the AJ here. Whether or not the raise was a good idea it takes more to call a raise and even more to call a re-raise, and AJ isn't the hand for either when you're up against less than wild raisers. The same applies to AQ but less so, essentially you've got more leeway here in terms of the type of player you'd call the re-raise with, but there will still be instances where you're going to have to throw this away.

KC

[AaronBrown]

K C gave you and excellent answer, I would just change the emphasis on one point. It almost never makes sense to reraise. You should generally fold, sometimes call if you think your opponent is either bluffing or so loose that he might have a worse hand than you.

If your opponent has, say, KK, reraising to suggest AA or QQ is not going to scare him into folding, either now or later in the hand. If an Ace shows up on the board the reraise might slow him down, but that's the one case where you're ahead and would like him to keep raising. If anything, the larger pot is going to make him more likely to stick it out to showdown. However, the reraise will chase out even the most foolish straight and flush drawers, you could use their money to help make up the odds if you want to play this hand.

On the other hand, if your opponent is bluffing, you don't mind him drawing out against you. The reraise might make him fold now, or he might call hoping for a set or two pair on the flop. He's not particularly scared of AA or KK, he knows he needs two pair or three to beat you so ranks are less important. So the reraise isn't likely to change his play much if he stays in.

Therefore, whether or not he's bluffing, the reraise doesn't fool him in any way useful to you. Since it's not a good play on the odds, and it doesn't have useful deception, it's not a good idea.

However, K C's first comment, "it depends" still applies. Against very good players, you can always go one more level and think "because there's no good reason to do this, I should do it, just to be extra deceptive." Against bad players, the guy might not have either a good hand or be bluffing, he might just have what you've got. In that case a reraise could be very useful.

[wonkadaddy]

[ QUOTE ]
You should generally fold, sometimes call if you think your opponent is either bluffing or so loose that he might have a worse hand than you.


[/ QUOTE ]

i hope you're not referring to limit here (which i think the original poster was asking about)

i agree that there is little value to reraising against most opponents. however, i disagree vehemently w/the notion of folding to 1 more bet. you're getting laid 6.5:1 on your call which makes it a no brainer (not to mention what it would do for your table image to raise and fold to 1 bet)

[Sng NL only]

wouldnt the value of re raising be to push people out of the pot that may want to call or that have already called to create a heads up?

[spaminator101]

if im repopped by a bad player i will cap it
generraly unless its capped before me i will call but it all depends on the players