A9s

[AngelicPenguin]

Average table, not too loose or tight.

Party Poker 0.50/1 Hold'em (9 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, Hero?

Easy raise right?

[shadow29]

Clear raise.

[Rev. Good Will]

[ QUOTE ]
Average table, not too loose or tight.

Party Poker 0.50/1 Hold'em (9 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, Hero?

Easy raise right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Booya! I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] open raising

[AngelicPenguin]

Thanks...now I need to stop watching your little image.

[fire_fly]

hmmmm. call me a noob, but why are we raising this here? (actually want to hear reasons for raising, not saying we shouldn't.)

If it's to isolate early position ppl, mp3, co, and button all have to fold, which may or may not happen (depends on ppl I guess.) if a lp tag calls, we know we are in trouble. If late position donk calls, we still might be in trouble cuz we don't have position.

If 2 or 3 call, do we really have a significantly better hand than the average?

I see the reason for raising this in co or button, but mp2 just seems too risky to raise here to me...

But then again I've been told I need to work on this kind of thing, so please, tell me why this is an easy raise...

[Rev. Good Will]

purely for value, we have a nice equity edge against the 5 more people to act.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

2,406,838 games 33.598 secs 71,636 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)

Hand 1: 15.1593 % [ 00.14 00.01 ] { random }
Hand 2: 15.1304 % [ 00.14 00.01 ] { random }
Hand 3: 15.1952 % [ 00.14 00.01 ] { random }
Hand 4: 15.1772 % [ 00.14 00.01 ] { random }
Hand 5: 15.1978 % [ 00.14 00.01 ] { random }
Hand 6: 24.1402 % [ 00.23 00.01 ] { Ah9h }

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
hmmmm. call me a noob, but why are we raising this here? (actually want to hear reasons for raising, not saying we shouldn't.)

If it's to isolate early position ppl, mp3, co, and button all have to fold, which may or may not happen (depends on ppl I guess.) if a lp tag calls, we know we are in trouble. If late position donk calls, we still might be in trouble cuz we don't have position.

If 2 or 3 call, do we really have a significantly better hand than the average?

I see the reason for raising this in co or button, but mp2 just seems too risky to raise here to me...

But then again I've been told I need to work on this kind of thing, so please, tell me why this is an easy raise...

[/ QUOTE ]

We want to raise because...

- We have a fairly strong hand
- Players will likely cold-call with inferior hands (and dominated ones)
- If players don't cold-call with inferior hands, we improve our chances of winning because they folded when they otherwise might have called
- A raise now tends to make pots easier to take postflop
- A raise with this sort of hand makes us less readable (if anyone out there is literate)
- A raise encourages more action because players get tired of folding when we raise (which feeds back into the second reason)

[SoftcoreRevolt]

The easiest raise since... Jesus raised from the dead!

That's the ticket.

[marchron]

<font color="red">WARNING</font>: 2+2 newbie here. If I'm wrong, be gentle; if I'm right, it was an accident, I swear.

[ QUOTE ]
Easy raise right?

[/ QUOTE ]
Absolutely. If it were A/6s, you might just want to limp in and hope for hearts, but A/9s is fairly strong. Even if someone wakes up with A/Q behind you, you still have the flush potential to bail you out.

If you are reraised or the flop has no hearts (especially with an ace and no hearts), then it's reevaluatin' time. But at least this way, you force everyone else to call two cold and not limp in for one bet with crummy hands.

[Kumubou]

If you want to limp A6s, you may as well dump it. Openlimping in late position is bad news. All it does is give the CO and Button incentive to jack your limp in position, the SB to call getting insane odds, and the BB infinite odds to see a flop. These are bad things, so if this is going to happen then at least make it a mistake for them and not you.

I think I fold A6s there, but that is close. (ie: if you are in the hijack I probably would open-raise, and in the cutoff to open it's always a raise). I h8 h8 h8 playing Ace-rag, but at least being s00ted and being heads-up makes it easier to deal with.

As for the OP: Open-raise this all day here. Here's a question: would you three-bet this if a LAG open-raised in mid position with you being in position (say in the CO or button?) How much lower are you going? What if a positionally aware TAG does this? How about some donk? How about old nit Kumu? (fold, that [censored]'s got aces)

-K