Flat Calling Raises with Kings Preflop

[riverboatking]

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Where you on the live at the bike webcast then?

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its were not where.
but yes i was.
seat 9.

[Percula]

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its were not where.
but yes i was.
seat 9.

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Thought so when you posted.

When I watched I kept thinking is this one of the LA posters, you and LApoker came to mind, maybe El D.

Nice game, hope to see you back again.

[lapoker17]

I don't want to start threads with these, because they're not strategically that interesting, but here are some hands:

4 handed, waiting to move to one of the main tables. 4 of us all just sat down 2 hands ago - we each have about 2000.

I raise to 80 on the button w K [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. Floater in SB calls, pretty good gambooler in BB calls. 3 to the flop.

J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Checked to me. I bet $200, SB calls, Gambooler min raises to $400.

I move in, BOTH CALL.

She has nut flush draw (oops), he has J8o (the BEST HAND). We run it twice and chop up floater's money when I spike one of my 5 outs on the river - a Ten - after an Ace hits on the turn.

Very good LAGGish player (and good guy)(3K) opens for $70 on the button. I (2k)call in SB w J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. I flop the joint, he flops top set. Over 3 streets, I get all the money.

A few hands later. He raises smallish out of the blinds with K [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] I call after limping w 7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. I flop bottom set, he flops pair + flush draw, we get it all in on the flop. he wins and doubles up.

2 hands later he raises to $70 on the Button w A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], I again call in SB w/ J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] I flop open ender - hit on the turn and play it really fast - he doubles me up. As good a player as he is, he psychologically couldn't believe that I could have J9 again in nearly the exact situation - it was pretty bizarre. This all went down in like 15 minutes. The rest of the table thought we were insane.

Good times.

[Garland]

I don't like losing the opportunity to give opponents to call a re-raises preflop with vastly inferior hands. Whenever I re-raise with AA or KK, I seem to get a caller(s). Then flop goes I bet they fold 90% of the time. If my opponents are gambling type players, I love to make them pay for raising hands such as AJs, ATs, their eyes seem to light up and can't call fast enough for the chance to bust a big stack, even if they know the odds are heavily against them.

In addition, if you're only reraising with AA, then you become extremely readable. Perhaps you're reraising other hands to compensate.

Garland

[whitelime]

I like it too. I feel like with AA, because so many people are unable to fold KK preflop, you have a chance at an all-in as an 80-20 favorite.

[coltrane]

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I do this a lot.



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I do it a lot too - it's almost always a function of stack size.....and having said that, I flat call preflop raises with aces more than most too....I don't reraise preflop very often either - especially when I'm out of position and really deep......I like to play poker....

[Kirkrrr]

"I don't reraise preflop very often either - especially when I'm out of position..."

Hmm... I take the opposite approach and tend to re-raise harder when I'm OOP since I know that my options will be limited post flop.

In position I'll usually just call a LP open raiser and reraise EP raisers.

Kirk

[soah]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't like losing the opportunity to give opponents to call a re-raises preflop with vastly inferior hands. Whenever I re-raise with AA or KK, I seem to get a caller(s). Then flop goes I bet they fold 90% of the time.

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In this case, might it be more profitable to get less money in preflop while allowing your opponents to overplay their weaker hands postflop? If they are always folding then the fact that you have AA/KK is irrelevent.

A while back Sklansky wrote an article for the 2+2 magazine where he said that if it's limped to you in the big blind you should occassionally raise huge with utter trash like Q6o because once you make a huge raise like that, the hand will almost never go to showdown. So under the right circumstances you can make more money running a pure bluff than by playing out the hand normally. But with cards that have a chance of flopping something (I'm not necessarily referring to big pairs here), you'd do better to just take a flop and get paid if you make a hand. Essentially the EV of raising huge and representing AA is x, almost regardless of what cards you have, and the EV of checking changes a lot based upon your cards.

This is not quite the same situation as reraising preflop, but the principles are similar: why waste only premium hands to make people fold? As I recall, this concept is also discussed in TPFAP... basically saying you should reraise preflop with premium hands you want to get all-in with, and with complete trash that has no other value besides bluffing equity. But some hands you should just call with because they aren't strong enough to be all-in preflop, yet can still be played profitably.

I realize I've sorta contradicted myself amongst the various points I've been making, but this post is just a collection of various thoughts that came into my head which seem to go together.

[fsuplayer]

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"I don't reraise preflop very often either - especially when I'm out of position..."

Hmm... I take the opposite approach and tend to re-raise harder when I'm OOP since I know that my options will be limited post flop.


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i think coltrane means when the money is real deep, like maybe 250+BB, where if you raise pf, yoiu prob arent getting much more than 10-12bb's in , and your hand is sometimes very transparent to other players, and they have the odds to bust you.

with 50-150bb's, im almost always reraisin g OOP.

[riverboatking]

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I flat call preflop raises with aces more than most too....I don't reraise preflop very often either - especially when I'm out of position and really deep......I like to play poker....

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its not always a question of "playing poker" its often a question of building the pot so that you have an oppertunity to win a big pot.

if you never build a pot preflop you will find it very difficult to win a big pot with AA because if you play a big pot most of the time you'll be behind.

for example, you and villian have >200BB, villian raises w/ KK-1010 and you just smoothcall, even if the board comes ragged undercards you can't extract that much from a good player because they will be fearful of the set.

of course it helps to know your player, but not re-raising w/AA when you're pretty sure your opponent has a big pair as well can often lead to missed value.

that being said i have used the flat-call of the raise w/AA on several occassions to win big pots...however it doesn't work often when the opponent is decent and deep.