I Know 2+2 Wants To Kill Me For This......

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UTG will sometimes find a fold when it's 2 bets back to him.

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Because of the narrowness of his range and because his UTG starters are so big, this will never happen.

[StellarWind]

I know a play that's better than folding.

Calling.

1. It's cheaper than raising. We're probably not getting great odds on the fourth bet.

2. It misrepresents our hand. TAGs never call with Big Slick. They will look at our stats and put us on roughly JJ instead. This will be very painful for them when we hit top pair or Broadway.

3. We learn about UTG's hand when he caps or calls.

4. We have good implied odds. If we flop an ace we will become a huge favorite and get paid. A king is also very good. Most of the time when we lose we will lose cheaply. Remember that the nightmare hands AA/KK are at half probability because we are holding one of each. They go down even further if we flop a pair.

5. That BB might call 2 BB cold doesn't concern me very much. It's more of a problem for the guy with 99. If I make a good hand I doubt BB will be happy with his investments.

Raising is an idea too. But when you are thinking about throwing AK away despite having money in the pot the coldcall is a good alternative.

[TomBrooks]

I like a call. Your getting 3:1 to call assumming the raiser calls and the BB folds. If the BB comes along, your getting almost 4:1.

This is fantastic, several advocates of Calling, Raising, and Folding. Fun hand.

Tom, what are you doing if the raiser doesnt call but elects to cap? At this point do you have to call another bet for a flop?

[TomBrooks]

Tom sed: I like a call. Your getting 3:1 to call assumming the raiser calls and the BB folds. If the BB comes along, your getting almost 4:1.
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Fun hand. Tom, what are you doing if the raiser elects to cap? Do you call another bet?

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Hi Mike,
If I knew it was going to get capped I wouldn't make the first call, because getting capped often means we're against AA or KK and we could be screwed if we get the flop we were hoping for. However, I'd call the last small bet because now we're getting 12:1 and 16:1 if the BB came along (he's not going to fold for one more either.) The capper could also have QQ, sometimes will have some suited connecter and occassionaly will just cap because he's gone goofy. I'd just play it more conservatively if we connect and would be wary if anyone, but especially the capper, was playing an A or K on the board strongly.

[DCWildcat]

We do have some implied odds for hitting an A (very good chance we're up against AQ/AJ), but they aren't fantastic. We chop with AK here a ton, and while we won't be up against AA/KK that often when we flop an A or K, we'll pay it off a lot when it does happen.

Neither of those factors outweighs what we'll make vs. AQ/AJ though, since we're much more likely to be against these hands than AA/KK/AK. However, it's enough to show that our implied odds, while good, aren't that good.

Equity disadvantage + being OOP gives a strong case for folding. If we're going to continue with the hand, I like calling for the reasons outlined by SW, especially disguising our hands. By calling, I think our implied odds go up tremendously when we flop an A or K. Villains with these stats will notice and respect a cold-capper that comes out firing with an A or K on the board. They won't respect us to the same extent if we just call.

I say calling > capping, but I'm not smart enough to know if folding or calling is better.

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Tom sed: I like a call. Your getting 3:1 to call assumming the raiser calls and the BB folds. If the BB comes along, your getting almost 4:1.
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Fun hand. Tom, what are you doing if the raiser elects to cap? Do you call another bet?

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Hi Mike,
If I knew it was going to get capped I wouldn't make the first call, because getting capped often means we're against AA or KK and we could be screwed if we get the flop we were hoping for. However, I'd call the last small bet because now we're getting 12:1 and 16:1 if the BB came along (he's not going to fold for one more either.) The capper could also have QQ, sometimes will have some suited connecter and occassionaly will just cap because he's gone goofy. I'd just play it more conservatively if we connect and would be wary if anyone, but especially the capper, was playing an A or K on the board strongly.

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I did consider the QQ. He may feel like he needs to get his bets in against potentially AK while he's still ahead. IIRC, an A or K flops against his QQ 43% of the time.

Now as far as knowing you would fold if you knew it was going to be capped, i think that's where my decision was decided. Several people on here seems to absolutely hate folding Ak here. Looking at their stats, and analyzing just the open raise and reraise, i believe that not considering folding here is akin to overvaluing AKo OOP.

I am definitely not an expert on minimizing losses, but it's not like this is unfair to you that you got AKo and you're behind. Sometimes you are BEATEN. IMO, the best way to deal with that is to muck the hand.

I appreciate your follow up Tom, and had i been trapped in the hand i would have easily called the capping bet as well, but i'd be living with the fact that i just trapped myself in a hand i'm likely dominated in.

[TheMetetron]

Glad someone agrees, but you said cold-calling makes them put us on JJ or something similiar... eh, I'd defintely be capping JJ here.

[PokerBob]

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I know a play that's better than folding.

Calling.

1. It's cheaper than raising. We're probably not getting great odds on the fourth bet.

2. It misrepresents our hand. TAGs never call with Big Slick. They will look at our stats and put us on roughly JJ instead. This will be very painful for them when we hit top pair or Broadway.

3. We learn about UTG's hand when he caps or calls.

4. We have good implied odds. If we flop an ace we will become a huge favorite and get paid. A king is also very good. Most of the time when we lose we will lose cheaply. Remember that the nightmare hands AA/KK are at half probability because we are holding one of each. They go down even further if we flop a pair.

5. That BB might call 2 BB cold doesn't concern me very much. It's more of a problem for the guy with 99. If I make a good hand I doubt BB will be happy with his investments.

Raising is an idea too. But when you are thinking about throwing AK away despite having money in the pot the coldcall is a good alternative.

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sooooooo good.

Stellar,

You're a great poster, and I hope you don't mind if I pick you apart a little [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I know a play that's better than folding.

Calling.

1. It's cheaper than raising. We're probably not getting great odds on the fourth bet.

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This is true. The 4th bet doesn't look that promising as we're almost never holding the current best hand.

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2. It misrepresents our hand. TAGs never call with Big Slick. They will look at our stats and put us on roughly JJ instead. This will be very painful for them when we hit top pair or Broadway.

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Misreprenting AK isn't that big of a deal against their ranges, especially OOP. The way we'll make the most money is flopping an ace when the two of them have Ax and a PP. Keep in mind that hitting an ace is a 2 outer (like a set) and won't happen that often if one of them has an ace. Any other hands will pay us the same 1 bet on every street if an ace flops. If we hit a king, same deal....the guy with the ace high won't be paying much and the guy with the pair will give us the same 1 bet every street that we'll be paying when we miss. We might be able to make 1 extra bet when we c/r (because we're OOP), but I assure you that it won't be that painful for them if we hit.

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3. We learn about UTG's hand when he caps or calls.

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Learning about UTG's hand doesn't help that much. If an A or K flops, would you fold because he capped? If the flop misses, is calling one bet to hit the turn wrong if he capped? If he doesn't cap, we still need to hit, no? The only thing his cap tells us is that we have to proceed more cautiously whether we hit or miss.

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4. We have good implied odds. If we flop an ace we will become a huge favorite and get paid. A king is also very good. Most of the time when we lose we will lose cheaply. Remember that the nightmare hands AA/KK are at half probability because we are holding one of each. They go down even further if we flop a pair.

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Like I stated above, flopping a pair will only get us paid well if it's an ace and one of the players has an ace, but that probability also goes down when an ace hits. The player holding a PP also has implied odds on us because we have to continue when we miss. Folding a missed flop or even turn for one bet in pot this size would be bad. Those peels have to be taken into consideration at the time of our preflop decision because we know they're a possibility when we play the hand.

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5. That BB might call 2 BB cold doesn't concern me very much. It's more of a problem for the guy with 99. If I make a good hand I doubt BB will be happy with his investments.

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True. If the BB calls, it's a good thing.


According to stove, we're a slight dog against their ranges. This assumes, of course, that we make it to the river. In order to do that, we have to factor in the calls we make on future streets for the times that we miss the flop or turn.

I don't see us getting paid by much more when we hit vs. what we will be paying when we miss postflop. Occasionally, we'll hit an ace when one of them has an ace, making more than just 1 bet per street, but that gets offset, because occasionally we'll also lose when JJ hits a set or when someone has AA and we hit an ace/king or when someone holds KK and we hit a king.