Cold calling with AA

[polarbear]

Weirdly enough, it seems like coldcalling a preflop raise with AA is better than rerasing under the right conditions.

1. The raiser is the only other player in the pot so far.
2. You're not in the blind, which means you have position on the raiser.
3. There are at least two players behind you who like to call two bets cold but usually fold for three bets cold. This also implies the game isn't tough.

If it's a huge -EV play to coldcall a raise with almost anything when AA is in the pot, then why not let your opponents do it? These cold calls more than make up for the single extra bet you would get from reraising from the preflop raiser, and the rare player who cold calls three bets.

If that weren't enough, most preflop raisers always bet the flop regardless of what comes up. Then you can raise and get the bet in anyways. In addition, since you didn't reraise preflop, most opponents don't put you on AA or KK, and can lose lots of bets.

Now, an extremely observant opponent might notice the only hands you coldcall a preflop raise with are AA and sometimes AQ suited. When one of these opponents raises, you can add in suited connectors at random for coldcalls, at a ratio around 1 suited connector per AA/AQs, or if this isn't a good idea, you can scrap the play altogether and reraise. However from my experience most opponents wouldn't notice you're likely to have a big pair for your coldcall, meaning mixing up coldcall play usually isn't necessary.

What do you guys think?

[polarbear]

I forgot, under the list of conditions, add in that the preflop raiser isn't in late position.

And against observant preflop raisers, when you randomize your coldcalls, also randomize your reraises. Reraise AA about half the time in addition to whatever other hands you'd reraise with. The frequency of suited connector coldcalls would have to somehow be adjusted.

[Dynasty]

Last week, in the Bellagio 15-30 game, UTG raised pre-flop. I was 2UTG and cold-called with KK. It was the first time I had ever done that.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

I think that I would make this play (cold call with AA) only from late position. It doesn't matter whether the raiser was early or late, but it's better if he's early, so he's likely to have a good starting hand like AK or a big pair. I would also only do this occasionally, most of the time I would reraise. It's OK to mix up your play now and then, but mostly I'd stick with the reraise.

One thing you didn't consider was this: although your opponents ARE making a mistake by calling when you have AA, the more opponents you allow into the pot, the more likely you are to lose the pot. This means you are not really getting as much value as it appears by allowing them to make a mistake, some of your equity gained will be lost back those times you lose the pot.

AA is a mountain heads up, don't forget that.

al