Bad laydown preflop?

[Dave G.]

Folding an often dominated, offsuit hand against a raise doesn't make you weak-tight. It makes you solid. People who habitually call such raises are the people you want to play against. If I'm raising AK here, I'd love it for someone with KQ to call me. He is so far behind me. If a K hits, I'm in for some money. Sure, in this case, I'm not looking good, but this flop will occur less than 1% of the time. Most of the rest of the time, I'm golden.

Big offsuit hands are good hands to play but they are also situational. Playing them profitably requires you to choose the right time to play them and the right time to dump them.

For example, AJo is consistently one of my biggest winning hands. I don't know why. It's always right up there with the big pairs. However, I never play this hand against a raise, not even from the SB or BB. If I did, I am sure it would be performing significantly worse due to all those times I hit but lose to a bigger hand anyway.

And I'd like to emphasise again that you're paying 0.75 BB, or 1.5 SB, which is double the 3/4 of a bet figure you keep using.

I would consider this a significant leak. When you play this hand against a raise, you're potentially going into the hand when your opponent has a big edge against you. There's no reason to give them that edge - fold and wait for a better time.

[Arm187r]

I appreciate the advice guys. I'll definitely lay it down for one bet from now on unless I'm against a LAG (I can still play this against a LAG if I have position right? or does that not even matter). I just thought that this would've been a different case, that if I was careful postflop I could get away with it, but with so many people saying otherwise I'll avoid the situation from now on.

[UATrewqaz]

I agree with the fold overall.

You do have one reason to call

1. This is going to be a big pot so you have good implied odds (although it is two bets back to you).

But you have several reasons NOT to call, which in my opinion far outweigh this

1. It is highly unlikely you have the best hand, based on the action I would say there is a QQ,KK,AA out, perhaps against an AK/JJ as well.

2. You are in the dangerous position of improving to teh 2nd best hand and losing lots of bets, say the flop comes K62, what do you do? You can't fold TPTK in this huge pot and odds are you're going to go do the showdown with a loser.

[Eeegah]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm glad I folded I would've lost this hand had I called.
BUT I'm still not sure about folding for 3/4 of a bet in a multiway pot.


[/ QUOTE ]

The conventional wisdom (ie Miller's advice) is that if there's a raise behind you, the only offsuit hand you should even consider playing is AKo--which you will still fold if it's three bets to you, otherwise reraise. Anything else is dominated too easily--and with a raised pot and likely betting war postflop you're standing to lose a fair bit.

Some authors suggest playing AQo against a raise as well, but you have to be very strong postflop in order to do so (read: not me).

[aK13]

You rarely ever should be the first to coldcall. It's typically 3-bet or fold (TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ are all 3 betting hands). I would probably only play KQo against a raise if I was HU to defend my blind. You will frequently make a 2nd best hand that you will have to payoff.

KQo isn't that strong of a multiway hand, FWIW.

[benkath1]

[ QUOTE ]
Bad laydown preflop?

[/ QUOTE ]

no

[SCfuji]

3 bet pf bad? what if we're suited?

[bottomset]

well this is why reads are important

look at how bad BB, UTG+1 and CO are

[TomBrooks]

Probably a good fold. I probably would have called it but I play loose and probably cold call too much.

I would never fold it for one raise, not even if I wasn't in the blinds. I would probably reraise it if I was on the raisers left and could fold some players behind me. (not the case in the blinds.)

Edit: I read the hand wrong. I thought you called a cap cold. I would call the first raise, and then I would call for two more since I was in for two and getting 6:1 on the flop. Like I said, this may not be right, but I would do it. My cold call percentage after my last 14k hands at .5/1 is 1.5% by the way which is very high according to most pundits. Still running over 4BB/100.

[caggin]

[ QUOTE ]
And with only one bet at me I'm not automatically putting him on AA,'s KK's, etc.


[/ QUOTE ]

No, but what are you putting him on? An average player raises AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, and AQ. Against this range of hands you are totally dominated the vast majority of the time. Even against a pocket pair smaller than QQ (which most people don't raise) you're still behind. Even in the BB I might fold to a raise w/ KQo.