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

[TheMetetron]

Call. It's pretty easy IMO.

[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.

[Wynton]

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They are TAGs. If you miss, you'll be charged to hit and if you hit, they won't go 12 bets with the losing hand.

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You are not compelled to play past the flop - or at least not past the turn - if you miss entirely and in the middle of a betting war. And if you hit, then I think it was worth seeing the flop even if both opponents fold right there, which is unlikely to happen anyway.

[Stefan_K]

I cap, but have read some good arguments for calling but folding is redicilius.

[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.

I've done this before when I had good reads on opponents, as you have here. I really don't know if it is right or wrong, but the few times I have done it I was very pleased. I will readily admit, I'm being results oriented for those few times. I'd say the frequency of this happening is in the range of < 1% so you can't be giving up too much.

If you were going to play it, a few people said call over cap...I like that line, too. It doesn't look like you will win UI, so give it call and re-eval on the flop. I guess the question is, is the deception of your hand > taking control of the hand where you will probably auto-bet the flop (improved or not) and then get raised?

[winky51]

I did a little reasearch with AKo being OOP vs a raise and reraise. The results are not good. Usually at least one has a pair and one has your ace. Best result is if the other players have AQ and AK and you can get them to fold or if they have QQ or JJ. Your outs are good and I think it would make an eaiser play post flop.

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.

[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.

[StellarWind]

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Misreprenting AK isn't that big of a deal against their ranges, especially OOP.

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Learning about UTG's hand doesn't help that much.

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I don't want to overstate things like this, but these advantages add up and allow you to gain/save an extra bet now and then. They are worth remembering when you have a close decision between calling and raising.

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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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This is incorrect. Consider the following examples. In each case the preflop pot is 10 SB and we face QQ and AJ:

Flop 1: A53

Both players will call bets here and the AJ is apt to become somewhat aggressive. All the money our opponents put in this pot is bad money because they don't have adequate odds. This is a very profitable example of our implied odds at work.

Flop 2: T85

We will probably call this flop if we can do so for one bet. That is not an example of implied odds for the QQ because we have adequate pot odds. He would be better off if we folded immediately and gave him the pot. Since winning the current pot is better for him than having us call the flop bet, it is clear that he has negative implied odds on this particular flop.

The preceding paragraph assumes for simplicity that the AJ will abandon his hand when he sees this flop. Obviously he might continue and that would be great for both QQ and ourselves, but it doesn't change my basic point that QQ is not making money off of AK's flop call.

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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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Not in a negative way because these peels are profitable or we shouldn't be making them. BTW this is an example of how seeing if UTG caps preflop is helpful. We don't want to be making marginal peels while likely dominated or duplicated.

Preflop EV analysis should go something like this:

1. We may hit an A or a K and have a really valuable hand.

2. Certain unusual flops like QJT or a 3-suited flush draw also have a lot of value.

3. Gutshot plus overcards has a little value.

4. Overcard flops are nearly worthless and often we won't see the turn. But once in a while we get a free card or marginally profitable peel opportunity.

In theory we could estimate all of these EVs, add them up, and compare them to our preflop investment. But the main thing you need to know about cases 3 and 4 is they are slightly positive and make almost no difference to your preflop decision. There is no such thing as a negative EV flop because folding the flop is always a zero EV option at your disposal. You would only call a flop if you could do better than that.

The preflop idea behind calling is to make a lot of money in cases 1 and 2 and otherwise write our preflop investment off. That it may actually be possible to make a small profit off of some bad flops by calling is something I'll worry about when it comes up.