Am I Playing These Wrong???

[HighStakesPro]

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This is awful advice. Do you only reraise with KK? There's all the deception you need.

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Typical players reraise in this spot only with AA, KK, QQ, or maybe AK. This is a narrow enough range of hands to allow the preflop raiser to play his hand more profitably than if he had no idea what your hand was, which is the case when you just call. If the preflop raiser is from late position, THEN your reraise gives less away because you would do that with a wider variety of hands.

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Edit: Just to elaborate a little more, there is a time to "slowplay" (I hate that word) big hands preflop, and it's usually when you have been 3-bet and capping will give away your hand. The problem with this is most times you are in this situation, your opponent will also have a strong hand that they'd like to go to war with. Also, as you move up in limits, you get into a lot more blind and HU wars and your capping range will be a lot wider, so it still doesn't say that much about your hand to cap.

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In the situation you describe, just calling a three-bet instead of capping, the situation is essentially the same (out of position against a preflop raiser heads up with a big pair), except you have already raised preflop and your opponent will be able to rule out hands like small pocket pairs, suited connectors, AXs, QJ/JT, and other such hands that people play from the blinds but don't raise preflop (unless you're talking about cutoff/button vs blinds play, which is a completely different story; I assume you're talking about a legitimate raise.)

Furthermore, while I can see why many people might disagree with my advice, I doubt that it is "awful" because Ciaffone and Brier suggest slowplaying in a similar situation in <u>Middle Limit Holdem Poker</u> on page 277, chapter 32, problem 10. The UTG player raised, you're on the button with AA, and the blinds look like they're about to fold. They say that "This is a perfect spot to slowplay preflop."

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The most important aspect of all this is VALUE and getting tricky often with these big pairs puts you in situations to lose it.

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Yes, value is important, but when you're only talking about one more small bet, it's probably worth it in this specific situation to call because the deception you are creating will often win you multiple small bets in the long run because you give away nothing about the strength of your hand. Plus, you can almost always go for the checkraise on the flop and get back the small bet you "lost" preflop. Yes, I agree that slowplaying like this in too many situations is a bad idea and will cost you value. If you had two or more opponents, or if your hand was QQ, reraising is probably better most of the time. But in some specific situations like this one, slowplaying can be very effective.

Edit: I accidentally referred to problem 8 in the book, but it is actually problem 10 that examines the situation I was talking about.