($55) Awkward spot with JJ preflop

[tigerite]

If the people to act after you call only with QQ+,AK+ to your push, you shouldn't move in here unless the UTG is pretty liberal with his raising standards.

[ QUOTE ]
If the people to act after you call only with QQ+,AK+ to your push, you shouldn't move in here unless the UTG is pretty liberal with his raising standards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let's assume average $55 player and you have no read. What would you do now that you have done all this very impressive number crunching?

[tigerite]

I really don't know! Maybe call and pray that the flop is all unders, and that not too many others come along? It's certainly made me think, anyway.

[Vuron00]

This situation would really help with a read of the raiser. This situation came up for me last night in a $55.

First level, 9 players left. All but one about the same in chips.
UTG Min-raises. I'm UTG+1 and muck my 10's because this is SUPPOSED to mean a big hand and I don't like my 10's with so many left to act.

Raise is flat called by MP and re-reraised by CO to 120. UTG calls.

It turns into an all-in when an Ace flops and I'm sure UTG has AA or AK, but flips over A3o to lose to the re-raisers AQs. UTG min-raise with A3o???

I'd say there are about 4 or 5 players, at most, at any $55 table that has anything close to a tight range. Of course, when I do call or push, I always seem to be up against them.

[tigerite]

Yes, it does help to have a read on the raiser, that's absolutely true. The more he is raising with here, the more you should push, as it makes the risk of being looked up by QQ+,AK+ after you almost negligible. Also, I believe this would be much closer to +$EV if he had standard raised, because the chips you gain when he folds, and the overlay when you are the 36.5% against the QQ+,AK+ range skew the results much further towards gaining you chips in the long term.

This is another reason why I absolutely hate donks who min raise, but anyway.

[ QUOTE ]
If the people to act after you call only with QQ+,AK+ to your push, you shouldn't move in here unless the UTG is pretty liberal with his raising standards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pretty liberal is way too liberal and is a donkey and raises A3o and 44 and T9s? I guess when he's 65% vpip/30% pfr you can push. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[tigerite]

Nah he wouldn't have to be that loose to justify a push, it was pretty close with the range you gave originally, I mean you're losing 0.06% of $EV in theory which is basically nothing.

[Irieguy]

I enjoyed reading how Curtains and Tigerite approached this hand as a math problem.

Unfortunately, I could play a $55 right now; push in that spot, get called from behind with 55, and have UTG call with A-9s and it wouldn't be an atypical $55.

Curtains is probably right with the logic that if you give UTG a tight range and have everybody behind you play perfectly then a push is correct in real life if it's correct under those circumstances. But I don't imagine it surprised him to find out that this would make it -EV compared to folding.

Once you allow players behind you to call with underpairs (which they absolutely will), and you put UTG on a realistically loose min-raising and calling range (which you can), a push with your chip stack in level 3 is clearly correct.

It might be close in a mini-step 5, but i'd say that even in a weekend or holiday $215 this is more than a marginally correct push. In a $55 a push is going to be significantly +EV.

Thank you all for an interesting thread, and thank you Tigerite for crunching the numbers needed to give us a launch point.

Irieguy

[tigerite]

I absolutely agree for what it's worth, but hey I can only work on the ranges I was given [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

I especially think the short stack would call with far more than QQ+,AK+ here, and the big stack would take a gamble with some lesser hands too, maybe even down to 99, KQ+ or something like that. If you even consider that to be a possibility (and I do) then it's a push.

[maddog2030]

If you were somewhat deeper, I think it would be a good spot to minreraise to isolate.