what's the correct play here?

[Ikke]

It's folded to the button and he open-raises to $40. He has $3 left after that raise. The BB is tightish. You hold J9o in the SB.

Suppose button raises all but his truly worst hands here. What should be your course of action?

Regards

[Ed S.]

Fold.


Ed S.

[Ikke]

What hands to 3-bet with? What hands to coldcall?

Thoughts? Think this should be quite well objectively approached with math or simulation, but am not sure how to do it.

Regards

[Pot-A]

I'm with Ed. The profit in this one is extracting the most money out of BB with a real hand, not in overplaying a mediorcre hand. This is the kind of hand that you play because you think it's cheap and end up losing $200.

I'd probably raise with any pocket pair over 99, any connected face cards, and any suited ace.

[elysium]

hi ikke
if the BB is lively and likes to defend a lot, then don't enter. but if he is weak tight-ish, and you are perceived by the button as unlikely to defend, then raise to drive out the BB and get heads up.

but if the button perceives you as loose and likely to defend, then do not call. you'll be seeing the river against a stronger than J9o hand. that's not good.

[Gabe]

Re-raise.

[Coilean]

I would say reraise. If you force the BB out, you only need to win 30% of the time to break even, and J9o wins 53% of the time in showdowns against random hands (and it sounds as if your opponent's hand won't be too much better than random). This 15-20% overlay you get when the BB folds to the preflop reraise should be more than enough to show a profit over the few times BB gets to clobber you with a monster.

[Munga30]

What does "all but worst" mean? He'll raise any Jack? Any suited T? T6o?

Pokercalc has a nice feature for selecting a range of hands for an opponent. I was surprised to find that my initial definition of "all but worst" could include as little as 60% of hands (I don't play much shorthanded). To get into the 75% range, you're talking about him raising any pairs, suited connectors, and any 9 or better. J9o has about 49% equity against that range. Add in any connector and he's playing about 80% of hands. Your equity rises to about 50%.

[Ed Miller]

You 3-bet. J9o against a roughly random hand with dead blind money is definitely profitable.

[Rushmore]

I find myself always agreeing with the minority.

The major problem with the conventional wisdom of raising is that raising is a potentially high-impact play (read: expensive) and you're holding a very mediocre hand.

Folding is low-impact, and seems to me to be the best play. There is no big downside.

Just as there is no big upside to 3-betting. You'd quite possibly be risking more than a little to win a little (because what you're really after here is the raiser's money, which will not increase by more than $3.00...Yes, there will be more in the pot if you are 4-bet, but that's the worst possible scenario for you, so let's not pretend that's an upside).