Wednesday, June 30, 2010

what do you do #3? Pocket jacks facing a giant preflop raise.


Feral Cow Poker Hand Converter
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 9 players

BB: $11.53
UTG: $4.82
UTG+1: $8.11
MP: $17.45
MP2: $12.20
HJ: $5.05
CO: $4.92
Button: $16.90 (Hero)
SB: $2.21

Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is Button with (9 players)
UTG folds
, UTG+1 raises to $2.10, 4 folds
, Hero???

A 21x raise from under the gun. What's that about? What do you do with pocket jacks?


See what I did



Hero raises to $10, 2 folds
, UTG+1 calls $6.01, and is all in

Flop: ($16.37) (2 players)

Turn: ($16.37) (2 players)

River: ($16.37) (2 players)

UTG+1 showed , and won ($15.28) with two pair, Queens and Tens
Hero showed , and lost with two pair, Jacks and Tens
UTG+1 won $15.28
(Rake: $1.09)

In my experience, these big early position overbets are small pairs that people don't want to play preflop. Aces and Kings want action, right? I put him on 88-TT and stuck it in. He had queens. Whoopsie. I think my read was right - this guy was just scared of even more than I thought, so my range was a hair off.






4 comments:

The Poker Meister said...

Barring any stats, this is a 50/50 call. I can see your case for shoving over, but it's a primarily risky play. You have to ask yourself: who is [normally] calling a AIPF bet? Certainly, AA, KK, some QQ, AK, very low end JJ, AQ. Most of those hands have you CRUSHED. I think an overshove, unless this guy's a total donk, folds out most of the lower hands.

Call & re-evaluate the flop or fold.

matt tag said...

I think your ranges are correct for a reasonable player, but I was tossing out "reasonableness" after seeing a 21x preflop raise.

My thought process was that this was some pocket pair that the user didn't want to see a flop with, many of which I'm beating. However, once put to a stack decision, many poor players think "well, I'm racing AK, so how bad off can I be?". I've seen players get all in with 4s and 5s using this type of logic.

Anonymous said...

My first instinct is also to shove - not because i think its necessarily a good play - but mostly because its 5c/10c.

However, Meister is right - you're definitely getting called by better hands 100% and 50/50 hands (AK etc) alot of the time. Therefore when you are called - you're crushed or racing a good percentage of the time.

You're sometimes getting called by worse hands, but that percent isn't easily quantifiable without reads. You're getting value out of these hands some of the time when they call, and losing value when they fold. Does it make up for the time we're losing vs the big pairs or 50/50's?

Would you ever shove here in a 1/2 live game?

If we have jacks and always shove 80BB after a unkonwn UTG+1-PreFlopRaise of 20BB's, do you think we're making money?

Overall seems a shove is incorrect without a read. Folding seems incorrect, (please argue if otherwise.)

It seems Meister may be right, calling seems proper by default. You have position, you have a medium-high pair. You have no read on UTG+1. You aren't committed to stacking with JJ vs UTG.

Forrest Gump said...

"Overall seems a shove is incorrect without a read. "

I agree with this - its a fold without a good to convince me otherwise. I don't understand the point of calling given the frequency of a A, K or Q coming on the flop after putting 21BB in the middle.



FG