Pocket Jacks in the Big Blind (2 Viewers)

[DrStrange]

Playing 1-2 live, eight handed. The table is in a good mood, about two hours into the session. There is a lot of action from the LAGs - so far they are winning the battles but the war still has a lot of time to go . . .

Cast of characters:

Hero is in the big blind with $500. So far, things are going Hero's way this session. Winning the big pots and losing small ones. Hero has benefited from a few big hands.

Crazy Jr is UTG with $650 on a $100 buy-in. This is the wildest of all the LAGs in the group. He plays to embrace variance more than seek out the best expected value. He will put you to the test holding any two cards. Heavily superstitious.

MP1 has $250 Loose, passive preflop, tricky trappy post flop. Half way between passive and aggressive post flop, but his bets are medium strength hands or better hands he made on prior streets. His check raises mean business. When he wakes up betting, it is often on the hand values made earlier in the hand. He always take a passive line with a big hand preflop unless the pot gets huge.

MP2 has $125 on a $300 buy-in. A year ago, he was a semiTAG / fit fold post flop type of guy and made good money. Then he went on a six month heater and it tore up his game - bad play got rewarded by big wins. Now he is more unpredictable, looser and more passive and tricky trappy. Oh and also a small to medium loser when he plays this way. I am not sure this guy knows how badly his game has drifted. He had always been thoughtful and self aware but that six months of "run like God" messed him up a lot.

Button is our friend, Crafty playing $300. He might look like Old Man, Coffee but it will not be long before you'll see his true nature. Skilled and thoughtful. When he is on his game, Crafty is dangerous. I'd say he isn't on his game tonight.

The hand:

Crazy Jr raises to $12. MP1, MP2 and Crafty call. Everyone else folds.

Action on Hero with . Fold, call or raise? If raising how much?

A couple of notes:

Crazy Jr absolutely could raise from UTG holding any two cards. Who cares about position anyway? He is raising something like 65% of the hands and limping 30% more. Everyone knows this. Some have made adjustments others not.

MP1 has a "hard on" for Crazy Jr and is itching to have a fight (not a physical one, just a chip battle).

The table has a history with big three-bets from Hero. They are often happy to call hoping to out flop / out play Hero because Hero can be stacked under the right circumstances. ( to be fair, it is more often Hero stacking the villain but Hero will place his chips at risk when appropriate.) However, Hero very rarely gets 4-bet light unless someone is jamming a shorter stack all in. Hero has gathered in a mighty mountain of chips under these types of circumstances - the play isn't a secret they have all seen it hundreds of times and bled chips.

 

[Meddler2]

I raise in hopes of getting worse hands to fold. What that amount needs to be is hard to say given the mood of cast of characters above. Call any nominal reraise and hope no over cards hit the flop.

 

[MegaTon44]

Being a TAG, I would typically respect UTG raise. However, given the description, I would have to believe that hero is ahead. Not as concerned about MPs yet, as an ultra-premium hand would have likely been popped out of position. Crafty probably has a decent hand for the button, but mainly calling due to position.

My opinion is that hero should re-raise to $40 to make any moderate hands have to earn it on the flop.

 

[Jimulacrum]

A raise is tempting, but I think closing the action with a flat call is best.

If everyone's happy to call a 3-bet preflop, then if we raise, we're going to end up in a huge pot in absolute worst position, against an uber-LAG and 3 other potentially tricky players. We may be ahead of each individual hand, but if we're expecting significant action from aggressive players, JJ is unlikely to be worth taking to showdown without improvement. If we're behind preflop, we're liable to get blasted out of the pot if we reopen the action. If we're behind after the flop, we either have to give up on a big pot or commit more money in a really iffy spot.

If we call, however, we're in a perfect spot to catch big action on a set. Stacks are nice and deep, our opponents include a lot of "action" types, and a couple of them seem primed for a big blowout. We don't have to worry about building the pot preflop because it'll build itself with this field (and it is already a raised pot, after all).

And if we miss? All it cost was $10.

 

[Chippy McChiperson]

Torn between squeezing, and flatting. If we squeeze, though, we have to make it pretty big, like $72 to go.

 

[bergs]

Flat and set mine.

 

[DrStrange]

Nice to see a big range of opinions here . . . . Hero was scratching his head.

 

[SixSpeedFury]

Complete the action and set mine from there.

 

[stocky]

I'd raise $60-70 on top if we think we can thin the field a bit. If we are pretty certain that it won't then flat. I'd like to be the aggressor against 1 or maybe 2 but don't want to play a bloated pot OOP against 4.

 

[courage]

Ironically Crazy is the only player to worry about pf, for both stack size, the fact that others flatted his raise, and occasionally he has a hand. Probably no premium cards there behind him but Crafty may have a better range than the rest.

Either option is fine (raise or flat) but I'd lean toward flatting as noted above, makes our hand easier to play OOP as well as disguising it. If raising it'd be nice to get HU or 3-handed but that seems unlikely since Crazy will call and the rest follow like lemmings. Making the big raise to $75 seems like a negative free roll for hero with villains in position when over cards hit the flop.

 

[Marius L]

I think both options is fine as well. Considering the action I assume we are ahead at this point. The callers shouldnt have super premium hands just calling, and Crazy Jr can have a lot of strange combinations. Of course he has a hand sometimes, but I wouldn't be very scared of being beat at this point. As @courage points out though, he is the only one we dont want to play a huge pot against OOP, because of his stack size.

I think I would call here more often, because of the fact that we are OOP. This makes our decissions post flop easier. We can still win a decent sized pot without hitting a set, but we need to thread very carefully post flop if we elect to flat call, even on a board with no overs. Both sets, two pairs and the occational overpair can easily have us beat on the flop, and we should try to opt for pot-control 5handed with only one pair.

If we do raise we need to make it big and hope to win the pot pre-flop, or at least try not to get multiple callers. Maybe go for 70-80 total.

If losing a huge pot in this spot will make you tilt/ affect your judgement for the rest of the night I would go with calling. If you are happy with a bit of variance, I think raising is fine. We will probably win the pot preflop a decent amount of time with a raise, and if we get a call or two a c-bet from us will look very strong regardless of what the flop brings. I think raising certainly have to be +EV as well.

 

[Anthony Martino]

I raise in hopes of getting worse hands to fold. What that amount needs to be is hard to say given the mood of cast of characters above. Call any nominal reraise and hope no over cards hit the flop.

Why would you want worse hands to fold? Does this imply you want better hands to call? This seems like the opposite of what we should be hoping for. We want worse hands to call, we want our opponents to make mistakes, not to play optimally, otherwise how do we profit (by getting better hands to call and then getting lucky?)

Why are we calling "any nominal reraise"? What hands do you believe we're getting four-bet with her that our JJ beats?

As for the docs question, given what you've written in the OP we can:

FLAT

The pot becomes $60, so it's already getting sizeable as it is, if we raise we risk bloating the pot to the point that we're playing for stacks on the flop, depending on the number of callers, and given the propensity for these guys to call.

We are OOP and generally it's preferable to play larger pots when we have a positional advantage over our opponents

RAISE

More than likely we have the best hand (although even guys like Crazy can be dealt QQ+). So theoretically we should raise to narrow the field, thus increasing the strength/equity of our holding against less opponents.

In addition, it's unlikely we'll get 4-bet light, which is another reason to consider a raise (it will give us additional information a flat-call on our part would not provide, so we can avoid going broke on a 9-high flop, for instance).

However, we also need to consider the propensity of our opponents to call a raise here. When it comes to us there is now $48 in the pot. If we raise it would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-60 additional. If everyone comes along we've gotten some information (we aren't up against Aces most likely) but we're also OOP in a bloated pot that will commit us and our opponents for stacks on the flop.

I don't like a standard raise, however..........

ALTERNATE SMALLER RAISE

Since our opponents aren't inclined to 4-bet light, what about a smaller raise in this spot? What if we raise to $22 total (i.e. a min-raise of the $10 raise crazy made)? This will likely confuse some of our opponents since it's likely out of character for Hero. In addition, it re-opens the betting, so if someone does have a premium hand better than ours we'll probably find out now rather than later.

I think the extra $10 is worth the information it possibly provides, while also avoiding bloating the pot to the point we feel committed for stacks against the cast of characters involved in this hand.



SO WHAT DO I RECOMMEND?

Min Raise > Flat >>> Standard Raise >>>>>> Fold

 

[thorwilliam]

Why would you want worse hands to fold? Does this imply you want better hands to call? This seems like the opposite of what we should be hoping for. We want worse hands to call, we want our opponents to make mistakes, not to play optimally, otherwise how do we profit (by getting better hands to call and then getting lucky?)

Why are we calling "any nominal reraise"? What hands do you believe we're getting four-bet with her that our JJ beats?

As for the docs question, given what you've written in the OP we can:

FLAT

The pot becomes $60, so it's already getting sizeable as it is, if we raise we risk bloating the pot to the point that we're playing for stacks on the flop, depending on the number of callers, and given the propensity for these guys to call.

We are OOP and generally it's preferable to play larger pots when we have a positional advantage over our opponents

RAISE

More than likely we have the best hand (although even guys like Crazy can be dealt QQ+). So theoretically we should raise to narrow the field, thus increasing the strength/equity of our holding against less opponents.

In addition, it's unlikely we'll get 4-bet light, which is another reason to consider a raise (it will give us additional information a flat-call on our part would not provide, so we can avoid going broke on a 9-high flop, for instance).

However, we also need to consider the propensity of our opponents to call a raise here. When it comes to us there is now $48 in the pot. If we raise it would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-60 additional. If everyone comes along we've gotten some information (we aren't up against Aces most likely) but we're also OOP in a bloated pot that will commit us and our opponents for stacks on the flop.

I don't like a standard raise, however..........

ALTERNATE SMALLER RAISE

Since our opponents aren't inclined to 4-bet light, what about a smaller raise in this spot? What if we raise to $22 total (i.e. a min-raise of the $10 raise crazy made)? This will likely confuse some of our opponents since it's likely out of character for Hero. In addition, it re-opens the betting, so if someone does have a premium hand better than ours we'll probably find out now rather than later.

I think the extra $10 is worth the information it possibly provides, while also avoiding bloating the pot to the point we feel committed for stacks against the cast of characters involved in this hand.



SO WHAT DO I RECOMMEND?

Min Raise > Flat >>> Standard Raise >>>>>> Fold

Not a fan of this play at all, we are just building the pot OOP in a multiway pot with a hand that is difficult to play post flop unless we flop a set. If we decide to raise we should go big enought to lose some players, but i think calling is best especially with deep stacks.

 

[Meddler2]

Why would you want worse hands to fold? Does this imply you want better hands to call? This seems like the opposite of what we should be hoping for. We want worse hands to call, we want our opponents to make mistakes, not to play optimally, otherwise how do we profit (by getting better hands to call and then getting lucky?)

Why are we calling "any nominal reraise"? What hands do you believe we're getting four-bet with her that our JJ beats?

We'll in my little ol home game, it's been my experience that I want suited connectors and strong drawing hands the hell out. Yes I know we want those hands to call long term, but in docs game as described above it would get real pricey for JJ to continue post flop. $12 raises in this game seems to only invite trouble. At least that's my interpretation of his game.

 

[Anthony Martino]

Not a fan of this play at all, we are just building the pot OOP in a multiway pot with a hand that is difficult to play post flop unless we flop a set. If we decide to raise we should go big enought to lose some players, but i think calling is best especially with deep stacks.

I'm fine with a flat-call here as well. But I think an extra $10 is worth the information it will provide if someone four-bets (i.e. the $10 we spend could save us the $500 stack we have), since our opponents are so unlikely to four-bet here without a bigger hand than our own.

 

[thorwilliam]

I'm fine with a flat-call here as well. But I think an extra $10 is worth the information it will provide if someone four-bets (i.e. the $10 we spend could save us the $500 stack we have), since our opponents are so unlikely to four-bet here without a bigger hand than our own.

But if someone has a big hand and we get reraised we might not get the odds to setmine and potentially win a huge pot. We should not get stacked 250 bb deep with jacks anyway if we just call pre.

 

[Anthony Martino]

But if someone has a big hand and we get reraised we might not get the odds to setmine and potentially win a huge pot. We should not get stacked 250 bb deep with jacks anyway if we just call pre.

True, but look at it this way:

Our odds of flopping a set are 1 time out of every 8 flops. So that means 7 flops we'll miss hitting our set. I just think the informational value of seeing if we're four-bet outweighs the potential of hitting a set and getting paid off by an overpair.

 

[thorwilliam]

True, but look at it this way:

Our odds of flopping a set are 1 time out of every 8 flops. So that means 7 flops we'll miss hitting our set. I just think the informational value of seeing if we're four-bet outweighs the potential of hitting a set and getting paid off by an overpair.

We could probably be four-bet by crazy jr even if he doesn't have us beat pre? (With the min raise betsizing and not Heros usual big raise.)

 

[Anthony Martino]

We could probably be four-bet by crazy jr even if he doesn't have us beat pre?

Not according to the OP

However, Hero very rarely gets 4-bet light unless someone is jamming a shorter stack all in. Hero has gathered in a mighty mountain of chips under these types of circumstances - the play isn't a secret they have all seen it hundreds of times and bled chips.

 

[thorwilliam]

Not according to the OP

But hero is usually three betting big.

 

[Anthony Martino]

But hero is usually three betting big.

Hey, I'm not disagreeing that flatting is a bad play, I think it's perfectly acceptable. I just think it's also acceptable to throw something different into the mix here. It will certainly confuse his opponents since it's out of the ordinary for Hero to make a play like this, and if someone has a bigger hand than Jacks we're still just as likely to get four-bet as we are if we make a larger standard reraise here.

 

[GrumpyCatMalaka]

I'm fine with a flat-call here as well. But I think an extra $10 is worth the information it will provide if someone four-bets (i.e. the $10 we spend could save us the $500 stack we have), since our opponents are so unlikely to four-bet here without a bigger hand than our own.

Would we have some concern that a min-raise defines our hand too much? If we want credit for having a big hand, a typical 3-bet would be needed. I'm not sure anyone will fold for an extra $10. The only info we'd be gaining is if there's no 4-bet then we can assume no one has AA, KK and possibly AK or QQ. We're assuming these already.

With the min-raise, crazy could still 4 bet (even if unlikely based on OP) with lesser holdings and MP2 could decide to shove with a worse hand than ours given his short stack and some dead money in the pot.

 

[DrStrange]

*** OK, Now what? ***

Hero 3-bets, $50 on top or $62 all day. ($50 raise into a $61 pot.)

Crazy Jr 4-bets, $100 on top or $162 all day. The rest of the table folds.

Action on Hero, fold, call or raise?

Table read: Crazy Jr has gone silent. Normally he is yabbering almost non-stop but not now. Make of that what you will.

DrStrange

 

[Anthony Martino]

Would we have some concern that a min-raise defines our hand too much? If we want credit for having a big hand, a typical 3-bet would be needed.

With the min-raise, crazy could still 4 bet (even if unlikely based on OP) with lesser holdings and MP2 could decide to shove with a worse hand than ours given his short stack and some dead money in the pot.

Well, we're assuming that our opponents think on a level that would permit them to range us appropriately. I see plenty of people who make a min re-raise with Aces, thinking they're being cute. So it's entirely possible if we make a min reraise some of our opponents may consider we HAVE to hold Aces in this spot because that is the play they would make if they held Aces.

If Crazy 4-bets and MP2 shoves I think we can comfortably fold.

 

[Anthony Martino]

*** OK, Now what? ***

Hero 3-bets, $50 on top or $62 all day. ($50 raise into a $61 pot.)

Crazy Jr 4-bets, $100 on top or $162 all day. The rest of the table folds.

Action on Hero, fold, call or raise?

Table read: Crazy Jr has gone silent. Normally he is yabbering almost non-stop but not now. Make of that what you will.

DrStrange

Fold, we're OOP, Crazy was UTG and even Crazy players get dealt big hands from time to time.

 

[Mr Tree]

*** OK, Now what? ***

Hero 3-bets, $50 on top or $62 all day. ($50 raise into a $61 pot.)

Crazy Jr 4-bets, $100 on top or $162 all day. The rest of the table folds.

Action on Hero, fold, call or raise?

Table read: Crazy Jr has gone silent. Normally he is yabbering almost non-stop but not now. Make of that what you will.

DrStrange

Well if we trust our read on Crazy I think we have to fold. If he doesn't 4 bet light then his range is crushing our jacks normally. If he turns over crap and does a nutter butters dance just take it on the chin and file it away for later.

 

[Marius L]

Guess you just have to fold to the 4bet then.

 

[MegaTon44]

A hero jam would be so much fun right now, but being OOP against UTG aggressor, I suppose the proper move is mucking.

 

[DrStrange]

There are two other players at the table who know what "range" is and actually use that information - MP2 and Crafty. Crazy Jr. doesn't think much about ranges, image, what someone else might be representing.

DrStrange

 

[Mr Tree]

FWIW I think the line between flatting and raising is razor thin here. (Before the four bet) If you raise it has to be substantial but you still need wiggle room because I think a four bet is normally a range that is crushing you. I think normal best case scenario here is AK.