Someone was asking me for advice on this hand, and I thought it might be trickier than it first appears.

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Hold'em Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $207
UTG+1: $252.45
CO: $280
Button: $280.75
Hero: $363.25
BB: $200

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is SB with Q Q
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $7, CO raises to $24, Button calls, Hero?

CO is 25/22. No stats on the others.


This looks like a standard raise/fold for ~$80, but that essentially turns our hand into a bluff. JJ and lower usually fold, and KK/AA shove (or trap us for stacks on a lot of flops). The only hand that might call is AK. However, if we flat call we are probably seeing a 4-way reraised flop OOP. Which just isn't nice at all.

I can't see a line that I really like.

CO has fairly aggro stats and his range is much wider than AA and KK. The button can call in position with a lot of hands, but I don't think that AA and KK usually make up a ton of his range either since he's inviting the UTG+1 player into the pot and the stacks are fairly big, so he should want to give people worse implied odds to play against him if he had those hands. He's got AK/JJ-99 here a ton.

With 100BBs, I'm just gonna play for stacks here. There enough dead money out there and a strong enough possibility that nobody's got AA/KK that you're gonna show a good profit here just reraising and taking it down most of the time or racing with AK.

Even with the bigger stacks, I dunno. I think it's closer, but it'll still be best to raise here. I'd probably make it $105 to go and be really upset when the UTG+1 player or the CO shoves on me. I am pretty sure that you just take it down often enough to collect a nice little profit here though.

This is kind of an interesting hand.

At first glance, I say just call. Now that I'm looking at it a bit more, I definitely say just call. Honestly, I'm more concerned with the BB calling in the blinds.

Any stats on the button? I've seen lots of players (more recently) flat call in the blinds with AA. If he's just loose, he could be calling with 66-JJ.

Is it too spewy to call here for set value? I don't really know what to do in these spots.

Edit: I like Acid_Knights analysis. Thanks.

The caller is on the button, not in the blinds.

Oops, sorry I misread it.

Ok, then I agree with Acid_Knight, even though I call a lot with this type of hand in this position.

What about jacks here? Call with jacks?

I probably raise to about 115-120 and call a push. standard.

i think based on slightly aggressive stats for initial reraiser i also 3-bet and call a shove

Meh, it's definitely NOT standard. I could see legit arguments for raising to $105-$120 and folding to a shove, making the raise and calling the shove or just flatting preflop.

I think I need to see a flop.
Four raisers PF ... this is ugly.
Flop/fold?

(God, I'm gonna get scorched).

My initial thoughts on the hand were that button's coldcall is a pretty narrow range. Probably AQ+, 99-JJ at most. Most likely hands are JJ and AK. That reduces the chances of CO's reraise being AA or KK. Combined with an UTG raise, I think AA is particularly unlikely here.

What are we attempting to do with a reraise? If we reraise planning to fold to a shove, we hate JJ shoving. If we reraise planning to call a shove, we want JJ shoving as often as possible. The more we raise, the more fold equity we (probably) have, but then we get better pot odds to call the shove.

Results were that Hero raised to $78, CO shoved and Hero folded.

Should Hero raise more? How much should we raise with AA/KK here? Most importantly, why? We are already defining our hand as very strong with any reraise here (almost exclusively QQ+, AK), and if we are folding to a shove we aren't getting value from worse hands by raising more. The only benefit I see from making it >$100 is that he will fold lower pairs and AK a bit more often (in which case, would you raise smaller with AA/KK here?).

It's a topic that's interested me lately - 4bet sizing. The usual reasons for raising are modified at this stage because you are suddenly somewhat shallow stacked compared to the bet sizes, you aren't defining your hand in any particularly effective way, you aren't getting too much value from worse hands, you are often WA/WB so you don't have to worry about pricing out drawing hands (other than in this situation against AK, but AK can't really smooth call hoping to catch a flop against our range), etc. etc.


As an aside, I really think that the lack of a 3-bet% is unfortunate with PT+PAHUD, because there are 25/22's that rarely 3-bet light (the aggression comes from opening a larger % of pots), and there are 25/22's that 3-bet incessantly. Knowing that stat would really change the play in this hand one way or another IMO.

I have been watching a lot of CR videos from sbrugby and CTS and I think that's probably a problem in my game is making my 4 bets a similar interval to the 3 bets that I make, which are usually close to, or slightly over 3x the previous raise. You're right that you don't need to make them bigger because the act of 4-betting alone adds weight to your raise and should discourage action from other hands as much as you actually putting chips into the pot here.

I really like the raise to $78 and fold to the CO shove.

i know this is really weak, but the best advice i was ever given in poker was 'if you're not sure, fold and wait for a better spot"

One of the best ones I ever heard was "if you never get bluffed off the best hand, you're calling too much."