Hi All,

My first time posting here in strat but I have been reading the posts for a good while now.

I have a hand here with J's where I got myself into a bad spot. Can I get some advise on how to play this? (or what factors I should think through when playing them?) Villian is running at 16/11 but I only have about 75 hands on him. I normally run very similar numbers although he may perceive me slightly looser (up to say 25/15).

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($75.40)
Villian (SB) ($50.00)
Hero (BB) ($50.75)
UTG ($49.70)
UTG+1 ($29.75)
MP1 ($29.00)
MP2 ($25.75)
MP3 ($13.75)
CO ($24.85)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J J
5 folds, CO raises to $1.50, Button calls $1.50, Villian raises to $6.00, Hero raises to $16.00, 2 folds, Villian raises to $50.00 (All-In)

ez fold, flipping or crushed

I am seeing a common theme here in a lot of the strat posts I'm reading. Before you bet or raise someone you should have a reason for doing it and a plan if you get raised. Never bet if you don't know what you will do if you are raised.

In this situation, you made a number of common mistakes.

CO opens, button calls and sb 3bets. Pretty standard, and now you're in the bb with JJ. Before you act, you should think about both the opener and the sb.

Is the opener tight or loose?
What does the sb think about how tight or loose the opener is?
How tight or loose is the sb?
If the opener is meh, and the sb is loose, you probably have a good hand to 4bet and stack off with as you're crushing their ranges.
If the opener is tight and the sb is tight, you should think about how strong the sb's hand must be for a tight guy to 3bet another tight guy oop.

Only info I have is that the sb seems to be super tight (16/11). So what do you think a 16/11 guy is 3betting oop with? Ask yourself, what cards could this guy hold here? I would guess TT+ and AK. Full ring nits generally just call with AJ/AQ and 99- right? Also if you 4bet, ask yourself if you are ever getting called/shoved on by worse. If not, then why bother 4betting? 72o plays the exact same as your JJ in that case, so you are totally wasting the value of JJ by 4betting.

So now, think about how your JJ fares against this range we've established for the sb. Not so well. Folding here might be a little tight but wouldn't be criminal, certainly better than 4betting.

Personally vs this villain, I call pf and evaluate from there.

If I choose to 4bet in this spot, it is not with the intention of folding if the guy shoves. As played, you're probably behind this nit but you've already put in 1/3 of your stack so folding or calling his shove are probably not drastically different if you stove it.

Mark

Why would you 4 bet JJ? JJ is just a horrible hand to play in this spot (unless you have a great read on villain), At BEST you are flipping. In my opinion (which probably doesn't mean much) JJ is probably the most overvalued/overplayed hand in NLHE.

Call or fold. I can understand trying to isolate and get position in the hand but whats the point if you can't call a 5bet shove.

I think this is a fairly straight forward fold as played.

I wouldn't have re-raised pre-flop. With Jacks I want to isolate, and he accomplished that for you. Re-raising gets you into a race situation for 50 bucks. Call the 6 and see what develops on the flop. Just my two cents.

I just answered the thread

- Mark

Thanks for this excellent response. This was just the sort of analysis I was looking for. The opener was loose and both myself and the SB would have known it, but your right I should have evaluated the SB's 3-bet a bit more critically and never should have put myself into this situation with the 4 bet.

I did fold of course. As noted by most, I was almost certainly way behind and realized that. Thanks everyone for your responses.

I like having Mark in strat.