Not my hand, I feel like there's a clearly right play here though and want to know what it is :-)

.5/1 on Pokerstars.

Hero has KK in MP, folded to hero who raises to $4, both blinds call.

Flop: 3 3 5 rainbow.

sb immediately pushes for $53, bb folds. What does hero do?

Villian is 24% VP$IP, post flop AF of 1.8. Hero said villain was pretty solid, and this was his first maniac-style move, so I'm assuming he's not using the smash strat .

Given his VPIP is so low, this is a pretty easy call. Odds are he's not sticking around in the SB with a 3, and even if he was, he'd probably check/raise all-in instead of immediately pushing all-in.

I'd say sb has something like 88.

gotta call if he as a 3 then thats poker

Sounds good, thanks guys.

If anyone disagrees please chime in.

No, if he has a 3, that's bullshit.

Now if he has ACES...well, THAT is poker...

But you gotta call.

i'm tempted to fold, only $4 invested, meh.

Call. Most likely has a pp. He wouldn't lead allin with a 3 here. Only possible hand that I see beating you here is aces.

i've seen it done many many times at these stakes.

hmm.

likely? SB had in mind to push any non-Ace flop as soon as he called preflop.

i don't have Balls to call..but I bet it's +EV.


If he has something like A3s, it's always fun when someone chat's: "Duh, you dumbass. Overplaying Big PP again."

I call here.

SB has a PP.
Could realistically push with 77 -- QQ
Also with KK, and AA, 33, 55.

You are ahead more often than not, on average its not a big edge, but I'll take it.

i usually laugh and fold as i say "sucks for you that you assumed i'm a bad player... you could have gotten so much more value out of me."

apparently i'm the only one, as everyone else says call.

you people are easy to exploit. :-)

aseem

Meh.

I call.

Only 4 dollars invested, gents. I don't make this call.

All-in preflop. :wink:

I'd fold and sigh..

If sb did go all in with some crap like 77 that wouldn't make much sense, then good for him, take the $4

you read about as well as you play which isn't good, look at my post above.

relax baby! i was generalizing when i said "everyone else".

aseem

since we're keeping score I said I don't call either.
Although, for different reasons.

Only hand I am afraid of here is AA. He knows he is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone if he has 33,55, or x3. Why would he push first to act? Unless he can put you on a high PP AND be confident you will call.

AND if he does put you on a high PP he can be assured you will bet when it gets to you and he can push All In than and get your bet guaranteed + a call perhaps.

I make the call no doubt in my mind. If he has AA....oh well... he only has half a buy in anyway.

Because he's going to get called by people who like to dream up ideal circumstances in order to justify a call.

Don't think so. First of all what is he calling with in the SB that is X3? Not much A3s maybe. So you are saying he is pushing first to act with either the nuts or 2nd nuts on the flop? Really don't think so. Why not wait for a continuation bet or give a free card for the Hero to improve. If he is making that move is he losing tons of EV in my mind.

Mid to high pocket pair, scared of overs. done

From sbs point of view, pushing with 55 (or 33) here isn't all that bad, you only have to get a call every once in a while to win more in the long run, than what you would if you played it slower. Plenty of people at 100nl call pushes on that flop with high pps (as you can see from the replies :-) )

I've gotta be honest that I don't think I could make this laydown against most players, I'm still not sure what's right though.

To the people saying fold, why would he be pushing with a hand that has us beat here? With the amount he has left, if we have a big pocket pair he could just check/call and he'd most likely get all of his money in. I don't see how he's exploiting any leak on a caller's part by pushing right off the bat, hopefully someone can explain this to me.

i'd call

if he did have a three, he wouldnt push in immediately. he'd rechecked, take a few seconds to quit celebrating, and then hit the check button. most likely he has a pp or a-5

davin, are you the davin i know?

aseem

how many other davin's are there at mit =)

The reason is that on the flop we only have information about his hand from preflop & flop, so it's harder to know if we have him beat or not, thus we are more apt to call.. But if he checks/bets smaller and we keep pounding the pot with our KK, you've got to get concerned that the KK very well might not be the best hand if he won't slow down, or keeps calling your bets. Also you get a lot more information of his hand that way.

nice, have you been reading fcp for a while, or just started?

aseem

Being the person that actually played this hand, I called. Here's why:

Villian was not a complete donk. After 100+ hands I felt I had a decent read on him - he was aggressive when he needed to be and felt there was no way that he pushes all-in with a 3, or 55 here. First he was a little too tight to be calling 4xbb pfr's with A3s from the SB, and if he had, I felt there was zero way whatsoever that he forces me off my most likely holdings (AK, AQ, AJ, KQ) without squeezing some value out of me when I'm drawing dead to runner-runner. His play had been standard semi-t-agg, fairly vanilla so far, so I assumed that his berzerko all-in had a kind of fish-logic purpose, and that that purpose could only be that he had:

- flopped a vulnerable overpair
- was scared s___less of being drawn out on
- never bothered to consider that he might actually be behind

Couldn't think of anything else that made sense.

It's all and good to have contempt for the $1NL players (as most are very bad), but I think you miss out on a lot of value if you automatically assume every berzerko out-of-nowhere push means a monster. Now if he bets, I raise, and he comes over the top, that's a different story.

Of course, it sucks when you're wrong and he has it, but against this player, most of the time you have him beat and a call is +EV in my opinion. A fold smells like scared money.

On the other hand, what the hell do I know?

Good discussion tho. Thanks to Poppin for posting it here.

Rereading my post, let me clarify. I don't mean to imply that only a complete donk makes an all-in move there with a monster. However, the logic that justifies the play requires some fairly advanced thinking that is a fairly rare thing to encounter at the $1 level - you can lose a lot of money assuming that a player making that move is applying the sort of forward-thinking logic that goes "I'm willing to bet that my opponent makes a donk call here often enough to justify the value that I'm losing by pushing him off most his holdings here".

In the large gap between the complete donks that push every time they flop a monster, to the people that are using the above logic, there is a wide segment of people (encompassing most of the $1NL crowd) that would never shove in with that kind of monster cold on the flop, but that might with a different, more vulnerable holding.

Just because the push can be justifiable doesn't mean that it is likely enough to abandon the notion of calling completely. I'm not saying by any means that I make the call against all players in all situations (certainly I rule out the smasharoo before even thinking of a call), but when I make it, I don't even need to be right 50% of the time to make money with it. And the possibility of an overpair and a strong sense of panic on the part of the bettor is strong enough to justify the call here, I think, against most players at the $1 level.

Anytime someone's donking it up and then they push into a microscopic pot and I have an overpair...

I'm usually calling.

In 1/2 live NL i was playing good tight aggressive poker against a drunk moron...

I raise from my button (4-handed) with Qc5c, he re-raised the min (which he'd been doing all night with weird hands...

Flop Qs-3h-3s

Checks to me, I bet pot, he calls.

Turn 2s, he pushes into me for 66% of the pot. I fold. He shows jacks, no spade.

Call stupid people making stupid bets with hands that show down well.

seems like you just got outplayed

agreed

hero needs to raise more preflop the .5/1 games are really really loose raising to $4 is very weak on these tables.

Blinds will easily call w/ A3 or K3 or 34 suited or 36 suited etc.

Why don't I want a call from any of those hands suited when I'm holding kings? Poker is about winning money, not avoiding situations where you might be sucked out on.

In any case, the table was actually pretty tight (for $0.50-$1.00), with multiway flops being very rare. $4 was usually more than enough to push people out. Rest assured I do adjust my pre-flop raise amount based on an overall table read; 4xbb was appropriate here.

Villain was <25% VP$IP and not calling raises with complete trash. That's a fairly solid preliminary read from over 100 hands. And it's a pet peeve of mine when people say "players at this level will something-or-other" as if all players at a certain level play in exactly the same style and should be played exactly the same way. Yes, I know that there are players that will call raises with trash at low stakes despite not being good enough post-flop to do anything with them. Last I checked that was a good thing.

I don't mean to fly off the handle but you just struck like 4 of my major annoyances in just a couple of sentences >.<

Uhm, if he's making this move with 6's through 9's, he's an even bigger idiot.

The only hands that call those insane overbets are the ones that have him killed.... and better hands virtually always call at these limits.