I have $200 and have been sitting at table for 30 minutes.

1/2 NL

Villain just sat down. Villain is 25/ 0 but I only had 10 hands on him.

Villain has $200

I had been raising a lot of hands so far and villain just saw me make a tight fold with TT but he didn't know what I had.

I raise to $6

MP calls

MP2 calls

LP (villain ) raises to $25

I stop and think a while

I call after timer runs down a bit

Everyone else folds

Flop: 4d 7c 3d

I bet $30
Villain raises all-in for $170

What do you do ?

IMO, you have to call this. It's read dependant, of course, but there's only one hand that beats you right here. Could he have Queens or Jacks?

I call here. Like Boogie said, it's very read dependent and the hands you really worry about are JJ & QQ. AA & KK are probably going to make a smaller bet here hoping to get a call. If you've been raising pots and being aggressive, your bet may look like you're trying to take the pot away from AK. (I don't tend to overbet pots, but against a possible lead like yours, I'm reraising you here as well with Ak and AQ and trying to put youto a decision.) Also, 99 and 88 make this play from time to time depending on the player as well.

Edit: don't know why i read 1010. Easy call. Not good business to fold to sets or to fold to AA.

Call. If he knows you're tight as a nun it might be AA, but you have to make the call there! Good blog too

OP ,

I re-raise preflop, to 50. if villain pushes, then its safe to say you might be screwed, or up agianst another pocket KK which is possible, and would basically be a draw.

right now you face a touhg decision and very well could be up against J,J or QQ and have no idea since you only called pre flop.

I assume that if you are just calling his raise preflop, it's precisely for this type of a situation. He has no reason to believe that you have something as strong as kings. You have reason to believe he _may_ have aces, but it's only one of several possibilities given the information that you have and many (10's through Q's) each seem to be as likely as aces.

Folding on a ragged board like that is worse than folding kings preflop. Not only are you still beating all reasonable pocket pairs (except aces), but your edge is now even larger against hands like AK or AQ.

The pot is $60 on the flop, you bet $30, his call is $30 leaving the pot at $120 before his raise. That means his raise is only slightly more than a pot sized raise.

I agree that you have to call. A smart player with AA will know you have a big pair and move you in here, and you're done for. But you could just as easily be up against someone overplaying QQ or JJ.

I have a general rule online at those levels: A reraise pf almost always means AA or KK, unless you have some reason to believe otherwise. People just don't get that tricky.

Sometimes you just run into AA with KK. I have a feeling you lost this hand. But I'd make the call as well.

Mark

If you think that a reraise always means KK or AA, you should fold preflop.

The fact of the matter is that it doesn't always mean AA or KK. In fact, it _usually_ doesn't.

I agree, a re-raise HU doesnt mean AA or KK.

but to extract more info from this hand, when it was re-raised he should have come back over the top. If villain folds winning 30.00 for having KK without seeing any flop is always nice .

If villain calls and we see rags, it would seem we have the best hand still.

if we dont re-raise pre flop, and we assume villain might have mid-high PP 10's - Q's and we see any of these cards on board, we might still think our K's are good, but we could have very possibly run into trouble.

so, if we think about this, we bet out, get raised, come over the top of villain with a re-raise, villain A- folds, we win the pot. B- calls, we assume now our kings are way ahead. C- he comes back and pushes, possibly are K's are beat by A's, and we can either lay them down, or call and hope player doesnt have A's. If he does infact hold AA, i dont see how we would have been able to get away from the hand post flop regardless.

I agree that a PF re-raise is the proper action here. The limited information you have PF without it makes this call tougher. Ultimately I think this is a call no matter what if he does have AA tip your hat to him and take the fall.

yea i agree with a call here. Perhaps you should've re-raised pf as some ppl have already mentioned, that will give you a little more information about your opponent's hand. The flop is great for you, there is only one reasonable hand that beats you right now, which are Aces. But the all in bet by the villian is a "scared" bet, he just wants to take the pot down now...I would think JJ or QQ, or another possibility is that he has AK of diamonds so he has the nut flush draw plus he might think he has two overcards. You probably have the advantage, get your money in when you have the best of it.

Based on experience, I disagree completely with that. I understand that in a strong game, a crazy game, live games where reads matter more, etc, a reraise preflop doesn't always mean AA or KK. But in the middle level online games, in my experience, it almost always does. Again, I've seem many times where it hasn't been. But 90% of the time, thats how it ends up.

And I was generalizing for a full ring game, obviously HU or 6 handed certainly this isn't the case.

As to those who say the OP should reraise pf: I don't disagree with this, but what is your purpose? If you reraise, and he moves all in, will you fold? If so, then I agree with the reraise. But since most of us won't fold KK pf, I like the smooth call. Reraising pf, more than likely QQ and JJ fold, and AA is moving in and you'll probably call. Smooth calling, you give QQ or JJ the option to make a big mistake on the flop, and still lose everything to AA.

As always, your miles may vary. Good luck.

Mark

Get anyone to check their hand database.

You're completely wrong if you think that more than 90% of hands that are reraised preflop are aces or kings at the limits that this thread is about. Maybe if you're looking exclusively at large UTG raises and UTG+1 reraises in a full ring where both players are rocks; then you could say close to 90% of the time one will have aces or kings. Even then it's a stretch.

If that's the case though, fold kings preflop, right? I mean, if 90% of the time you're either chopping or a huge dog, you should surely fold your kings to a reraise. Or do you enjoy calling with something that you're going to be tied with or losing to 90% of the time? (and given that you hold kings, aces are far more likely in terms of hand combinations)



I wouldn't say it's for information as much as it is for value. The information is useless. If he pushes, you call. If he calls, then what? You have less than a pot sized bet left for the flop action. How do you use the information then?

If he has a hand like AK, you want him to pay preflop, because the majority of the times you're getting action post flop from him are when you're beat. If you knew specifically had queens, you could probably justify calling because of how likely you are to take his entire stack if his queens overshoot the board. But you dont. Even if he does have queens, you're probably still better off raising for value (and potentially getting him all in as a huge dog).

Just for kicks, is there an easy way to extract that info from pokertracker? Basically, if a reraise pf, what was their holding when known?

Also just to clarify again, I believe that in 90% of the cases that you see a reraise pf at middle level online games, you will see AA or KK, UNLESS you have some other reason to make the play more likely. For instance an obvious tilt, a short stack pushing in, etc etc.

I actually track this theory by $, because just as it seems to be here, it is much argued amongst my online poker playing friends. In my case, its over $1400 on the plus side for me to always assume AA or KK on a reraise. (again, assuming nothing else to say otherwise) And would be over $2200 if I could lay down KK pf, which I would not do.

Mark

Actually, the more i think about it, it isnt possible.

These hands don't always get shown down.

If someone reraises with something worse than aces or kings, it's far LESS likely to be shown down than if they do have aces/kings.

Consequently, if you were to simply look at the results of all hands that were shown down with preflop reraises, you would have a disproportionately large number of kings or aces, relative to the actual percentage of hands they occupy.

Call, he's got jacks.

Wow. Dead on. I called and he had jacks. I thought I played the hand well. I gave the opportunity that if villain had a lesser pair he could make a mistake. I thought that if I reraised preflop that it would basically completely give away my hand and he would would probably fold. I felt like he was testing me preflop to see what I had and when he saw that I hesitated preflop to call his raise, he felt that I was weak.