So I talked this hand over with a couple of big online players and got interesting insight, we all agreed it was a tough spot as easy as the hand may seem.. I'll post what they told me after. What do you guys do here?

I have 75k in chips blinds are 1k/2k with ante. UTG is "soggyvag" pretty solid, knows whata he's doing, doesnt get out of line too much, but kinda predictable imo. He has about 100k in chips, I believe this was post bubble, but maybe it was pretty close to it in one of the rebuy's on stars.

UTG raises to 7.2k, folds to me on the button with 88, I call. flop 679r. Soggy vag hessitates a few seconds and bets 12k. How do u play this hand over all? muck PF, rr, smooth call and shove the flop, etc...?

yeah, definitely an interesting hand...

utg raise, solid player, his range is pretty small. probably AA-99, AK, AQ.

i flat call as well pre. flop presents a lot of reasonable choices. i probably just call. we have the advantage of position which allows us to control the size of the pot. the hands we're ahead of (2 overs) we don't really want to fold, so i don't see the point in jamming. and i think the implied odds against hands we're behind are actually pretty good. i don't know if a 5 or a T would really be a scare card to AA-QQ.

I'm back and forth on this. I don't think you have any implied odds against a good player, because a T or 5 will scare them off. Are you ahead of his range here? Would he c-bet AK, AQ? Will he drop AA-QQ if you represent the set? I can really see all options (raise, call, fold) as fine in this spot, depending on his UTG opening + c-betting range. How's that for helpful?

The smooth call preflop is probably ok. You are getting just over 10-1 implied. You could reraise preflop to 15-20K, but you only have 88 and would have to fold to a 3-bet all-in. IMO.

I woud raise pre-flop. If you catch your set this gets more money in early, and it gives you some FE up front. More important is the line if you just call:

While your stack is fairly deep right now the play of the hand is fairly easy to predict if he is a solid but predicatable player:

If you call he is going to cb with high pairs and overcards, maybe even smaller pairs. If you missed totally of course you fold, and setted who cares. The problem is when you catch a piece of the flop like this. When he cb's you would really like to reraise with this kind of hand which may be ahead or has solid drawing equity with 10 solid outs. But a reraise here is going to invest a very large portion of your stack.

The raise preflop will slow him down on the flop, quite possibly letting you see two cards for a much cheaper price than calling. It also has the advantage of knocking the blinds out in more situations. Id go to about 20k.

Uh...and you aren't worried that a tight UTG raiser might be willing to shove pre, in which case you'll be spewing 20k?

OP doesnt say he's tight, or how tight, just that hes predictable. if he'll only raise with pairs better than 8s and AK, AQ then its an easy fold, because we dont have the implied odds to play for set value.

If hes got a wider range and predictable, though, I think the 20k preflop is cheaper than what it costs us to call and play the flop.

I would call preflop with position based upon your read that the UTG player is solid so he either has a higher PP which has us in bad shape or we're in a coin flip against two overs. I don't like a reraise as I want to see a flop and would hate to get pushed off of this hand if UTG jams in response.

Great flop - I think that I would call here. If another low card hits on the turn, UTG may decide to check and not fire a second bullet with two overs if he's solid and we can bet the turn knowing that we're probably good. If UTG does have a premium pair, I doubt that he's going to fold if we hit our hand since I'm sure he puts Prty on a pretty wide range.

Or in summary, I'm taking MK's line

Dammit. I wrote a long response on why you should jam the flop. Then I decided it was wrong and wrote a long response on why smooth calling is better. Then after that I rethought it and thought jamming was better again.

I think it's very close and both are viable options for this awesome flop.

The problem with smooth calling flop to me is what are we going to do when he leads turn and we haven't improved? If he will fire a second bullet with missed overs we are losing a pretty big pot for bad reasons. Also, what are we doing when the turn is QKA and he leads out.

I agree that calling is the standard play here, and folding probably 2d, given the tightness of the range that mk puts UTG on. Post-bubble I would put him on a wider range where we have some FE against him, and where the blinds are more likely to gamble and I really dont want to be up against more than one hand.

I don't think this is a problem. If he's predictable, he's not betting the turn on that board with AK, AQ. Hopefully. Me likey the opportunity of a free turn card, or an easy turn fold (unless hero hits). If an AKQ hits, that makes our decision even easier, because it's purely a pot odds/implied odds problem.

Smells like JJ

Fold.




Probably wrong, but this is what I would do.

I'll get out of way and let you experts discuss while I try to keep up.

PrtyPsux, do you think he is the type of player who would fire a second bullet with missed overs if the turn bricks?

I think that is the key to this hand.

Sometimes I jam the flop, sometimes I just call.

K, so I talked to 3 very good tourney players and here's what I got, I'll tell u who told me and kind of how they play so you can get an Idea of how they came to that conclusion.

Roothlus. Having talked to this guy countless of times I can tell you he's one of the best thinker's this dude notices tiny things in hands and acts on them (something that I too notice but a lot of times dont act on it.) he has no problem making big laydowns or big calls if betting patterns/instict tell him to, he even layed down KK to me PF one time in the 1st level of a stars tourney.

Rooth said something people here may have realized but not pointed out, as I played the hand I realized it but didnt act on it really...He mentioned that the 7.2k bet or the 3.5 (ish) x the bb raise pretty much defines his hand as 88-JJ, no way he'd raise AK or AQ like that and not likely at all that he'd raise AA-QQ.
He advocated folding PF, once we saw the flop he said he'd probably end up shoving and knowing hes drawing to 8 clean outs and maybe 10, and most likely getting called.


SamEnole, is another great player but I rail him/talk to him all the time and I honestly dont know how he FT's so often, he's a complete rock and has the patience of no one I've ever seen, he's by far the best short stack player I've ever seen, even though I think he lacks gamble as a mid stack.

He said he's never folding a pair there PF, he told me it might be a leak of his but he hardly ever folds pairs PF when he has a reasonable stack. Then he said he doesnt commit his whole stack on a draw here considering we're getting called almost always. Then he said he probably smooth calls the flop and hopes to hit a str8, but he was kind of unsure if that was correct considering we're not getting action a lot of time if we hit, also if we hit a set on the turn we're stuck to the hand when we can easily be up vs a str8 or a bigger set.

Finally I talked about this hand with Hoosier, and we pretty much combined the two ways of thinking and realized that a fold is probably incorrect (although very very marginally incorrect) but the only reason to play this hand PF is for set value. So no matter what the flop is you should get away from it if you dont hit your set... even with this flop you should probably just muck and save money. At least thats what we thought would be correct.

At one point I was leaning toward the Copernicus way of thinking where he says rr preflop would be best, the problem comes when villian smoothcalls you're pretty much commited now for a huge chunk of your stack, and the times he decides shoving JJ (or the rare occasions he has AA-QQ) is a good idea we're pretty much screwed.

Anyway this is all the info I gathered on this hand and I think it could be very usefull for similar situations.

PS I didn't proof read so if **** doesnt make sense let me know.

I pretty much agree with Roothlus' analysis on this one. Although I'd arguably put AQ/AK in his range there. I shove the flop.

Why would u shove the flop if you agree w/ roothlus' analysis though? you know he's not folding then. The thing is that people dont bet 3.5 bb's or whatever with AQ and AK usually, they dont want to make a bigger pot with a hand that might miss. I think most of the time this is a mid pair type hand vs almost any opponent.

You can't fold preflop, for set value alone and I don't see reraising as being a legitimate play. By process of elimination, calling appears the best play preflop.

On the flop you are going to be about a 2/1 dog against his range, the pot is about 19k and you have about 67k left.

I don't think you have much fold equity so I don't see pushing as the best option (you get called far too often by an overpair), but I think the implied odds are there to call and see the turn. An added benefit is that he will probably shut down on a blank (or maybe an ace) turn if he doesn't have 88 beaten and give you a free river.

I've been teetering on smooth calling the flop and pushing like I originally advocated, so I had to think about it for a day. I still say push...

- The pre-flop decision has been made here: We're investing 10% of our stack to see a flop.

- Having invested 10% of our stack, other than flopping an 8 outright, this is about the second best flop we could have hoped for.

- Since you weren't sure whether this was post-bubble or pre-bubble - but right around it, I put AQ/AK in his range as that (to me) would be a reasonable raise UTG during the bubble.

- You're almost certainly drawing to ten clean outs.

- You have enough fold equity to get him to fold an overpair enough of the time, especially if we're at the bubble.

- Combining the minimal (but existant) FE we have with the ten outs, I think pushing here is the most +EV play.

Would love to hear any rebuttals to this?

Crash

I agree with Sam that 88-JJ is likely, but I wouldn't completely miscount AK or AQ here. I have noticed people doing the same "I'm OOP so I will raise a little larger so I don't have to play a flop with this hand OOP" with AK and AQ. I agree that 88-JJ is more likely (like prolly in the 80% range of his hands) and that AK and AQ and maybe another random hand or two make up the last 20%.

i was thinking the exact same thing. people will often raise AK/AQ bigger than a standard raise upfront for fear of flopping oop.

GREAT avatar Mk