Slight hijack,seems like a good place to post it though.
Live 200nl
SB-Hero ~$550 (AsQs)
UTG+1-Villain~$220
UTG calls $2,UTG+1 calls $2, MP2 calls $2,CO calls $2,BTN calls $2,Hero raises to $20,UTG folds,UTG+1 raises to $42,fold,fold,fold,hero calls $22.
Flop-- 9s4s7h
Hero checks,UTG+1 bets $50,Hero raises all in,,,,
Villain typical live fish. In my experience a back raise is JJ like 90% of the time,right???
Thoughts on my line and hand in general.
Not a hijack at all - I welcome other hands, especially right now when I can't play live and post my own hands for review.
I think I'd fold to the re-raise pre without reads on what this type of play means for this particular villain. In my experience (granted, limited), the limp from EP followed by a min-3-bet is always a big pair (QQ+, more likely KK/AA) and a hand like JJ is more likely to just raise enormous from EP to try to "get folds." That being said, don't think the call is necessarily a big mistake or anything, given it's a min-bet and so many limpers were in, so the pot is bloated.
But the pot being bloated also makes it tricky, since SPR will be < 2 going to the flop. If we don't bink top pair or a FD, how are we going to play it? If we assume he has a pair, we're not excited. And if I hit a Q and he goes crazy betting on the flop I'm not really sure my hand is good.
The flop is kinda weird. The pot is $92, and there's effective ~$178 behind. If we assume he never folds for his whole stack, and we get it in on the flop, we are risking ~$178 to win ~$270. So we need ~40%
equity... Which is technically fine, cause even if he has QQ+ only, we have 42% equity. But it's not like we're getting massive +EV here. If we give him TT+ instead (doubt his range is this wide/he goes crazy with it pre), we still only have 47% equity.
Now, I'm obviously not doing this math at the table (though I'd like to be able to quickly at some point), but my point for showing the math is that even when we hit one of the best possible flops for our hand, we're not that excited about it. We're in a +EV spot, but so is our opponent. Imo the only reason we can GII profitably OTF is b/c we made a mistake pre by putting in 20% of the effective stacks. I think you could make an argument for calling pre stronger if the stacks were deeper (though I'm still not sure).
Also, fwiw, I'm not entirely sure I fold this pre when actually at the table, but I think I should, and it's something I'm working on having the discipline to do. It's sort of a case of thinking "my hand is too strong to fold" when in actuality, if you can put him on a range that mostly crushes you, it's still correct to fold. (Obv it's not really a mistake if you put him on a range that is 90% JJ.)
So then post flop, I think the check-raise is clearly the right thing, though again, I really don't think we have any fold equity against a pair. Even if he has JUST JJ in his range, the fact that we didn't 4bet pre will make him significantly less wary of KK/AA. And I don't think players at this limit will ever be making "big laydowns" with JJ here, expecting sets or something. In fact without an enormous read, folding JJ would be a big mistake for him. Which means that leading out and calling off is basically the same thing as check-shoving, since we expect to GII regardless.
Sorry for monster-reply: been teaching my dad some pokerz over my winter break but I'm still not really doing nearly as much poker as I'd like these past weeks.
