I've been known to iso raise bad players with 99 as part of an extended value range but it depends on who is behind you etc.

With pairs in live poker, I'm usually firmly in the flatting and playing multi way camp (even sometimes with QQ+), but I definitely think there are good spots to 3bet 99:

500 bb aggressive whale opens cutoff to 4x, we are OTB w 99 and cover. Two nits in the blinds --> 3bet.

This really doesn't seem like one of those spots though. Easy call with the whale behind.

I used to think this way but I've moved away from it. Last week I thought of a hypothetical NLH dilemma:

Say you are dealt 99 at a reasonably tough table and you somehow have knowledge that there are two dead 9s. I guess pretend utg and utg1 each face up mucked hands with 9 in them. Would you play this hand now? From which positions? Would you call a raise with it?

A few people I asked said they would in some cases, one guy said he'd open fold it from every position. I personally would probably open the cutoff, button, and small blind with it, and i'd call an open in blind vs blind.

I think it illuminates a simple NLH maxim that mediocre unimproving hands aren't worth much. Even against a bad player, it will be pretty hard to realize a lot of equity postflop with an unimproved pair of 9s, especially if you narrow his range by 3-betting. So if you put in money as a 55% favorite, you're still gonna get bluffed off the best hand quite a bit postflop, and make bad payoffs with the worst hand. Even if the bad player overbluffs in a lot of spots, you'll be making correct calls due to the pot odds, but still often giving value to his range and having to depend on dead money from previous streets to make the call.

Def iso'ing a whale...

Def setting up huge pot in position when stacks are deep and image is maniac...

Def buying the button a lot/not getting punished by good aggro players behind (but not at the expense of pushing out a whale obv)...


If there were no whales behind here I would prob 3bet and put everyone behind me in a bad spot and most likely play the hand post flop in position with initiative.

"Villain and I are both good aggro players, have an established hyper aggro dynamic and basically know each other very well and own each other routinely."

Given this, SB's range is not strong and we're ahead of it. We also have position on SB. We're also isolating the whale.

I read that as a dynamic between the two players and not a "we are spewtards from all positions"

isolate: cause (a person or place) to be or remain alone or apart from others.

Right... because most of the time fish is going to cold call and the guy who raised out of the small blind is going to fold and let us play heads up vs the whale...?

Olaff is not clear that the SB is first to act pre here, and is treating it like SB is isolating a fishy limper. In that case, 3b 99 is probably fine.

I wouldn't be as concerned if the blinds are nitty. (assuming you mean nitty=tight) If they are nitty we have position and they will still fold a lot.

I think there are other pretty std scenarios like aggro whale with any two opens the button and we are small blind with squeezy tough reg in the BB. If we flat we will get squeezed a lot. Same if we are the button and CO opens and blinds are tough aggro. Playing HU in position or out with whale will be better.

Fantastic.

Interesting discussion on 3b'ing 99. I think as it gets super deep i.e. 600bb+ then 3betting 99 is a more +EV way to play the hand vs more passive opponents. Maximizing realization of implieds while still winning the marginal boards for your respective hands (the benefit of a mid pp) is always good. Def better to do it IP rather than OOP tho or else you won't be able to win a significant chunk of runouts bc of too many overs / runner runner flush / 4 straights etc when your opponents whiffs and can bluff you off of it.

Agree with the beginning - our hand plays well deep cause it set over sets a good number of pairs, plus villain will call with under cards like 56s more often because we are deep, which we dominate hard.

Don't agree with the second point, unless we are playing someone better than us. Being oop widens villains calling range, and a huge leak a lot of players have is having a super narrow 3/4/5bet range here when deep. Especially if villain is passive, which means being out of position sucks less because we can better tell where we are at.

Realistically only hand you're losing to is quads (maybe 1010 depending on what villain thinks of whale) but aq/ak will in a vacuum call enough for me to say you should definitely raise.

Edit: Actually some argument can be made for flatting to have whale flat behind if villain is bluffing a decent amount and not calling a raise a ton but it seems like a ****ty spot to bluff for sure.

Raise turn to 1k-1100 to set up pot sized river shove vs. SB

As played call river and hope whale comes along with a pair

Also 3 betting pre in this spot seems meh at best. Villain is opening first to act from the SB(button straddle), if he's competent then he's not doing this super light imo, plus we want to invite the whale in cheap pre as well.