ah! interesting! where did you get that from?

my number: chance an overcard doesn't flop:

(50-12/50)*(49-12/49)*(48-12/48) = 30% IIRC.

well named, you're right we're not going to solve this, but i think we can get some way towards it. I have more thoughts, but I want to make sure what i'm about to say makes sense.

1 - (38/50)*(37/49)*(36/48)

I certainly will continue to call with JJ OB more often than I 3bet, but this thread has made me want to look for opportunites/opponents where 3betting for value will clearly be better than calling.

Some more thoughts. If I open from the CO and someone calls in the BB, I hate it. I hate it even more than if they 3bet (taking the hand in isolation. obv if they keep 3betting, that is worse than if they keep just calling), because if they 3bet, I can toss my crap hand away without hesitation. If they just call, I cbet 80% of flops, and when they call that, I give up, and hate having just thrown 10BB or whatever at them.

If I just call with JJ and give up on flop when an overcard hits, then it is a huge leak for me to call with JJ and I am going to just leak money. When I call IP with JJ, I am not too worried about an overcard because my default on almost any flop is to float. If I am calling IP with JJ, I am probably folding 25% of flops, raising 10%, and floating the rest of the time.

In my experience, after I call in position:

-co doesn't fire cbet (this happens more often than it should, but maybe not so much with the villain described in OP)

-co gives up on the turn and folds to turn bet.

-if an overcard flops, I am floating and making CO fire a second barrel

-I have never been CRAI on the turn when I have floated flop and bet turn with air. I keep waiting for this to happen, because I realize how exploitable floating a lot could be, so every time I do it, I wait for someone to CRAI on the turn, but it still hasn't happened.

-based on the above, I can play ATC in position the same way if villain will give up on the turn, but when I do it with JJ and get called on the turn, my hand is still going to be ahead a lot of the time, and I can v-bet a lot of rivers, or just check behind and win most pots, having got 2 streets of value out of my JJ instead of just picking up the blinds and co raise.

So a lot of the pf is dependent on reads on how people play post flop.I am less willing to call with JJ if villain 2barrels a lot, or even if they are likely to put a lot of pressure on me with a pot-sized cbet instead of just 65-75% pot-sized cbet.

My cold-call from button % is 2.6 and I am averaging 1.8BB per hand when I have floated on the button pf over my last 30,000 hands. I have no idea what my bb/hand is when I have 3bet on the button.

well, i think the biggest factor with a hand like JJ is how light a particular opponent will stack off against you post flop, and how willing you are to get all of your money in unimproved. against most 21/17/ag type regs, your jacks are going to be good on a ton of flops, especially if you are agressive and they know you. they'll put moves on the pot a lot, and QQ is usually the only hand that rapes you unimproved. i call with JJ in situations that don't lend themselves to quite the same kind of action as this one does, which is fairly often really.

mine is 2.95 big blinds (not big bets) per hand fwiw.

ok here is why i think 3betting JJ is best in this spot.

i said basically if you just call you have ~0 EV when an overcard comes, so you've basically taken your >50% a/i equity and turned it into 30% pot equity + some (but not massive) implied odds.

well named countered saying position --> bluffing vs a weak range --> EV>0 when an overcard flopped. he agreed that calling to just get aggro in pots where we flop an ovepair or better is not good. i do think you can raise or float a lot of overcard flops profitably, but if you are happy to do this and are not going to start crying about turning JJ into a bluff, why you wouldn't just raise JJ pre when is it is highly likely you have the best hand rather than when an overcard flops, when it is considerably more likely you have the worst hand??

secondly, rr and then getting called by better is hardly a disaster as we will be stacking off to these a large proportion of the time when we call and flop and overpair.

simon, i disagree with you that we are necessarily behind a 3bet calling range from this guy, but we might be. even if we are, it doesn't mean we are turning our hand into a pure bluff... we will have anything from 30-49% equity easily to go with our FE, so we're really turning our hand into a semibluff, just with a made hand rather than a draw.

I am enjoying this discussion and it certainly makes me think a lot, and I hope people who don't agree with my view on the JJ see this as a discussion and not an argument. Maybe we can do it again with 3betting out of the blinds.

Anyway, here's why I like calling with JJ.

Cliff's notes Without taking post-flop into account, calling is about .6BB hands less profitable than 3betting. But I think it is easy to make up this .6BB per hand post flop, and that playing JJ in a raised pot is a lot easier and more profitable than playing JJ in a reraised pot.

Math
So much of the math is dependent on post-flop play, so this analysis is trivial because it can’t factor in post-flop play. I do not know how to calculate your expected net return or loss postflop when you are playing JJ in a reraised pot, nor playing JJ in a raised pot.

Ranges etc for my defaults from CO vs button who had given me no reason to adjust.
CO open range:
any pp, any 2 broadway, A7s+, A9o, J9s, T8s, 98s, 87s (21.6% of. all hands)

CO 4bet range KK+ and AK (10% of opening range)

CO calling range QQ-JJ and AQ, KQs (11% of opening range)


3betting preflop
So, over 100 hands, you put 1400BB into the pot by re-raising to 14BB each time (assuming nl50), so your net investment is 1400BB

79% of the time, I fold and you win my 4BB + 1.5BB from the blinds + 14BB returned to you.

79% * 19.5BB = 1540.50BB

So, by 3betting every time, you win a total of 1540.50 – 1400 = 140.5BB/100 hands, or 1.405BB per hand preflop.

Assuming you fold the 10% of the time you get 4bet, we are left with the 11% of the time your 3bet is called. As I said before, the analysis here is trivial since there is no way to determine how much you will win/lose post flop when your 3bet gets called. But, for a baseline level, you have 47% equity vs my 3bet calling range, so assume you win 47% of the money that’s in the pot on the flop.

11 hands * 29.5BB pot * 47% = 152.50BB/100 hands, or 1.525BB per hand

So in total you win 1.405BB + 1.525BB = 2.93BB per hand when you 3bet.


Calling preflop:
Over 100 hands you invest 100 * 4BB = 400BB
You have 67% equity vs CO open range, so trivially you will win
100 hands * 67% * 9.5BB pot = 636.5 BB
636.5BB profit - 400BB investment = 236.5BB/100 hands or 2.36BB per hand when you call

So the trivial math shows 3betting winning 2.93BB per hand and calling winning 2.36BB per hand. The question is, can you make up that extra .60BB per hand post flop if you just call?

I think you can, which is why I like calling. I think you can because

a) co will cbet most of the time (say even 70%) and you will still win the majority of those pots. for example, if villain cbet 7BB into 9.5BB pot 70% of the time, and you still win 60% of those pots, that works out to
70% * 7BB cost to call cbet = 490BB investment
winning 60% of those extra 490BB cbet + 490BB call = 980BB
60% * 980BB = 588BB profit - 490BB investment = 98BB/100 or an extra .98BB per hand, so already calling gets more value than 3betting

b) CO will have AA or KK and stack off to our set sometimes. We have a set 11% of the time. CO has AA or KK about 4.5% of the time, so we will flop a set vs AA/KK .11 * .00495, so we will have set vs AA/KK 0.5% of the time. Those times we will win an extra 100BB. Some times they might not stack off, or sometimes we will lose set over set, but they also will stack off sometimes with TPTK or 2pr vs our set, but let’s say that even half the time we get a set vs AA or KK, we win a stack, so that is .25 times out of 100 that we win 100BB. So that works out to an extra 25BB/100 or .25BB per hand. (We can never do this when we 3bet, because then CO 4bets AA and KK and we fold.)

Obviously there are scenarios where we can lose big pots when we just call, and win big pots when we 3bet, but I think on average it is easier to pick up extra money with JJ in position in a raised pot than it is to get the extra money with JJ in a re-raised pot, and I think we will lose big pots more with JJ in re-raised pots than we will in raised pots.

So I the math doesn’t prove anything, but it shows how much value there is in calling with JJ in position, assuming you don’t fold every flop to a cbet.

I think in general I let game flow dictate a lot of what I am going to do here. So I only would say that the answers I give here are what I would do say 75% of the time.

A. This one actually more like 50/50 here. Against a 22/18 I think that is loose enough to 3 bet and get all the money in if he plays back. The main reason I don't like 3 betting pocket pairs in position is that when the player 4 bets you then he had a hand you could've busted a high percentage of the time if you had flopped a set. But now not only do you not get to flop it on him, you also invested a lot of $. But with JJ against a looseish player you can get all the $ in and be OK versus his range. So if the guy is vloose I 3 bet JJ a lot and if his 4 bets mean ak/qq-AA then I like a flat call.
B. Call every time here
C. I'd say 50/50 here between calling and 3 betting. If I call I raise most every flop that I miss just because, oh I don't know, I can't help myself I suppose...lol. I feel like calling and then giving up on a flop I miss is weak. If I hit then how I play it depends on how light villan stacks off. If the flop is j high and villan stacks off light then I raise flop and get the money in if I can.
D. JTs is another close one although I thin kI call here most of the time and usually float a ton of flops because jts flops either a gut shot/backdoor flush/overcards damn near every time it seems. Then if opponent ever looks weak then I step on his neck. That's usually my plan for that hand.
E. Here I would say I mostly just call. This hand is going to by far have the worst results of the hands we've talked about here, but still profitable I think. Same concept as jts except I will not flop as much potential with it and therefore will float less and give up more often with it.

I hope this helps you guys and I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any questions/comments.

If you give up everytime an overdard come then you are absolutely right. But I call (at the very least) every conceivable flop. Ace high even. You are folding the winner far too often if you are giving up when overcards come.

Because I think that 80% of the time when I have the best hand, villain is folding and I get no value other than their initial raise.

Also, vs. the 21.6% CO raise range, we still have 64% equity when a K or Q flops, and 57% equity when an A flops. We even have 55% equity when a K and a Q flop, and 48% equity when an A and a K flop. If the flop comes AKQ, we have 67% equity. Preflop we had 67% equity. So we don't lose a lot of equity when the overcard flops--though it makes the hand trickier to play, of course--so I am willing to give up that little amount of equity post-flop in order to not have the CO fold pre-flop so much.

weee nice post.

clearly we've identified the area where we disagree - how much we win when he cbets into us. i've chosen to split that up into what i see as difficult and fairly easy situations (overcard flopping/not flopping) but i admit thats a little subjective.

basically you are saying we we can win 60% of pots where he cbets (given a 70% cb freq)? i am a little sceptical but i'd like to see what others think about this number and whether that's achievable.

I certainly am going to 3bet with JJ more often than I did before this thread. Nice of leatherass to stop by.

Can someone just post 20 hands or so of how they played JJ (vs solid TAGs if you can), and then we can analyze the individual scenarios and what may have been the optimal play. I think this may help alot to figure out what's best.

Np sir.

its not about how you play JJ. its about how you play your range as a whole. 3betting with any hand is optimal by far in this situation, but you can't do it at a 100% frequency.