I'd appreciate it.

I raise and 3-bet JJ from any position with no hesitation and if an overcard flops and hits a villain, I just move onto the next hand.

I raise TT, but I hate it - I have to force myself to do it - I'm always afraid I'll get cold-called in multiple spots, overcards will come and I'll be lost, but I do it because I've studied the odds and know TT has an equity advantage.

If I'm FACING a raise, I'm sweating to make myself 3-bet it, even if I've seen the villain raise unpaired hands. Sometimes I do, sometimes I freeze up and end up folding it.

I CANNOT make myself raise 99. Not UTG, not if it's folded to me in MP, not if I'm on the button after 4 limpers. I've studied the odds, I know what the equity advantage is, but there's just this mental block I have when I'm at the table and just can't force myself to put in $8 instead of $4.

And forget about 3-betting 99. If I'm facing a raise with 99 it usually ends up in the muck.

These are spots where I know the correct play but I'm literally scared to make it.

Suggestions will be GREATLY appreciated.

Well, for starters, your opening range and 3-betting range should be different. It's fine to raise 99 if nobody has raised, but fold it if it's already raised to you.

Opening 99 (and 88) are the bottom of a UTG range. It's not a huge mistake to fold them. Work on raising the best hand you'd otherwise fold (which in this case looks like TT) and add 99-88 later when you're comfortable with TT.

Postflop, you don't always have to fold to an overcard. It will depend on the number of people in the pot and their ranges and their betting tendencies.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_hadf...blind_in_space

Pay attention at 10:17.

Based on opponent ranges, it could be correct to not 3 bet 99. If you're facing a tight raiser, 99 could just be crushed. If your games are as loose as I assume they are, mucking could also be a big mistake. Post a typical 99 hand and lets talk about it.

1. If hands are regularly going off 6+ ways, 99 and TT are going to get crushed a lot. Get used to it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't raise them. Sometimes you will get favorable flops. Also, part of the value in these hands is that you are often able to easily know when you are behind and you can safely fold them.

2. Two or three ways, your hand will often still be good when an overcard or two comes. Don't give up too quickly.

Sorry for the delay in responding.

OK here's a general spot - we're early in a 4/8 session at what so far looks like a standard SSHE table and we're UTG 9-handed with 99. Limp or raise?

The table is loose/passive? I'd raise this in tough games without a problem, I'm even happier to raise it here.

99 is a bit of a stretch here since its such an awesome hand, but in general, I could see it being correct to employ EP limp strategies against certain 4/8 line ups.

If table is super loose with almost no preflop raises, it clearly becomes correct to limp with hands like 44-22, plus tons of suited hands. Some of these will be too bad to even consider raising, but a limp will still be a nice addition to your game tree. So within that matrix you could consider limping some better hands to be more reactive/deceptive, but that sounds wrong for what I was describing before.

If you think your EP raises are likely to make people fold hands like AT, KJ, Q9s, but they might become raises after you limp, then you might have a good line up for some value limp-re-raises, or value look-and-sees.

Since line ups are always changing, you might be able to get away with doing this in different ways, inevitably causing people to either disrespect or over-respect your limps.

Once you're in a game featuring 6 or 8 way limped pots, deception becomes less of an issue. The real key to the game is making the best hand and then showing it to people on the river after they've all called your bet. The idea of reserving hands in various parts of your range to add deception at a 80% VP$IP table is a bit nutty. They think you're the crazy raising guy because you raise often and they don't. It just seems like you're overthinking this. As you said, 99 is stronger than some Axs or middling suited connector which some people might argue can be profitable to limp.

DalTXColtsFan, I'm surprised you posted an UTG hand as a tough spot with 99 or TT. You've played a lot of poker, this is just a happy/easy spot. You open these hands because it is more profitable than doing anything else. You lose more than half the time in MW pots and you're a money favorite. This hand is towards the bottom of a very strong UTG range, so it isn't like printing money. It still is more profitable than folding.

You have to be certain that the pot is going to be seven- or eight-way without a raise for setmining with small pairs in early position to be a good idea. A preflop raise cuts your postflop implied odds in half, and that hurts setmining.

Also it isn't good to play a small pair for one bet in EP and have only one or two passengers along for the ride.

(99 is a fine hand to open with UTG in a loose-passive game. As the others have said, you won't win a majority of the time, but you make more money in the long run, more than you would if you just called one bet.)

ETA: OP, maybe you need to move down to where you don't respect their raises.

I'm not ashamed that there are still easy spots that are hard for me. Doesn't stop me from asking questions one bit.

I did some math, and assuming the math is correct, we're going to flop either a set or an overpair with 99 30% of the time. I did *not* know the number was that high. But an overcard will come on the turn and/or river about, what, 70% of the time? It's akin to a villain having 20 outs with 2 cards to come.

Here's a stove I did with some very conservative cold-calling ranges for 2 villans plus the big blind. In short, 99 has 32% equity 4 ways against:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

15,294,185 games 9.261 secs 1,651,461 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.435% 31.03% 00.40% 4745838 61931.42 { 99 }
Hand 1: 23.757% 22.81% 00.95% 3488426 145029.25 { QQ-22, AQs-A5s, K9s+, QTs+, J9s+, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, AQo-A8o, KTo+, QJo, JTo, T9o, 98o }
Hand 2: 23.734% 22.79% 00.95% 3485079 144868.33 { QQ-22, AQs-A5s, K9s+, QTs+, J9s+, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, AQo-A8o, KTo+, QJo, JTo, T9o, 98o }
Hand 3: 21.075% 20.36% 00.71% 3114608 108724.75 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, A7o+, K8o+, Q9o+, JTo, T9o, 98o, 87o }


---


I'll post more in a minute.

Really what it boils down to with 99 and TT is I know they have equity advantages but I feel lost when an overcard comes. I'll post a hand where we raise 99 UTG, get 2 coldcallers and a BB call and then an overcard comes on the turn in a few minutes.

OK, so I'm at a 9-handed loose-passive table. I'm UTG with 99 and I raise. HJ and BTN coldcall, BB calls.

8.5sb. Flop comes 873

BB checks, I bet, everyone calls.

6BB. Turn comes Q

BB checks. This seems like a trivial bet/fold - there are so many draws and worse hands that would call the flop that weren't improved by the Q. And if I do get raised without a solid read that a turn raiser is capable of bluffraising when there are 3 other people in the hand I don't even consider continuing.

So let's say I bet and everyone calls.

10BB. River comes 5

BB checks. I think this is a trivial check, and if it's one bet back to me, I say "the pot's too big to fold" and toss in a big bet. If I'm not closing the action I'm not afraid of HJ raising me - with a strong hand he'd have bet out.

Thoughts?

EDIT: DougL: In response to "They think you're the crazy raising guy because you raise often and they don't.", I've been called "Mr. Nuts" and "Mr. Preflop Autoraise", and have been told, "You'll raise anything, won't you?". Your statement, at least from my perspective, is accurate.

No, it's not. It's not even close. Assuming that any overcard kills you is simply excessive pessimism. It's the same thing that prevents people from betting their KK on a AT7 board because OMG THERE'S AN ACE!

That means that you're 7% above your "fair share equity" of 25%. That's something like a 30% relative increase in value. That's pretty good.

I'm inclined to bet. You get value out of 8x and 7x hands, there's no reason to put significant stock in the idea that the Q is out there, and it's an easy fold if raised.

You should forget about minbet-poker and start NL. Nobody plays Limit today. Then it is way easier to get the value from those kind of hands

I was going to say something along these lines as well, though it can be table dependent. My last couple of sessions have been on weekend nights (read: good games) and it is astonishing what you can get value from in these types of situations.

For an extreme example, there was a guy at my table last session who thought he deserved half the pot after calling a river bet. He said, “but I’ve got the low!”

On the other hand, the weekday games in my casino are much worse and in your example I think betting your hand for value may be too thin, as 3 villains aren’t getting to the river with worse and then calling with worse once the flush completes.

According to my stove, we still have 25% equity on the turn even after the Q hits, but if it's a K it goes down to 22% and if it's an A it goes down to 18%.

Would your answers have been any different if the turn were A or K instead of Q?

It's not that I'm worried that the overcard kills me, it's that I'm worried that the presence of the overcard makes my decisions more difficult. Let's face it, if you have an overpair you usually have the best hand and if you don't it's just bad luck. If there's an overcard on the flop and I bet, bet, bet against passive opponents I could be puting 2.5BB in the pot drawing to 2 outs.

Not really.

The issue at hand is that your overall scheme is pessimistic. Are you suggesting that A5s calls the flop 100% of the time? If that's true, then *of course* the ace falling on the turn hurts more than the queen. But if a lot of those weaker ace hands fold the flop, things are different.

I suggest you re-evaluate the turn *after* pruning down the number of hands your opponents are peeling the flop with. And if you're going to suggest that they're peeling widely, then you need to include more preflop calling hands.

Seems like you're doing it right.

Meh. If you always bet the turn and then bet the river at least a third of the time, I can't imagine you're doing things too poorly.

Yes.

I thought the 20 outs comment had to do with the fact that there are lots of cards that can outdraw you *on the turn*.

But to turn this around, you could also be putting 2.5 BB into the pot with the best hand. It sounds like you're playing not to lose money as opposed to playing to win money.

Why not set yourself up with a simple scheme and be scientific about it:

1) Raise TT preflop.
2) Bet flop.
3a) Bet turn if 0 or 1 overcards
3b) Check turn otherwise

Yes, there will be some 10-20% of the time you're 3-bet preflop, or raised on the flop, or whatever. But the vast majority of the time you can set yourself up like this.

Even if you're randomly guessing about what to do on the river, you've got yourself a reasonable starting strategy.

Now take down the data. How many players on average called your preflop raise? How many of them called the flop? The turn? What hands got to showdown?

You should be excited to get TT because it's now an opportunity for you to run your experiment and learn about handling situations with TT. The challenge of the unknown is not something to fear, but to embrace.

The topic of this thread reminds me of a PLO session I played yesterday, where I ran pretty poorly in medium sized pots and lost 170 bb.

I was probably VPIPing around 15% of hands, while my opponents were in the 65% range. And I tended to play my hands in position versus out of position.

Unfortunately, I often would simply miss the flop, and the guy with Q963 single suit would show down his flopped top two and win.

Does this mean I should "stop raising" because a flop could come where I would be lost and confused on my next move? No, of course not. I could be lost and confused 80% of the time on the flop, but if I'm piling in cash 7 ways w/ way the best of it 20% of the time, I'll be making money. And when I raise pre w/ the best of it and connect, I'm in position to win a bigger pot now.

The same holds here. So what if 99 is going to lose way more often than not when the flop goes off 6 ways? So what if an overcard comes and we lose an extra half bet on the flop when we bet it anyway and someone happens to have it and raises. Do the math; 99 will win more than the plurality of the time and that means we're probably going to make money playing it. Plus, sometimes we flop a set or get a dry 822 and get to win an even bigger pot.

W/R/T the 99 hand with the nice flop and not-as-nice turn/river, I think it's a little close but I'm apt to agree w/ Aaron W on a bet fold. If this were higher stakes where I'd expect a flush draw to raise flop a certain percentage of the time and most top pair or better to raise by the turn, I'd for sure bet/fold 99 here as one of my few (by standard, against certain opp I'd be b/f a lot more and some I'd be b/f never).

I got dealt 99 twice and TT 3 times last night and raised all 5 of them. Sadly I LOST with them all 5 times, but I believe I played them all correctly and unless someone points out an egregious mistake I will continue to play them the same:

Hand 1:
Miraculously it's folded around to me on the button and I have 99 and raise. BB calls. Flop is a paired board with a 2 flush. I bet she calls. Turn is a brick, I bet she calls, River completes the flush, I bet, she raises, I fold, she politely shows me the flush.

Hand 2:
2 limpers I'm in the HJ with TT, I raise, BB and limpers call. Flop is AA3. Checks around to me, I bet, BB and first limper call, second limper folds. Turn is a 7. Checks around to me, I bet, BB folds, limper raises, I fold, limper politely shows me 33.

Hand 3:
3 limpers I'm on the button with TT and I raise, BB and limpers call. Flop is K73. Checks around to me I bet, 3 callers. Turn is a 9. Checks around to me, I bet, 2 callers. River is a 2. Checks around to me, I check behind and one of the limpers flips over KQo.

Hand 4:
2 limpers, I'm in MP with 99 and I raise, coldcaller on the button, BB calls, limpers call. Flop is 776. Checks around to me, I bet, 2 callers. Turn is an 8. Checks around to me, I bet, 1 caller. River is an 8. Limper politely donks to let me know she has an 8. I say, "I'll pay 8 bucks to see your 8" and I call. She flips over A8o.

Hand 5:
3 limpers, I'm in the CO with TT, I raise, BB and limpers call. Flop comes KQ7tt. BB donks, limper folds, limper raises, limper folds, I put my TT on a rocket ship and launch it into outer space.

EDIT: make that 6 times - here's one that I forgot:
4 limpers, I'm on the button with TT and raise, BB and all limpers call. Flop comes KK4. Checks around to me, I bet, 2 callers. Turn is a 7. Checks around to me, I bet, 1 caller. River is a 9. Check, I bet, villain says, "It's just you and me in the hand, right? Then I raise.". I know I'm beat but I can't overcome my curiosity so I call. She flips over 99.

Welcome to limit holdem. Embrace the variance.

+1
I think that the hands are fine. I'm a little worried about your b/f frequency. The thing people don't do in these games is x/r bluff or raise to bluff on the river. If you teach them that this will work specifically against you, they'll play much better only against you. You need to make sure you're not convincing them to play like high stakes geniuses/tough players when HU vs. you on the river. If they think you bluff a lot on the river and then fold to their raises, that's fine.

Flop better
You're not one of those people who keeps track of hands at the table, are you? Not just jotting down a quick note or two at the table to ask someone later, but taking tons of notes during your live session? My (likely biased) observation is that people who do this are much more susceptible to tilt/recency bias issues -- it helps you find some area of luck where you're "below average" and focus on that.