I'd personally be overjoyed to see AK given the description of the hand.

I'd raise here as well given the description of the hand, and call down. There's this huge disconnect between what he thinks the percentages someone has AA, KK, or what the actual range is. It's somewhere between hole-cam and the "in my game, fish always LRR w/ AA" kind've certainty. I'd hate to not charge a gutshot here. I am not convinced that it's towards the hole-cam end of the percentages, and people will back raise with 88, or JTs, in multiway pots, which adds tons of variability.

Given the description of the hand w/o tells, I am thinking, 66-JJ, and suited broadways (up to AKs) discounted at 25% each, w/ AA,KK 100%, and QQ up to 50%.

You realize this is limit hold em right. You keep saying deep stacks. We aren't getting stacked


Just accept you are wrong here. You raise the flop because you have the best hand and you want value and you want people to fold.

If the pre flop raiser 3 bets the flop of AK9. That's when you stop.

Not raising an AK9 flop vs an unknown who takes a ******ed pre flop line is bad.

Also. Limp re raise isn't always AA

That's said. In the actual hand, if they check raise after limp re raising I'm going to assume they have AA and call down and pray.

He mentioned deep stacked because when they are short stacked, even conservative players often will limp re-raise with whatever they happen to have, hoping to get it all in. Full stacked players won't do that as often.

Thanks for clarifying that point, chill. The limp-re-raise in a multiway pot to get it all-in is not KK+, that's for damn sure.

Actually chill, I don't see anything about stack-sizes in the original question, so I don't know what the "deep stacks" talk is all about. The stack-sizes do not come into play in the original question.

Also, I'd like to add that there is the problem from our perspective of "second hand information", which makes posts like this hard to follow, because, well we weren't there, we don't know how solid the read is. All I can do is give what I *think* the range is closest two from my "second hand" point of view.

I think TheHip is right and it's lol to not put in aggressive action w/ 99. If you raise and they three bet, then fine, shut down and pray for AK. Maybe make a superhero fold if a K bangs off.

But really, worrying about how to lose the minimum on AK9 when holding 99 is a big waste of brain cells at fixed limit hold em. You call the three bet. You raise the flop. They check raise the turn. You cry call down. You lost 5.5 bets. It's not like you're playing 300 BB deep live 2/5 NL after the SB 3 bets your Co open when you hold 99 and the flop comes AK9 (and they're pounding the pot)

Playing poker right now. Player just limp-reraised QsJs. He started the hand "deep stacked" too.

TheHip also made a great point that playing 30-45 minutes is not nearly enough time to make this kind of read. I don't know how long, maybe like a few hundred thousand hands to make this read?

Super sick if the player was you.

Lol. It was not.

Even if the worse case scenario, K or A comes, I'm still paying off a turn xr btw. I don't think it'd be a good lay down given the size of the pot. It really sounds like an opportunity to make a bad laydown. I mean, he could've hit trips on the turn with one of the suited broadways. Pot's pretty big.

Thats the issue here

putting them on a range.


their range is literally any two cards because we know nothing about them.

Yes its more likely than not they have AA or KK, but you still have to raise the flop.


Lets say they didn't limp reraise PF. Here's how the action would go

You bet, they check raise AA, you 3bet, they four bet, you call

turn brick. they bet, you raise, they 3bet, and now you start to wonder, ok, maybe i'm ****ed here.


but because they limp re raise, I'm saying this

they bet flop, you raise, they 3bet. ok, now its the time to call down.


so to repeat, you don't know what they have based on PF. When they bet/3bet the flop after the PF action, ok, now i'm starting to believe a set of 9's maybe in trouble here, so call down and hope the AJs

I dont think its near that amount.

But there are guys i've played with at Greektown in detroit, over a few years (maybe 25-30 sessions total) that if they LRR here, I'm pretty sure its AA/KK type of stuff.

so if I had a pretty solid read, I would call 3 times and pray.

less than an hour, can't have that type of read.

Yep...a one hour read can't possibly be so solid that this has to be AA-KK.

Your question illustrates well how I have over simplified and over stated my read. As many have said, and I well understood in real time, 45 minutes was not enough time to have a reliable read even though the LRR from a player who was neither a LAG nor a loose passive (45 minutes is enough to make that much of a read). So it was an exaggeration by me to say my read was that with 100% certainty Villain's range was AKs, AA-KK. Of course, some percentage of likelihood that villain had a wider range had to be given.

All of that said, I still think the greatest likelihood is that villain has top 2 or a better set on this flop. On the other hand, if villain is one of those typical live LH players who LRR only AA-KK and AKs, then the same player often fears that my range is much more narrow, too. And so, that villain will also have great fear that I hold AA, KK, or AK. Whatever small percentage of likelihood that villain's hand is something other than AA, KK or AKs, we have at least that same percentage and probably a little greater that villain will fold to my raise on the flop. So I raise.

Now, let's say villain 3 bets after my raise. I am feeling less happy but still not certain that villain holds AA or KK. AK is still very possible. (AQ and AJ are also possible but very unlikely). I think the play then is to cap the flop. If villain leads the turn, I have to call down with that many bets in the pot. But I cap on the flop because a) it has the tiniest (but not a zero) amount of fold equity; and more importantly, b) the too tight villain might also be very wiling to check both the turn and the river. (losing 1 more sb > calling down with 2 bb) I have certainly seen many live players take this line under similar circumstances pre flop and on the flop.

Not sure what caused you to see in my two questions the need for a better understanding of statistics. Can you explain? (I am neither ignorant nor an expert about poker statistics; so if I need to learn more, I am interested in plugging that knowledge leak. But I know enough that I don't need to waste my time with reading or watching videos about the basics).

^ that comment was not directed at you

Not it was, to to be honest, I look at statistics videos or other maths from time to time, so it's not a *shot*. I was merely flabbergasted by the ~100% read, and how to incorporate it. I thought it might be a joke, but decided to take it at face value, because how else should I? We joke about percentages, but this is an important aspect to get better at hand reading, so throwing out numbers indicates that this is an area that is a little on the weak side. Hand reading improves with experience, and keeping track of hands in a journal of some type.

To clarify, the approach should be to assign weights to various portion to a range, and then construct a theoretical tree (though a simplified one), and then come to solutions and pick the one with the highest expectation. For us humans though, we merely prune the parts of the tree that seem entirely unappetising, and would tend to "slam on the breaks" (pruning the raising to ad infinitum part of the tree) at some point, and the only question is when to "slam on the (proverbial) breaks".

I'd say one raise on the flop, and if you meet any further resistance call down.

I think though if you are throwing out random numbers, you can think about the problem a little more clearly, and the range I gave is somewhat reasonable.

and then there was the idea of lawdude's "tilt insurance", which again, I think is just the "slamming on the breaks" I mentioned, which is intuitively done, but by no means should be done if it's "mathematically unjustified". Though he seemed to think it was a NL hand (?). It's better to take a break or quit. Taking a break is a very underrated financial and psychological move, as is quitting.

If you are looking for a poker book recommendation, there's no better starting point than The Theory of Poker by David Skalansky. It should be on the shelf of anyone aspiring to get good at this game, and Ed Miller's book on Small Stakes Hold'em as well, both terrific reads. This is already a lot of material, so read a couple chapters, play, review and repeat.

45 minutes is enough to make that much of a hypothesis, not a read.

45 minutes is only about 20-25 hands, even fewer if the table is very loose and/or players are slow to act.
Even maniacs go card dead.

+1

My assumption is that a older lady (if that was the villain) who hasn't played many hands since I sat down is tight and I'm probably adjusting in that direction. However, the whole >99% KK+ read is beyond the pale. You show me someone over a few hours who limped QQ and AKo and lectured the table on "not raising those speculative hands" and I'm still not 99% sure of anything. That's poetry.

We can guess ranges and frequencies. We can debate probabilities of given hands. We can look at the population the player comes out of, but we have this ~30 hand sample to confirm that read. Preflop AK of some flavor is 16 combos. KK+ is 12. It is more likely that the villain has AK than a better set. That's if the LRR range isn't wider, and we have big error bands on that.

If you don't want to go a bunch of bets with this read, OK. If you're making really strong statements beyond that, I think you're over-sure.

If your read is 99.9% of AA (and that isn't poetry), you snap fold the AK9 flop if she bets. If she checks to screwplay you, check behind and fold to any further action barring the 9-ball on the turn. The math is easy, >99.97% of the time you're drawing with incorrect odds to 1 out.

Poetry is like the brainstorming phase in figuring-out what your best range assignment will be. So you'll use a broad statement like "reasonably certain", and then flesh out what "reasonably certain" means in constructing a range. The reason why I'd use langauge like that is that people guided by experience have a set of things they are "reasonably certain" about, and can relate to without hard-core numbers with a consensus, and then get into the hard-core numbers. Poetry is a useful abstraction layer, but combining it with hard analysis confuses things more than anything else. If the question was modified to say, "reasonably certain after 30-45 minutes of play that my opponent's range is KK+" then that statement is far more economical in poker thinking.

Lesson in poker forum posting now learned. I should not have appeared to be as precise as the post made it seem.

I should learn to be less prickly, but I am a uniquely dense person who does not always realize a joke when in deep thought. So my head was going in circles for a bit. These are the two points I think you can take away:

1. Sample sizes and how they affect reads. Playing for a short period of time does not narrow the suspects very much. You kind've have to go off of what your long term experience is in your cardroom, and it will certainly vary from cardroom to cardroom as well.
2. Narrowing ranges as the hand goes along. Each bet narrows the suspects a little bit and you gain inference towards the holdings. So after the flop is bet there's a couple calls, you raise, and your opponent continues to three-bet, this information says he still has a hand that is a favourite over yours AND does not fear a re-raise. At this point you should be thinking about "putting on the breaks". You may be up against AK at this point, at best. And that's only 3 aces times 3 kings, so 9 combos. And also given the weights, if we add AKo to the suited broadways at 25%, that's really only 2.25 combos. Your opponent also has 3 ways to make AA, 3 ways to make KK. That's 6 total making 6:2.25 you're ahead against a rational opponent. So, at this point, re-raising is not worth considering. If your opponent is irrational enough to spew at this point, then you are going to pick-up chips from the opponent later in the game anyway while you learn about your opponent's spew tenancies. Remember, your opponent is also thinking about what you have when s/he raises.

Also, sorry if I was *prickly*, btw and I encourage you to post your hands and adventures.

OP's post was fine. He gave us enough information that we shouldn't have taken his laser read seriously. It's lawdude's posts that felt like they were coming from The Twilight Zone.