Hi everyone,

I realized that I keep finding myself in spots pre-flop where I'm not sure whether I'm getting the right price to call with marginal hands.

Here is an example from a $1/$3 NL game:

Hero is in the cutoff with 6s7s

Folds to HJ, who limps. Hero opens to $15. Folds to BB who goes all-in for $75. HJ cold calls $75.

Effective stack between the HJ and hero is $400. Hero is getting slightly less than 3:1 ($165:$60). Hero folds.

Should I be calling in these spots? When people refer to getting priced in, what type of odds are we looking for?

Thanks in advance.

Although it isn't your main question, one of the reasons I now think preflop is likely more an overlimp than a raise is due to shortstacks like the BB putting us in dumb non-profitable spots.

My take on this spot:

If we had no more money behind, it might be close to a poor sigh call. We'd only need 27% equity breakeven (although admittedly I haven't factored in the rake/BBJ drop which will require us to have more). You'd have to stove some examples, but against two sets of overcards or AK and an underpair / etc. we're easily getting that, although mix in an overpair and we're not getting that. My guess is that it's probably borderline poor, but you'd have to stove some reasonable ranges.

But the fact that we still have money behind probably makes this more even more of a fold (which isn't completely obvious since having money behind does mean some IO). But the fact is that we're just so unlikely to be able to get to the river to realize our equity, and have very little behind (in what will be a lol 1.5 pot) which will make it not worthwhile drawing to most draws on the flop (and very rarely flopping well enough where we can comfortably play for the rest right away).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Set some assumptions for villain's ranges in the hand.

Then do the math to see if you're getting odds comparing it to your raw equity vs that range.

Then do an estimation of how likely it is that you will come close to realizing that equity. This depends on the tendency of the other villain. Like how aggro/passive straightforward are they?

Generally if your raw equity is kind of close to the odds you are given and there's more action to play out and your hand is not that strong and or doesn't play well post flop, best to dump it especially if you have an aggressive villain and you are OOP.

Based on HJ's actions of limping then cold calling a 3 bet all in from the BB he seems loose passive. 76s in position should do ok vs this type of villain.
His range is going to be a lot of pp, suited Ax and suited broadways and some SCs.

I haven't bothered to do the math to see if you got the right odds, but those are some things to think about. In this case since villain seems passive and you have position, if you are getting the odds to call it seems ok to continue.

You play suited connectors to win stacks. Your target is usually the preflop aggressor. In this case the aggressor is too short to warrant calling. The player behind is also too short to warrant calling with the implied odds of felting him, not to mention he's probably not going to pay off with anything less than whatever the board completes meaning you could be drawing dead. This is a fold.

your best option pre is to fold. over limping is second best. raising to $10 is third, raising to $15 is fourth. clear fold now, this is not a hand where you want to put tons of money in pre. you mostly want to use it to establish an aggressive attacking image by making steal raises from the button and CO, but you can't try to steal the blinds when there are already limpers and your hand is not strong enough to iso (something like QJs would be fine, assuming a very loose limper).