Poll time... Lets go ahead and make some assumptions and read, then based on your experience, assign her a range.


Villian - A Florida snow bird 70 year old grandma. She has been at the table for an hour, she has VPIP 75%. She has gone to showdown a fair amount, usually calling down with middle pair, or some other hilarity.

Earlier her only aggression was she check raised top two pair on the flop against me on one of her first hands. I shoved, she called, and we chopped the pot.

As I was coming back from the bathroom she table a JJ in a limped pot. She called a flop bet (I think with a K on board), and checked the rest of the way.

We are playing a loose 2/5 game.

UTG Opens for $15, it gets called in three spots,
Grandma ($400 in stack) launches to $115 from the SB..
We are next to act in the BB.

Where is she? What is your calling range? What is your shoving range?

She has dementia.

Depends on UTG. We can't ignore him.

Whenever I see players who are really loose passive 3bet preflop they inevitably turn QQ+

I would go as far to say that it is KK+ and maybe AK. You should be folding JJ, and strongly consider folding QQ here, and for sure fold AK here.

She has probably only KK+. She limped JJ, QQ is probably the same in her mind. Maybe give her 50% QQ. Old people consider AK a drawing hand, so they tend to play it more passively.

Calling range is empty.

Shoving range is AA. Only AA.

Yes, I would probably fold KK here


Unless granny is super shallow comparatively to UTG and us, yeah, we can ignore UTG because we're never getting money in good against both of them unless we have specifically AA

Her range is probably between KK+ and AK/QQ+, more likely at the tight end. If grandma's stack is typical of table then shove AA, possibly KK if you put her at the wide end and fold everything else. If the rest of the table is much deeper then I might have some set mining in my range but I would need more information about rest of villains and stack sizes first.

If I'm reading right, we've played with her for an hour, she's VPIP'ed 75% of the time, never raised (or 3-bet) pre-flop including when she had JJ and never raised post except when she flopped top two? I put her 3-betting range as AA, KK, and maybe QQ, plus some random stuff because people do weird things sometimes. I don't include AK, think she just calls with it. If I have AA I'm shoving, folding everything worse than KK, and thinking about KK but probably getting it in (which I admit is probably a mistake given my range for her).

QQ+, stop being mean to the elderly and vunrable in society.

I think my calling "range" here is exactly KK, but there's a case to be made for having an empty calling range and a 3! Of exactly AA

yep, we need more.

If UTG is tight, I have no calling range.

She has KK+ and maybe AKs. I have no calling range. I shove with KK+ and fold everything else.

Just because a villain is loose does not mean they have a lite 3! range. I feel like I say this all the time, but it's true.

+1

I don't understand how anyone thinks shoving here with KK is ever good. Even if she has AKs (a whopping 2 combos) in her range, we're a 68/32 dog.

This is a clear cut reciprocity case. Most players go broke here because "I hazzzz KK, can't ever fold for 80bb", yet we've seen grandma limp JJ. That huge information! If she's limping JJ, do you think she's going bananas and 3! with AKs? What about QQ? That really only leaves AA and KK. 6 of those hands we are destroyed by; 3 of those hands we chop with. We have zero dollars invested in the pot. Is this really that difficult? Don't be the player who goes broke where everyone else goes broke, your WR will improve dramatically

I would not dump KK against a villain I've played with for only an hour for 80BB. I strongly suspect KK+/AKs. Add a couple QQ combos and shoving is even. There is far too much uncertainty to fold KK. There are also four other players in the hand who might call with worse.

Yeah, stack sizes vs. the rest of the table matter as well.

vs. grandma I sigh shove KK for 80bb, based on the fact that 25 hands is not enough info to narrow her down to exactly KK+. I jam AA obviously. I fold every other hand, unless we are super deep vs. the table and I can very likely see a pot vs. someone else with premium pockets.

You think one of the 4 players remaining is calling a cold 4bet shove? That's slightly optimistic.

I'm not in the business of folding KK pre either, but we have a ton of information, most importantly how she played JJ. QQ is not much different.

I say we shove KK and flat with AA.

Why flat with AA? If we have aces, what can she have? And what can she have that would call a shove? But if she bets large and we flat, if she does have JJ or QQ in this scenario then she'll go broke post flop. And what if this is the time she decided to bluff?

And why shove KK? It's 80bb and we have seen her do some funky things. KK isn't as strong as AA so we aren't as thrilled to slowplay. QQ just seems like a muck along with AK.

We should give her some bluffs and maybe half QQ. If we have the bluff and some QQ, combined with us cracking AA 20 percent of the time, we should come out to about BE.

Nah, I'm just talking about vs. grammy at this stage, as I said what I do depends on stack sizes and table.

25 hands, one of which is JJ, does not tell us how she plays QQ or AK or AKss or whether she is subject to random moments of dementia or microstrokes leading to erratic raises with other non-KK+ hands. 80bb deep, I don't have enough info to lay down KK.

We have no information on the other four villains or their stack sizes. I think it is very possible someone at a 'loose' table will call with JJ+/AK, especially an UTG raiser. I've certainly seen worse call as well. I'm not saying its a huge possibility, but it must be considered.

I think we have to agree to disagree that we "have a ton of information". One hand with JJ (with no written hand history) is not enough to convince me she never has QQ, AK, or worse.

RESULTS - I folded AKo from the BB.

All else folded..

I convinced her to turn her hand over (Grandmothers love me).. She had QQ..

WEll played grammy, well played!!

Against a range of QQ+, AKs, KK is a 52% favorite.
Against a range of KK+, AKs, KK is a 32% dog.
Against a range of KK+, KK is a 23% dog (note that is only one combo of KK in this case).

We're not sure what her pre range is. Let's say it's 50% QQ+, and 25% each KK+ and KK+, AKs. So our weighted equity against her is about 45%. To shove, we'd need to be good 400/860 or 47%.

It's a mistake to assign someone a range on partial information and then use that range as an immutable input to the problem. That's roughly analogous to putting someone on one hand rather than a range of hands.

In this case, V has several possible ranges -- a range of ranges. We're pretty comfortable she has better than JJ (though even that's not 100.0%), so we're probably dealing with one of the three ranges above.

Saying she could do this with QQ and then assuming that's all combos of QQ are in her range is a mistake. Saying she could never do this with QQ is also a mistake. Insufficient information is available to make either determination.

It's reasonable to reduce the weightings of QQ in her range, or to simply take the weighted average of the ranges (my intuition says those aren't necessarily mathematically identical, but it's not central to this post whether they are or not).

Either way you do it, KK is behind her "range of ranges". We're either crushed by a really tight range (KK+, AKs) or flipping with a looser range (QQ+, AKs). We're getting some odds because there's already 60 in the pot so we need to be better than 400/860, but that's not helping much. I'm neglecting the small chance someone behind us has AA and the small chance someone behind us decides to call the shove with a hand we're beating.

If we call, we're basically putting it all in on the flop. If an A comes, we're down to 3 AA and 0 to 2 AKs vs. some number of QQ. We'll be getting basically the right odds to call even against only 2 or 3 QQ. If a Q comes, we should fold. Now, we're only ahead of AKs, which is a very small part of her range. If a K comes, we're obviously happy. On any other flop, we're basically in the same situation we are now with better odds and so we'll call.

I guess it's possible she's so passive we could call and then get to a showdown without her betting more unless we're beat. But that's a big read to take based on very limited information.

I shove AA and fold everything else, happy that I'm exploiting V's tendencies. If folding KK is a mistake here, it's a very small one.

Grandma has JJ or QQ