JJ UTG - What Does Hero Want to Do?

It’s a pleasant Sunday afternoon at the Commerce Casino when Hero first encounters Noobie. He’s a personable 20-something tattooed Asian guy who seems to be playing casino poker for the first time. He wears a simple clean white T-shirt and jeans, apparently well-stocked with benjamins, and sits down at the $100 buy-in, 2-3 blinds, and proceeds to lose a buyin (or more) per orbit for 60 minutes. He never folds, calls any raise under $30, and checks out of turn on the river when he “misses” – although he often calls it down anyhow even though he has already revealed the meager nature of his ATC holdings. He doesn’t know what it means to “chop”.

He also doesn’t know enough to value bet our aggressive Hero with AQ on an A95 board, when he hits his two-outer on the river, when his J5o becomes three fives. But (so it is said) that is “variance” for you. Well, for our Hero anyhow, why does variance seem to only happen to our Hero? But I digress.

Noobie soon decides that his burn rate at the hundred game is inappropriate, and so he asks the floor to wait list him on the $200 (blinds there are 3-5). Well, not really, he expects to be seated immediate, and someone explains to him how the board works, and that when a seat opens and it’s his turn, they will call him. Is this an act? After 6 or 7 benjamin’s our Hero is convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that it is not an act, and tokes two runners to be sure that Hero is also on the board for the $200, and that Hero gets a seat at Noobie’s table.

Within ten minutes Noobie still has money and we both wind up at a table that looks like this when the hand of interest occurs:

Seat 1 is our Hero ($400). Noobie can’t even see our Hero from his location at Seat 8, since Hero is behind the dealer from his perspective, but Noobie is entirely oblivious to the fact that Hero has chased him down to play in his game. Hero has $400, having just doubled up by snapping off a river bluff from Seat 2, undertaken when Seat 9 goes out of his way to indicate out of turn to Seat 2 that Seat 9 is folding the river no matter what. (Seat 2 was visibly upset at this, throwing his cards at Seat 9 (yes, they had to pass in front of the dealer… but I digress again.)

Seat 2 is “Samurai”, an older Japanese regular who uttered nary a word during the entire time Hero had the pleasure of his company (and of his chips .. but I digress). His stack has somewhat diminished as a result of the attempted collusion, $300.

Seat 3 is “Junior Ninja”, a 25-30 year old pleasant Asian guy who is willing to splash around a little. Or a lot, once he and the rest of the table realize Noobie is truly a noob. Remarkable how everyone opens up trying to isolate Noobie whenever they get anything remotely playable, 3-betting a little wide just in case that does the isolation trick. Noobie is kind of like a gravitational black hole, attracting money in multiple dimensions, the theory of relativity of opening and raising hands and ranges being temporarily repealed… but I digress. Junior has $400 and is having fun with Hero’s end of the table rolling his eyes and shaking his head as Noobie continues his virgin session.

Seat 4 is “Senior Ninja” although he is probably no more than 3-5 years older than Junior Ninja. He has $800 and an attitude about having the biggest … cards… and wanting to be Table Captain. He is leading in the polls for that office.

Seat 5 ($350) is a Reg who does not figure into the story. He is trying to play TAG but so far has succeeded only in the “T” department. VPIP is barely registering.

Seat 6 ($450) is the Clone of Seat 5 in every way. In his head he is virtually certain to be saying something like “This is the best game I ever watched.”

Seat 7 ($300) has the button for this hand. Otherwise he might as well not be there.

Seat 8 ($275) is Noobie in the small blind. The entire table is silently pleading with the poker gods that they be granted something – anything – playable. Noobie has $275 instead of a fresh buyin because he managed to suck out on someone the previous hand. No matter, it will be in the middle soon enough.

Seat 9 ($500) is Colluder in the big blind. Hero relishes being behind him eight out of every nine hands, intending to pressure his big blind despite the strategically wild Ninja’s behind.

Action is now on Hero, and Hero wakes up with JJ. It appears (from the “dance of the hands and chips” that the two Ninjas seem to frequently perform prior to participating) that there is going to be some action in this hand, so Hero flats the JJ to await further developments. The aforementioned developments are not long in coming.

Samurai folds.

Junior Ninja, sneaking a peak at Noobie once or twice (no doubt trying to telepathically induce Noobie to call) makes it forty five to go. As Spock might say in this circumstance, fascinating. Hero analytically thinks to himself “WTF? “ A brief moment of calculation passes, and Hero tentatively eliminates from Junior Ninja’s range the following: No 22-66; no KK-AA; would he put in more than 10% of his stack from early position with small suited connectors? Probably not. Large or really large suited connectors? Maybe. Hold that thought.

Senior Ninja, already reaching for raising chips, stops a moment and reconsiders. Soon he reaches a decision and it is now $120 to go. He still has Mount Whitney worth of chips behind but since Hero has only $395 left now, it hardly matters in the cosmic scheme of things. Another brief moment of calculation passes, and Hero tentatively assigns the following range to Senior Ninja: TT+;AQ+; AJs+; and Hero cannot possibly thing of anything else Senior has that would induce him to make it $120 with the remainder of the table behind him.

One thing seems possible although unlikely - are the two Ninjas collectively actually not that anxious to have Noobie in this hand after all? Fascinating.

And before you can say “three bet in middle position" it is folded around to Hero and his JJ, whose luster and purity are now being assessed as he decides whether or not to battle the two Ninjas.

What, pray tell, would you recommend that here do in this spot?

Fold. No reason to make this complicated.


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What's sr's 3b%?

If he's 3betting 2 or 3 times an hour I shove.

JK, actually I liked that wall of text. I´m sure you tried hard

you really seem to go deep into your villains, and you even assigned them a range, so go with it imo since this is such a read based spots, and how can we tell whether your reads are off or not?

Assume (for now) that V1 always folds.

Now assume (for now) that V2 will only call QQ+ AK (34 combos)

You have 36.19% equity against this range which means when you shove $400 and are called you lose $91.

Some % of the time, when V2 has a hand he will fold, you win $160 outright.

The breakeven point of shoving would be (1-x)*-94 + x*160 = 0

x = .37. So for shoving to be profitable V should be folding at least 37% of the time. If he is calling with 34 combos that means he needs to be raising 54 combos (so folding 20).

Will he 3b AQ and TT? If so, there you go. And any other hands are just added profit. (Note, if he calls these hands, your equity jumps to 46.82% and now your shove costs you only $5, assuming the worst case that there are zero hands he is 3b/folding, which is probably not true)

You can tweak it from there but it should be clear that if there is any chance v2 is 3betting remotely loosely a shove will be profitable.

Using your live reads and analysis of players, especially catching "junior" looking to Noob before he raises suggests to me that he has a strong range. "Senior" then 3! which only means 2 things, he wants to give Noob a bigger reason to splash (assuming table is licking their chops as much as you say) or he is trying to isolate "junior". Either way you have under repped your hand which only makes it a tougher spot IMO.

AP it's either muck or ship. Flop will be hard to figure no matter what flops (outside of a J high flop). Due to the fact I am not a ship and pray type of player, and it's JJ, I would muck.

It is interesting though how one nut job can change the dynamic of the table to so much.

Using your live reads and analysis of players, especially catching "junior" looking to Noob before he raises suggests to me that he has a strong range. "Senior" then 3! which only means 2 things, he wants to give Noob a bigger reason to splash (assuming table is licking their chops as much as you say) or he is trying to isolate "junior". Either way you have under repped your hand which only makes it a tougher spot IMO.

AP it's either muck or ship. Flop will be hard to figure no matter what flops (outside of a J high flop). Due to the fact I am not a ship and pray type of player, and it's JJ, I would muck.

It is interesting though how one nut job can change the dynamic of the table to so much.

Thanks for all the replies so far.

Sorry about the wall of text but most of it (except the digressions) is relevant.

In a couple of days I will tell "the rest of the story".

Nicely told story, I enjoyed reading it. However, things didn't work anywhere near "the plan". I don't like JJ OOP against decent opponents that 3-bet and stacks are not deep.

Fold (which is what I think you did and you saw that you would have spiked a set).

As the $120 tidal wave of folds approached the shores of Seat 1, the following thought offered by one of the posters did, in fact, come to mind:

>>> Due to the fact I am not a ship and pray type of player, and it's JJ, I would muck. >>>

And so I cheerfully consigned my JJ to the dustbin of history, to be forgotten except for this thread.

And there they were, Ninja Junior followed by Ninja Senior, heads up to the flop of 8-7-2 rainbow. Check Check and nothing was heard but the sound of one hand clapping.

Turn brings a K to complete the rainbow. Crickets.

River brings a Q. Check check again.

Junior tables 9-9.

Senior tables 10-10.

Hero, still believing that the right play was to fold JJ out of position in the face of the $120 three-bet, could only marvel at the sense of humor possessed by the poker gods, that both Junior and Senior were BOTH pretty much at the bottom of their respective ranges.

Could someone else have found a shove for $395 pre flop?

Perhaps.

But only better calls $395 here.

Not AK or AQ.

Or so Hero prefers to believe.

If senior will 3b TT+ AQ+ and fold all but QQ+, shoving is actually $33 +EV (well, naively ignoring junior at least, but if you're right about your read that he doesn't have qq+ with this sizing...)

It should be self-evident that if you are laying your opponent 2:1, you want him to fold a hand with 45% equity.

See, just like I said, you need to ship it and pray!

IMO this is just one of those weird hands that you can't really file away for use later because it may never come up again.

On the other hand, if you had raised the JJ instead of limping the rest of the hand would have more than likely played out much differently... I think...maybe?

So, they both were just happy checking the hand down huh? I guess since Noob didn't join they lost their luster.

Right you are, of course.

Both with regards to wanting a fold and the slightly positive EV.

Call me timid but as played, I was reluctant to "flip" a $400 stack with the ranges of one or both Ninjas when the Promised Land of "Wait for a Better Spot" was right there before me.

Although I did almost the same thing the week before. $300 effective stacks and QQ in position behind two middle position regs who made it $30 and $90 to go respectively. Hero shoved, each reg tanked, and reluctantly folded. But that game didn't have anyone like Noob in it!

So such a spot, while not "garden variety common", occurs enough that it's worth studying. Thanks for the analysis. All I gotta do now is resolve to treat JJ like QQ if it happens to me again, because if you picked two players at random, the reads wouldn't be a whole lot "narrower range" and might well be "wider range".

Sometimes, you can do everything perfectly, ... and lose.

Sometimes, you can do everything wrong, ... and win BIG!

Neither changes what wining poker is.

Super easy fold......since the guy who you were bumhunting isn't involved in the hand, you could have omitted that part of the story. Just saying.