Quote:
Originally Posted by Colombo
I'm very surprised to see these responses to saying fold pre, especially the first time around. IMO this hand is a clear open, and a standard (but not loving it) call to the small 3bet sizing. The fact some LLSNL posters who I have high respect for are advocating fold twice is shocking to me. I'm still always opening this, but the discussion about folding to the 3bet and the RIO of 98s is very interesting. Looks like this could be a leak in my game!
As far as the flop goes, I like just calling here. I also like just calling with my sets since those don't need a ton of protection. That being said, I'd probably raise my sets sometimes. I think we can balance it out by raising QJs with the backdoor flush draws and that should be enough. I like QJs as a raise because it blocks QQ and JJ combos that we don't want villain to continue with. Also having a BDFD gives us a little more equity while also discouraging villain to continue with AKs hands with a BDFD.
The RFI with 98s is close exploitative wise but folding to the 3bet (theory wise and especially exploitative wise vs the average live 2/5 3bet range) is a clear fold imo.
Theory wise, in a 500z rake structure 98s is like a ~5-10% open from LJ (depending on your raise sizing, and it is the bottom of your opening range along with the other mixes). In a live 2/5 rake structure (which is significantly higher than 500z) and opening to a 4x sizing (which should tighten our range compared to a smaller sizing) 98s is a pure fold.
Now, exploitatively, live 2/5 tends to be under 3bet and over called preflop; people who should be mainly 3betting or folding are mostly cold calling and sometimes with garbage ranges. This generally leads to us opening wider ranges profitably as we don't get punished by 3bets because they don't happen as often. Also, live 2/5 tends to have players who often make major postflop mistakes (especially in multiway pots) and that definitely adds further EV to our RFIs (assuming we exploitatively take advantage of that). However, specifically 98s doesn't actually play very well multiway; and we aren't even pushing an equity advantage vs the loose wise calling ranges. Additionally, we don't benefit from the minuscule "board coverage" aspects of 98s because exploitatively people aren't even factoring that in to their strategy; we don't have to have these types of hands in our range because our opponents aren't punishing us for not having them.
So overall I'm not sure which exploitative factors outweigh the others when it comes to opening specifically 98s; we would much rather extend our range to include all suited Ax, more suited Kx like K5s-K7s, all 54s, 65s, 67s, 78s, before we start including 98s. The exploitative RFI decision is close, and when a exploitative decision is close, I tend to go with the theory. I will say there are definitely table conditions where I would open this from the LJ and in an unraked live 2/5 game I'd pure open it.
A lot of words on the discussion of a single hand RFI hah
EDIT: for postflop decisions I was wrong. 98s is not a fine x/r at low frequency; it's a pure call. Also if we did x/r it on the flop, it's a pure check on the turn. So yea OP this is a pure punt; you played every single decision point incorrectly.
Last edited by Jarretman; 12-31-2019 at 08:47 PM.