Hero ($600)
V (TAG $750 )

V Straddles UTG ($5)
MP calls
Hero JdJh Button calls
SB Folds
V raises to $15
MP Folds
Hero Raises $40
V raises $148

Hero ???

I figured he was a TAG and thought that I would get value from worse if he was going to set mine

Instead he 4b me to about 25% of my stack.

Open to ideas on whether this was a horrible play by me with a strong holding like JJ not raising on the button?

*bump* sorry to add a reply to my own thread but I figured it might catch some one's attention again if there was a reply to an original post that people saw which was obviously incomplete.

It is a weird one! I'm going to say how I'd play it first then look at what I think is happening as played.

You have huge stacks. 300bb deep is huge for me anyway. I suppose the straddle is making effective stacks only 120bb for this hand. However, you still have 300bb for bankroll purposes. Firstly I'd check what % of my BR this $600 is and make sure I'm not beyond 10% of BR on table. If I am > 10% I'm playing this hand cautiously and then cashing out.

Cautious approach is basically keeping the pot small and allowing position to work for us over multiple streets. If straddle is likely to raise I'd call the straddle and call the raise and then play poker postflop with high stack to pot ratio.

If I'm sat on a huge roll with way less than 10% on table and I have a reasonable read on villain I'll take a more aggro approach preflop. I'd raise the straddle and limp as if it were 2/5: I'd raise to at least $60 so I'm getting 10% of effective stacks in preflop with my big pair. Then, if utg calls SPR on flop is 540:128 = 4.2:1. That SPR allows us to get it in post flop over two or three bets, ideal for a large pair type hand.


As played:

The problem with your sneaky approach is V can think you are making a cheap bluff reraise and that's going to completely throw your read of his subsequent 4bet. Really with JJ you want to be able to eliminate QQ+ from V's range before feeling comfortable about stacking off. If you had raised first to $60 and then V came back with a $150 reraise you'd be putting QQ+ as a big part of his range. Now you aren't so sure how often he has QQ+ and how often he's levelled himself into rebluffing you with AX or total junk.

You took a strange line and confused both yourself and your opponent.

If you call the extra $108 you only stand to win 188+560=748 so you really can't call just to set mine. If you call you are going to be put to a decision for your stack on the flop and over half the time a Q, K or A will fall. If you have an overpair on the flop and V wants to get it in, how confident do you feel he's still bluffing?

It's a horrible situation.

Without a strong read this V is frequently going to interpret your weird line as a bluff I would fold to his reraise. If V is likely rebluffing then I'd click it back or shove.

Im only taking weird lines when I have a decent read on how V will respond to the weirdness.

Hope that helps. I haven't played deepstacked for a while so don't take what I've said as gospel. Hopefully some more replies will come in soon.

Hi, welcome to the forum. Please do not bump your own threads. If it isn't an interesting thread, you'll probably get one or two answers that everyone else agrees with and doesn't feel they need to add anything. In addition, it had been less than 1/2 hour since you created the thread. Give people some time to respond, like 24 hours.

As for the hand, why do you "figure" he is a TAG? The vast majority of villains at 1/2 aren't. If you've been at the table for very long at all, it should be obvious if he is a TAG or not (mostly raising, not calling, only playing about 2 hands per orbit).

The way to play JJ is to play it either as a big pair or a small pair. You managed to try to play it both ways. You called like a small pair then raised like a big pair. I'd stick to just one approach and go from there.

As played, a 4bet range with any unknown at 1/2 is comfortably well ahead of JJ. Easy fold.

Sorry about the bump, I had villain labeled as a TAG because there was several spots where he opened the pot but did not call a 3 bet. It always seemed he liked to be the aggressor in position, which I'm assuming is apart of his strategy. He would rarely 3 bet OOP but won plenty of pots being the aggressor post flop sometimes showing 2 overs after a C-bet.

This was actually one of the first situations I saw him make a 4 bet.

I may have been mistake labeling him as a TAG player with this information but he definitely did not limp in hands he saw flops with.

Sounds pretty TAG-ey. I think you're looking at a range of QQ-AA, AK at the widest, KK-AA is even a strong possibility.

I'll discount some QQ and AK and give him a range of:

QQ(2 combos, 18% equity), KK/AA(12, 18%), AK(8, 55%)

we have ~ 31.5% equity against that range. Deep stacked like this it would be a huge mistake to get it in.

Calling to see where you're at or any other reason is not a viable option.

This is a fold vs this player.

Why did you over-limp? That was really bad.

I think the dynamic is weird.

V raise to 15 after two limpers. That does not sound strong to me as well because rasing that small oop will only encourage limpers to call without narrowing limpers' range.

Hero over limp on BTN is very sneaky and very underrepped.

Hero's 3bet should be perceived by V as buttong clicking as nobody is over limping strong hands on BTN.

The large 4bet to me seems very suspicious button clicking.

Given the dynamics, I would call and play postflop cautiously.

Once you call the 4bet, V would be very careful postflop. Shoving here is bad as you are too deep and shoving would fold worse and gets better to call. You have position.



One last thing, do not try those sneaky move in low stakes poker. It totally complicates the scenarios and make yourself leveling. It can be very bad and tricky sometimes.

Limp-reraising with JJ makes little sense to me. You're not clearly raising for value as most worse hands will fold. Side note: do you think V is going to raise straddle with hands like 22-66? I think most Vs will check those hands. We get a little bit of value vs 77-TT that wants to setmine, and get 4b by AK,KK-AA. Opening/flatting a 3bet to setmine is the better play.

Re: your thought process. If your goal is to get value against lower pocket pairs, opening is far superior. When you limp-rr, you lose value against all the hands that would call an open but often check (think AJo, KQo, JT, QJ, plus 22-66). Your limp-rr isolates you against a tight, strong range consisting of a few hands we're way ahead of but will fold postflop (66-TT) and a large number of hands we're either crushed by, or flipping against (QQ-AA, AK, KQs, AQ).

Not sure I like the overlimp with JJ. I would save it more for hands like AA KK, 67suited etc. I really comes down to what villain is capable of.

I do like the fact that we have position, so I think I might end up calling to see the flop and his action. Not sure I am looking to stack off with out improving though. Really

I over limped with JJ simply to try and take control of the betting lead. I realize that it may be a leak, however I had thought that me limp raising the straddle's raise it would look like QQ+ so often.

Thinking that he would attempt to set mine for the wrong price against my reraise a lot of the time. When he raised his straddle I thought his range was A10s/o+, KQs/o, 22-AA, I even thought he could be raising with A2-5s. Since we were so deep I figured he would be calling a raise almost 100% of the time with this range of hands, unless he had me crushed. I thought I would be making him pay to play an inferior hand against me out of position, not to mention I thought that from his shoes the over limp play would look fairly strong.

As it turns out his 4b pretty much narrowed his range to QQ+ & AK from my point of view and it was a fairly easy decision after the bet of 148

I ended up folding and he flipped over AK.

I often thought that my hand would be under repped when I make a play like this but the general consensus on the thread seems to be that my hand looked fairly weak and bluffy.

Obviously in this spot I folded the best hand (although a race), however I thought that my play wasn't as bad because I thought he would range me with QQ+ when I limp the straddle and 3 bet his raise, in which case if he had AK he would just call to see a flop not 4 bet me off my hand.

I was not too upset about the way I played the hand however I do realize that if i had just raised on the button he would 3 bet with AK, I would call his 3bet, then Id be able to play the flop in position which is much easier to do than what I had tried to accomplish playing my JJ sneaky as if it were a stronger hand than it really was.

There's no need to do this with JJ, you're trashing it's value and turning it into a bluff. I think you just took a bit of an FPS line. Just keeping it standard would have been much better.

Worrying about what would have happened with his AK vs your JJ being in position had you played the hand differently is being results oriented. It's not about what his exact hand was, it's about his range and how you played against it vs how you should have played.

For example when you limp raise him, you are allowing him to narrow the wide range you gave his open into a value range and play perfectly against your exact hand.

I'm not sure why we constrict V's range to QQ+/AK. His $15 raise over 2 limpers in a straddle pot is lol small. The straddle causes lots of people to spazz and Hero's line looks really spazzy. I wouldn't eliminate aggro-tard spew from V's range.

Hand I saw the other day:
Straddle, 3 limpers, Straddle raises to $15, call, call, button $45, straddle calls, fold, fold
Flop goes check, shove for like $80, straddle calls and his unimproved 55 is good

Straddles cause spew for sure.

did I play my JJ in a spazzy way or tried to get too cute preflop with a strong hand that was well ahead of his straddle range of any random 2 cards?

I guess following that question would be in a similar scenario if I'm raising on the button what should be my cut off range for opening a straddled pot with a limp in MP, I know it is a very broad question and obviously it's situational but with value hands and as for positional hands what should be my opening bet size and card holdings?

Treat the straddle as increasing the blinds for that hand. Reassess your stack vis a vis the new "blinds structure" and play accordingly. Raises should be bigger with a tighter range (like you are shorter stacked) and your limping range should be adjusted for the new relative stack size. I.e. you can't limp as wide vs the straddle because you have relatively less stack behind compared to the price of the lmp.

You didn't play JJ in a spazzy way. You just took a sneaky line with a hand that actually likes clarity. Your sneakyness lead to a lack of clarity which meant you didn't now where you were at after V's 4bet.

In actual fact V started the sneaking by raising so small with his AK. Therefore it was doubly confusing! If V saw your hand he probably wouldn't have raised so big for fear you couldn't fold. He likely thought you were making a move on him with a speculative hand in response to his small raise.

Attack limpers. Your button over limping range should be very close to nothing.

TAGs very rarely straddle UTG, so that seems unlikely.

As everyone else said I hate the limp/RR, but after he raises you back, he is representing real strength.

If he has a fold button, and a wider range here, I would think about clicking it back.

But folding yourself is not a mistake here.