I am torn between two strategies with the following hand. Should I be raising to build the pot/take it down on the flop, or should I just call to build the pot by keeping weaker ranges in the hand? It’s a 1/2 game with extremely loose players and this is a rare instance where it folds to me in the CO (because the worst player at the table, on my right, is busy buying back in for the third or fourth time).

Hero about $350 deep, other players in hand $200-300 deep.
Hero in CO with Ac9c opens to $10 and gets called by BTN, SB, and BB.

Flop: red 9, 8c, 2c. SB checks, BB leads out for $20. From watching him up to this point, he would do this with any weak pair. I thought about raising, but decided to call and see if I could keep the BTN and SB in the hand to build the pot assuming they would have a lot of 9x, 8x, straight draws, and weaker flush draws that would call. BTN and SB both call.

Turn: off suit J. SB checks, BB bets $40. This bet confused me at the time as the BB usually did not go for two streets when called on his weak leads. I decided to call. BTN and SB both call.

River: 8x. It checks around. I was confused by BB’s turn bet (based upon watching his previous play) and didn’t think I would get called by worse or fold out better. BB started muttering about his hand being counterfeit and turned over J2o for the win.

A little more about me might help. This hand happened during my first live session. I started playing during Covid initially out of boredom. I was getting crushed and started studying. I really enjoy the challenge and strategy of this game. I now do OK on Pokerbros. I’m not, and never will be, a crusher. This is a hobby that I really enjoy and I want to continue learning, but I have a career, wife, and 3 children, so it will never be more than a hobby for me.

As for “should I raise to take it down on the flop”, Ed Miller makes the point that your cards only matter at showdown. If you’re raising to take it down (but probably behind when called), you might as well have two napkins and you’ve wasted the showdown value of a medium strength hand.

You should raise for fat value. It’s unlikely that you don’t have the best hand, and you have tons of equity against anything. And you should be fine to get all of the money in.

I’d raise to like 70-80 here


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Yeah, to make it clear, I’m not saying you shouldn’t raise here, just that in general the idea of raising to take it down with a weak made hand isn’t great. With the flush draw it’s fine.

It’s actually not as horrible as we used to think. Raising top pair marginal kicker with significant cash to play for used to be considered a fish move, but solvers will do it a fair amount. Usually not in MW pots, but I can definitely see a solver raising A9 even without the FD in this scenario (and if it doesn’t, it’s because it’s assuming BB has a much tighter range than what we’d see in a live poker scenario, so it still could be quite good to raise here).

In all honesty, the only reason why I wouldn’t prefer raising this hand to an overpair is because bad live players can still have TT-QQ and play it this way, since the primary hand i’d expect to see if TPTK or an overpair is beat is 98.


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