I'm pretty sure I was talking about it in general, and accusing me of doing otherwise is a pretty disrespectful way of disagreeing.

First of all, I've seen people limp with all kinds of hands, both good and bad. Is it strange? Maybe a little, but we shouldn't be blown away by it. I agree that we need to look at this from the CO's point of view, but disagree as to what it is. CO has 17k, we have 11k. If we stick in a 5x or 6x raise, the CO will see a medium sized stack, raising about 1/4 his stack, an amount that basically screams "I am ready to put all my chips in the pot," oop, into a stack that has him covered. I would imagine that the CO would be rather wary of losing 2/3 of his stack with 44 (or a similar hand), this close to the money, particularly after the BB shows so much strength.

As I said before, this is not a problem. In fact, I see this as pretty much the best case scenario, because it means that the CO doesn't have a hand he is willing to go with preflop. If he did, he certainly would have shoved it after we almost pot commit ourselves with a raise. If the villain has showed a propensity to flat call raises, then I think a moderate sized raise is probably best, given our stack sizes.

When I get 99 in the BB facing a limper, do I expect it to be the best hand? Yes. Do I raise? It depends. If we had 40 bb, I would probably raise. If we had 20 bb, I could be talked into shoving or raising. 30 bb is different. If we get played back at with 99 on a 30 bb stack, I don't see there being much chance of it being good, mainly because any reraise the villain makes commits him to calling our shove. The more we raise, the more we commit ourselves, and the more certain we can be that we're beat if we get action. This correlation, arising out of our stack size, is what I feel makes raising a bad choice: the raise will almost certainly fail to extract value, because we only get action when we're beat. If that's the case, it seems like a real waste of 99.

Here I'm basically repeating myself, but I think the EV of these two actions is virtually equivalent, because of the stack sizes of the two players.

pageup...If I don't raise pre I think I have a hard time getting away on this flop...also I don't usually give to much credit to randoms...a lot will limp call or limp push with small pp just putting you on overs...As blinds get high there is so much more contention for each pot and I think if we start limp folding 99 we will hve a hard time chipping up or even keeping up with the field and the blinds

Yup, I go broke on that flop too. And that sucks, but I don't think that takes away the merits of checking. Yeah, we're going to be check folding a lot of flops, or leading and folding to a raise, or leading and not folding to a raise (depending on the flop), but oh well. 99 is a decent hand, but it's not one I particularly like staking my tournament life on with 30 bb and other options.

My point is simply this, yeah, you're ahead of 90% of the villain's limping range, but of that 90% pretty much all of it folds to both a shove and a smaller raise. That being the case, having 99 when you raise or shove is pretty irrelevant, and, in fact, it may be better to have a weaker hand like 76s that plays better against those hands from which you will get action, while folding more hands that have it beat. In this case, because of the relative strength of 99, neither raising nor shoving maximizes the value of 99 as much as checking.

yeah this is why against unknowns and the way he played i'm thinking its a cooler.

fair points page...I guess another part of it was that the table was pretty agressive and I had been card dead for a while so I wanted to play my 99 strong for better or worse

but u didnt so u gave it more credit then it deserves.

If this was raised up by hero to 3x-4xBB p/f and we're limp/3bet by villain, how many people are able to get away from that flop if we coldcall villain's 3bet and go setmining?

When all else fails, berate villain for limping in c/o with queens ftw.

[QUOTE=PageUp;3779336]I'm pretty sure I was talking about it in general, and accusing me of doing otherwise is a pretty disrespectful way of disagreeing.

You're right I'm sorry for that. Didn't mean to be offensive. I just can't believe anyone would put a regular player on 10+ there without knowing how this hand turned out. But maybe you're just way better than me (that's not an ironic statement).

i think some of you guys have great ideas about the gameplay of the hand. but there is one concept that just occurred to me. if you got all your chips in preflop in this situation, you would be getting something like a 19 % / 81 %. but if you call a raise or reraise preflop, and then get the majority of your chips in on the flop ( > 50% ), you are getting these postflop chips in at something like 8 % / 91 %. it seems like if this mistake were to be made, he made it at the right time.

I don't agree with pushing pre. You're in a comfortable enough position to not have to risk your whole stack on this hand. Regardless of that, its difficult to see any way you're not going to lose a lot of chips here, especially after that flop.

Most people would raise 9's with one limper. Question is, how many people at this level would be good enough to drop their hand when the inevitable re-raise follows? I'm not sure I would be.