Hi all,

Over the last 150 hours of play, I've been getting the vast majority (probably 2/3) of my big pocket pairs in EP, so the poker gods must have decreed that I gain experience in these spots. It's easier with the strong ones and high equity, but last night and the night before I had two similar experiences with mid pocket pairs where the best decision was not obvious to me. These are higher variance situations that I've never really thought out before.

Stakes are 1/2.

Scenario 1: Hero ($225) is UTG with TT and raises to $15. V1 and V2 in UTG+1 and UTG+2 (both rec donkeys, loose and willing to call down with weak draws, stacks $150 and $200) flat. SB (weak rec player but better than V1 and V2) shoves short-stack of about $70. I folded here, as I wasn't sure what V1 and V2 would do and might have to beat them both (granted, against a wide range). Player to my right was a strong 2/5 player who told me I should have shoved since V1 and V2 displayed weakness by flatting and SB also had a wide range.

Scenario 2: Effective stacks are $250. Hero is UTG with JJ and raises to $15. V1 in UTG+1 (young, looking for big hands, calls too much pre) flats. V2 in MP (older nit) flats. BB (tight, disciplined, ABC player who plays face up and kept expressing his annoyance that no one was paying him off at this tight table) pops to $45. Here I probably did the worst thing and flatted. UTG+1 reraised to $200. MP folded. BB hemmed and hawed and folded. Then I did the next worst thing and shoved, not expecting a fold obviously. I did so because I put V1 on AK, TT, JJ, and QQ. He showed AA. BB folded QQ, MP folded KK.

Any advice here? I think the way V1 played AA was unwise. The 2/5 player noted flatting is weakness, and yet AA shows up here.

Thanks in advance.

I'd isolate jam the first one and definitely fold the second to the backraise, which is really easy given you've posted results

Thanks for the replay. Should I not be posting results right away? I've noticed they don't do that in the LLSNL forum.

When doing a hand history, you will get much better answers if you stop the hand at the critical moment. So yes, almost never should an OP (original post) contain the results.

Sometimes the critical moment is preflop. In which case you can use PAHWM in the thread title. Play A Hand With Me usually turns into an excellent discussion. Wait for PF discussion to wane before giving full PF results...then post the flop and any action up to you. Follow that format for each street of interest.

Just don't start such a thread and abandon it.

edit: an example: PAHWM TT UTG vs. donkeys

Hand 1: I agree with the 2/5 player. Jam. Most likely holdings of ss are AK AQ wanting to see all five cards with unmade hands. I’m never folding TT+ for $70. But you need to get the other callers out of the hand to maximize your equity. Between the two of them they may have two overs (e.g., JT/K9/A8).

Hand 2: easy fold when tight abc player—in BB—3! and then suddenly flatter possibly aware of three-bettors image and position 4! anyway. JJ shrivel up facing this much action preflop. Unlike the TT example, I will snap fold TT/JJ—even QQ against certain players—to a $200 4!. Your range of V (JJ QQ AK) is way off, and even against that range you are in terrible shape. Typical 1/2 and 1/3 players don’t make it $200 with less than KK AA.

Also, your post calls JJ TT “big” pocket pairs. They’re actually better considered mid pp. Typically QQ+ are considered big pairs.

Hand 1 is dependent on your opponent's range. You say he has a wide range. If true, shoving is probably correct. If he is a loose-passive player, he could be the sort of player who calls too much but still only calls the raise here with hands like 99 and AK and only shoves with the same range that a tight nit shoves with.

In hand 2, I sometimes play AA the way V1 did, so I would not call it unwise. It is a gambit known as "second hand low".

What is "second hand low"? I couldn't find much about it.

My issue with V1 having AA is that he's in UTG+1 and flats. The way these games typically go, there is rarely a re-raise preflop that reopens the action and a decent proportion of pots go 4-way to the flop even with a $15 raise. I suppose if you're confident in your postflop skills and have no problem getting into a situation where you are more likely to have to throw away the hand in return for a bigger pot, flatting is a good idea. Not sure I'm there myself yet.

Flatting an EP open raise w/AA expecting a LAG behind you to 3-bet so you can jam over the top. Old-time, Doyle term.

Thanks, Kurn

This gambit works best if the opener is known to be aggressive, and you have a strong, aggressive player behind you. By flatting, you are making a squeeze play very attractive.

Be careful with this gambit though. If you have stationy players behind you, you might get multiple flats, and a squeeze becomes too expensive. All of a sudden you are playing AA OOP against multiple, wide players.

Second hand low refers to flatting the original raise and then coming over the top of the three bet (four betting), it doesn't have to be with AA.

If open raising 7.5X will get so many callers wanting to gamble, maybe consider raising smaller, like 5x. The extra money you put in is not having the desired effect. Imagine there is an invisible straddle and the stakes are just higher than 1/2. Mix in some good drawing hands into your EP opening range. These pots are going to be multi-way and there is nothing you can do about it from EP.

They are playing ‘draw out on you’. So you can respond with a range that plays draws well.

WRT middle pairs, I would just open 88-JJ to 3X and mix in 89s-JTs for balance. You are set mining with the pairs and nut mining with the connectors.

What the heck is this?

"We're making a large raise and getting multiple callers that are happy to pay that price to continue in the hand. Ergo, we should raise smaller"

If I were in a live game UTG and all my big pairs were getting called by a bunch of players with speculative hands when I raise big, I would raise larger. And if it keeps happening, larger. And larger....

Hand 1 we get a really good price, $55 into a $115 pot. Folding seems like a big mistake unless SB is a nit. Shoving to get the other two guys fold a bunch of equity seems like the best option.

Hand 2 we really don’t want to stack off after showing lots of strength from UTG just to see UTG+1 show even more strength.

I think I understand where Robert_utk is coming from. He's a GTO-style player, which I ultimately aspire to get into. From what I understand, the style is built around balance. In Doug Polk's videos, he constantly talks about range construction and what to balance each play with. I think Robert plays many more hands (thus smaller preflop raises), has strong postflop skills and pays close attention to balancing his ranges.

I say "ultimately" because I think this style is best employed against better players. The exploitative play is as outfit says to bet bigger.

To be clear about hand 2: 75% of the time my $15 raises were taking down the pot pre. (My UTG opening range at this tight table was ATs+, KQs, AK, 99+.) The rest of the time, I got between 1 and 3 callers. Reraises were extremely uncommon. Looking back, the backraise was clearly AA, maybe KK. I haven't been playing long but I can't recall more than one possibly two times a backraise was a bald-faced bluff. Not just in 1/2 but also 16NL Pokerstars. I think I was blind to it because the play usually starts with a limp, not a call. Again, at this table I think the call was a bad play because there was no guarantee anyone would reraise. There were no aggressive players here.