say you get J10s on the BB and (blinds .5-.10) early position raises to .30, guy in middle position calls and it's on you. How do you know if you are getting right odds to call this bet pre flop?

Only cost you 20cents more I'd call you have a decent connector hand.

Personally, if the conditions are right, I'd rather reraise that instead of just calling. You're in a good spot to squeeze and if you're called, you can still flop a monster. But I guess such a play would be a little bit too sophisticated for NL10, so yeah, I call might be fine as well.
Working with exact odds is still hard at that point. Unless you can give a very tight range to your opponents, you will have to find out later in the hand, if something like toppair if you flop it is good. So if you aren't confident in your postflop play (like e.g. you have a very tough time getting away from tpmk), you definitely have a reason to fold here, imo. You might have a strong drawing hand, but even those are really tough to play oop...

In this case you want both yourself and each of your opponents to have stacks of around 20x the bet you have to call. If you all have stacks of around 60bb (3bb x 20), then you can "speculate" with this hand. You call this pre-flop raise for a small amount of your stack (5%) looking to flop some kind of primary draw - Either an open ended straight draw or a flush draw.

Totally ignore the small discount you get for being in the BB. This is not limit hold'em, and the "discount" you get for being in the BB in no way makes up for the massave disadvantage of playing a drawing hand from out of position.

In fact, I would not tell someone, particularly a new player, that they were wrong for folding here. One of the worst habits you can get into is playing drawing hands in raised pots from out of position.

Now that said, things aren't really all that dismal for the BB either. It is true that you have the worst possible absolute position. However, you have good position relative to the pre-flop raiser.

In raised multi-way pots it's actually an advantage to be to the right of the preflop raiser.

Say the flop gives you some kind of primary draw. You check and the pre-flop raiser c-bets. Well, no surprise there. You expect the pre-flop raiser to bet after the flop. But now you get to see what the late position caller does before you have to commit any chips to the pot.

If he called the c-bet, then you can call and close the flop betting. If he comes over the top for a big raise, then you get to see that no one intends to let you draw cheaply. You get to muck your hand without actually suffering the negative effects of playing a drawing hand from OOP and it didn't cost you any extra chips.

But if the flop had come, say, 982 with two of your suite then now you've got a powerful combo draw what will fill by the river ~50% of the time. Because you have "relative position" on the pre-flop raiser you can check the flop, see the c-bet and when the action gets back to you then you put in a big check-raise.

Then you stand up and do the pot equity happy dance.

"Oh yeah. How to you like me now?"

Stack sizes.

Squeeze an early position raiser? MP, sure. He could be opening with all kinds of hands that can't stand a re-raise. But EP? If he has a clue at all then he's opening with JJ+ & AK and he'll just shove over a 3-bet.

That said, this is 10NL and we've all seen chumps open UTG with nearly ATC. That argues in favor of the squeeze. But 10NL chumps are also calling stations who will call a 3-bet with rags and catch some miricle flop.

IMO these are not the cards and this is not the situation to play for top pair. JT is too easily dominated, and being OOP in a multi-way pot means it will be very hard to control the pot size.

atleast a call..

Be careful when you type out questions. .5 is 50 cents, not 5 cents.

call to monster farm.


If IP call if villain plays bad postflop!

Stack size must first be considered. If you're not getting correct implied odds, this is an autofold.

Do not ignore stack size.

youre right.. I assumed villain and op had atleast 75bb minimum!

I don't really think of myself as a nit, but I always fold here without a specific read that I want to be in pots with one of these opponents. Flopping a draw (or worse, a weak pair) oop against two opponents is not my idea of a fun time. Somebody said "no matter what your opinion of position, chances are you undervalue it greatly".

I'd want deeper than 100bb stacks to think that implied odds made this tempting, and I really hate playing oop with deep stacks.

I certainly respect phydaux's opinion, and he could probably play this way profitably. It will certainly be a thin profit, though. ABC poker is recommended over and over for nanostakes, and I think the ABC move is to fold here.

there are a lot of situations where it's either easy to lose money or hard to make money oop with this hand, imo.

Like I said in my first post, a fold here is not wrong. Being OOP with a drawing hand sucks so damn hard, and flopping a weak top pair would often be costly because you wouldn't be able to ensure a cheap showdown.

And +1 to your quote on position. When you have position you will win more money on the hands you win, and you will lose less money on the hands you lose.

After several threads in the FR NL strategy forum, I'm coming to understand that I'm not nearly as tight as I always thought I was, and in fact I play a high variance style of poker. This was fine when I played with the chumps & spewtards at 25NL & under, but it's got me struggling at 50NL.

Assuming stack sizes are good like 80BB's+ and maybe a little less.....I'd call here all day. JTs is practically a premium.

I detect a trend...

I'm sure Lego can make money with the move, and you probably have to do this at tougher games where you can't just wait for opponents to throw money at you. I loved phydaux's post re: relative position, and will try to learn from it.

My only point is that somebody playing ABC at 10nl isn't giving up much value by folding, and must play well to be +EV at all. Personally, I lost a lot of money overplaying speculative hands without even realizing it until I checked PT stats.

Well you may not be losing too much folding this at 10NL.....and if you aren't going to really know how to play it post-flop than you probably shouldn't call it pre-flop.


But eventually this is a hand you should be able to play here. JTs really is a quite a good hand and you got 2 people in the pot and you have to call 2BB's....so with some good stack sizes and preferably one or both of the other players weren't so good than this can be a good spot even OOP.




And lol....I dunno about "baller". I'm just crushing 100NL and beating 200NL more marginally. I'm not sure about that being too baller without it possibly watering down the meaning of baller.