Hero wakes up with KcKh7c4h in MP with a half kill on. Game is $4/$8 LO8- structure is now $6/$12.

UTG & UTG+1 limp, Hero limps, LJ, HJ, and Button all limp, SB raises BB’s kill, we all call. 8 ways $12 each to see a flop of Ks Ts 5c.

Pot: $96 -$5 rake = $91

I thought several things on the flop:
1) calling flop to raise safe turn cards
2) getting equity now and shovel as much $$$ as I can.

Pot:$139

I of course go with the former. SB bets and well all call and see the 6d on the turn.

Board now reads Ks Ts 5c 6d: SB bets, BB calls, UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, Hero raises, LJ, HJ both fold, button calls, SB calls, BB calls, and both UTG call.

Pot:$283
River: 4c

SB checks, BB checks, both UTGs check, and I check to button who bets. SB hesitates and raises, folds to me who shrug calls, button calls.

Pot:$355

SB was a solid reg, wasn’t getting out of hand, but the CR threw me for a loop. He was pretty straight forward and would have just bet if he got there into 8 players. Why CR?

Button is pretty loose. Foreign male in his 50-60’s. Could have anything from 2pr+ nut low or some other combo. He is the type that will berate you for raising or isolating others out of a pot.

Only real thing I could have done was either raise myself pre or limp 3! to sort of “pump and dump” as my Stones announcers call it.

I guess I could have folded river, but with a lot of $ in there, I don’t see how I get away from it. Any and all thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you!


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You're a light sleeper.

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No idea what you mean by this.


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Raise pre and raise flop, as played whether to call or fold river is somewhat villain dependent

If you were first into the pot, I would definitely raise. With two limpers behind you, I don't love any of your options, so I suppose a limp is fine.

You should absolutely raise the flop though.

The rationale for raising on the flop is that you have a better chance of folding out backdoor flush draws, backdoor straight draws, and backdoor low draws.

By the time you get to the turn, the low draw is there, many different straight draws are there, and the pot is bloated. So it's much harder to get hands like 234x, 347x, 789x or any A2 or A3 to fold—even to a raise—whereas all of these hands essentially whiffed the flop (unless they included a flush draw), and you might have gotten at least some of them to fold then.

By the time you get to the river, you're most likely beaten. Five opponents saw the river with you. That's 20 cards among them. What are the odds that no one has 23, 37, or 78? Pretty low, I'd say.

SB could easily have A23x (most likely with spades), and the button has all the straight combos in his range.

When you're facing that double-bet on the river, your pot odds are not that great because you can only win half the pot. And what if the button raises behind you and the SB caps it? That possibility makes your pot odds even worse.

For one bet, I'd make a crying call on this river; for two bets, a crying fold.

fold pre go back to sleep

+1 ... why play for half the pot at best?

Fold preflop. Moni is Krazy.

You can play KK when your other two cards work with it.

How bout you show some work, I have studied situations like this extensively and think folding would be horrible - I would expect most advanced and expert players to prefer raise.

Most players do not play kkxx hands correctly, in this spot hero will have an equity share advantage vs field unless villain limped aaxx. Also these kkxx are clearly well above average despite weak low potential.

postflop skill is still a major factor for the hands overall profitability, but the hand selection itself should not be controversial

You're asking me to show some work, when several others agree with me, and you say you have done the work? Why don't you show your work and convince us?

Do I really need to explain why folding double suited kings with a low draw from mp is non-standard and bad ? And in a kill pot, where hero should play a slightly wider range to boot because of the extra dead money.

I dont mind making a lengthier post, if posters who advocate folding provide some substance to their remarks. One poster suggested it was only playing for half the pot, which is obviously not correct. This hand can scoop, but winning half the pot is also a good result.

I would suggest running some simple multiway sims with this hand preflop to get a better feel for it's value, then remember even after that, how the dead money from blinds and a kill should also impact standard preflop strategy. Solid preflop strategy in o8 is about pushing small edges and this is not a close spot, hero should raise happily. There is a lot more judgement involved in how to play various a-wheel cards and room for mixed strategies such as limp an a2xx combination half the time and raise it the other half.

Well, I know it's not doing the work myself, but any book I have ever seen about O8 has said to fold these types of hands, and I don't see any winning players in my games playing them. Plus in a low limit game like this, the rake eats up a significant amount, and with people playing any suited aces, I don't think the kings being suited adds very much value.

You're pretty much never going to win with this hand unless you make a set of kings or make a flush and get lucky that no one else has the Ace high flush, plus you will still often only get half the pot.

I don't think simulations giving equity to the river here are very useful. If the flop is 843 with with none of your suits, you may have the best high hand, and it may even be best at the end, but are you really going to see the hand through to the river? You have incredibly high RIO and never know where you are in the hand.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I think folding, limping, and raising this hand are all defensible options in this situation.

However, I don't think the above idea is correct when the kill is in the big blind. In this situation, you should actually play slightly tighter because the total blinds available to win will be smaller relative to your raise than when there is no kill, since the both the raise and BB will be proportionally larger, but the SB will not.

So a couple of things:

O8 literature has not aged well. It's become a game of poker science. There is a limited amount of expert content available on the training sites, but from what I hear, it's still fairly sparse.

Folding or limping some kkxx is correct. Or at least, subject to debate. For a rough guideline, when a hand is double suited vs single suited it normally improves total equity by at least 2%, and improves overall hand strength by 10%. So generally, you should treat double-suited hands as somewhere between .5 and 1 tier stronger than a similar hand with only one suit. Similarly, you should discount hands with 3 or 4 more to the same suit. So you might play this hand like kk56 single suited, discounting the less attractive aspects of the double gapper low. While we would prefer better connected low cards, these still provide useful coverage that allows us to contest a wider variety of board textures and inform us of likely opponent holdings.

Rake should not be a factor in the hand op posted. Rake is more of a factor in heads up and 3way pots with marginal hands. In a multiway pot, and with a kill, the impact of rake should be at its lowest.

I don't know much about what stakes you play or how much the best players beat the game for, but I can tell you that in my experience playing live mid-stakes and (to a lesser extent) online, I dont think any of the best players would fold here.

The notion that you need to hit a set to win the pot or a portion thereof is wrong. Though I should add that for weak-passive players that is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, for several reasons.

I agree if the kill is in bb, it is a different dynamic, also that it can be a good idea to play kkxx hands more conservatively from ep full ring

My guess is you're playing games that are much tighter preflop than the one OP is playing (and I have been playing recently), and it makes a big difference.

The game I have been playing lately is 8/16 with a half kill and it plays very loose aggressive. It's rare that fewer than 5 people see the flop. I'm not weak-passive by any means, but I don't make it to showdown with unimproved KK or with a 74 low. There are a few players I see who occasionally take down half a pot with such hands. They always bust out before leaving the game.

you are going to see a 23 at showdown


Pushing more on flop, turn may have gotten flush draws and low draws out ... maybe not with their pot odds.

It wouldn't have gotten out flush draws. Probably would get out low draws with nothing else going for them.

Oh wow. Thank you for the input. As the hand played out, SB had AA2x for dry aces with nut low, button had 347x and didn’t 3! for some strange reason. My read was SB had that exact hand or maybe A2 with 2pr hand.

I enjoy playing KKww cards, perhaps with my KK47 ds, I’m getting carried away and that 7 should be a 5. For the times when the board pairs, we’ll be scooping a lot of pots, but essentially any river was bad for us unless it paired the board. I think my biggest mistake was not raising PRE. In MP with KK47ds I believe is too strong to fold if no one has raised.


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I don't think ad hominem attacks are helpful. They lower the level of discussion and discourage people from participating.

I do think there's great value in considering monikrazy's perspective. KKxx hands vary widely in value. KKA2 double-suited ranks 1.0, while KK92 rainbow ranks 90.0 (according to ProPokerTools). KK74 double-suited ranks 14.0 ten-handed, but it goes up in value as the field size decreases: 11.0 six-handed, 8.0 three-handed, and 4.0 versus a random hand. So this hand is definitely playable, and the more you can thin the field with it, the better. That's one argument for raising pre.

You and I may be used to playing in loose low-limit games in which it seems very difficult to thin the field with a preflop raise. That's certainly a consideration. But very difficult is not impossible. And even if everyone calls, you still have an equity advantage over the field—that's another argument for raising pre.

Ad hominem attack? All I did was make a joke based on his screen name. Like people do when telling me to chill...

But anyway, as I said earlier, I don't think hand rankings based on showdown equity have much to offer here. You simply can't realize much of your equity with those types of hands, or you will be dumping off your money in the hands where you're crushed.

I think you actually will end up realizing most of your equity with this hand in this spot.

When eight players are seeing the flop, KK74ds earns almost none of its equity from situations in which it just makes an overpair or an emergency low. The situations add enormously to the hand's equity in a 2- or 3-handed spot, but they're virtually never going to be good against seven opponents.

KK74ds with earn almost all of its equity from situations where is makes a set or a flush. These are spots where are you are rarely going to fold out your equity. Sure, you will rarely find yourself forced to fold on the flop in a spot where you would have spiked set or a runner-runner flush by the river, but this can be true of any hand. I think this hand is more likely to realize its equity than most.

Rob: ppt ranks don’t just use hot cold equity. In my experience they are good metrics for fixed limit games and less so for big bet.

I like the limp pre. I prefer the raise on the flop because the pot is enormous. You're not forcing a ton of hands to fold, but you just have so much equity and for all you know someone will jam like NFD+gutshot with you and you'll be able to cap it multiway with top set. River you just have to fold :-(

I mostly agree with this. Basically, you got what you deserve by playing a marginal hand preflop. Btw, raising preflop with this hand at a full ring game is very incorrect because you're dependent on hitting a nutty flop like this. So don't listen to THAT advice.

A few questions:
How may you have played this hand differently had you (taken other's advice and) raised preflop?
How may you have played this hand differently if this wasn't a kill pot?
How frequently do you put in the 2nd bet post flop, and specifically, what are those situations in which you WOULD?

My thoughts:
Clearly, hindsight is 20/20, but raise the flop. Charge those draws. Make it MORE expensive for people to catch running low cards. tbh, if I had an A278 type hand that ends up rivering a straight, I'm NOT putting 2 bets in preflop that many ways and then folding to ONE bet post flop. I am almost assuredly folding for 2 bets though.

Ideally, you take control of the betting by raising flop and the LJ, HJ, and Button fold to 2 bets rather than already having 1 bet in and then calling 1 more bet post flop. THAT WAY, you have position on the river and can make a check in position and lose less rather than put in a $24 crying call on the end.