Daily Hand Quiz

What we said then: What does he have? Let’s break it down into bigger pairs, smaller pairs, broadway cards and small cards / air.

Bigger pairs: doesn’t seem too likely. First, they’re hard to make, and second, this is a pretty big raise. Maybe a scared player makes this raise with KK, but I think most of the time people are looking to get a little more action with AA and KK. Of course, you could be getting leveled, but it seems pretty unlikely at this stage. Anyhow, 12 ways to make AA and KK.

Broadway cards: In a lower buy in tournament, you’ll see a lot of people make this play with AK-AJs hands. They want to defend their strong hand, but they don’t want to play a flop. Since you’ve been aggressive, maybe you see the occasional KQs showing up here. Let’s say about 45 combos here.

Smaller pairs: You could see JJ or maybe TT making this overbet, trying to take down the pot right here rather than play a tricky flop. A lot of the other smaller pairs will generally just call and try to flop a set, but maybe 77-99 get frisky here once in awhile. Let’s say about 15 combos.

As for air, maybe some smaller suited connectors pull this from time to time. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it happens.

Here’s my rough estimate: 65% of the time you’re up against broadway, 20% you’re up against a smaller pair, 10% a bigger pair, and 5% air.

Ok, so what should we do? The hand is far too strong to fold. If we make a small re-raise, say to 3x, we’re committing to the hand if he shoves, as we’ll get 2-1 on his shove and we’re basically a flip against JJ+ and AK. We also offer pretty good odds for a broadway hand to come along and set up an awkward situation when an overcard flops.

Both calling and shoving disguise the strength of our hand to some degree. Calling sets a trap for the smaller pairs in his range on ragged flops. Shoving somewhat accomplishes the same thing by making our hand look a bit more like AK and possibly motivating a call from a 77-type hand that believe they’re in a race with lots of chips added.

Since calling can create some awkward situations on the flop, and since there’s already 500 in the middle, I vote for shoving here. I know it feels weird to jam over 100BBs in PF in the first level, but I think it’s the play here. If it were KK or JJ, I’d probably lean toward calling.

What actually happened: You flatted and the flop came KJ2. The SB led and you folded.

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My feel is that he has AK or TT-JJ. So I play my position and just call. If an ace or king hit on the flop and he bets out I’m beaten and I can cut my losses. If undercards flop, I can stack him if he has TT-JJ

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If we 4bet and opp 5 bet shoves then JJ goes out the window for me and we are up against 12 AA-KK combos and 16AK combos so 43% of the time we are dead and the other 57% we are flipping. Is 2 to 1 enough in that spot? I think if we raise to 1000 we can still fold, but with stacks this deep I would rather just call in position which disguises the strength of our hand and keeps the pot under control and stops us going all in pre flop with an M of 100!

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Shove.

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raise to 2900 then fold to the all in

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Call and play position.

Shoving is ridiculous; if we’re against 77 or JJ we can very well see a flop, if we’re against AK we’re flipping for our tournament life, and if we’re against KK+ we’ve just stacked off in a bad spot. I don’t know what kind of craziness it is to think 77-JJ will call a shove. Shoving gets all the worse hands to fold and the better/flipping hands to call. That’s really the definition of a donk play.

We’ve got position. Let’s use it. Are we that afraid of playing post-flop that we just want to get it all in now and not have to play some poker?

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Shove. You knock out the caller behind you and get all your money in with the best hand. SB might fold to your strong move if he has a low pair.

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Without a read to the contrary shoving does seem to be +EV in this spot in the long run. Unfortunately this play can result in us going busto and in the long run we are all dead and risking 100% of our chips to win 17% more seems too much risk for too little reward. I actually advocated the shove last time so I’m arguing with my former self here. Interesting how our games develop and adapt through the bad beats and variance.

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4 bet to 1k. if he 5 bets all in you can get away from it. winning this hand isn’t that important early. you can’t win a tourney in one hand but can lose it. keep an ok stack and keep pushing the action til a better spot. plus its online poker, maybe you just ran into a set up hand. if you just flat or shove though, you have a worse idea of what they are holding. so 4 bet, get more info, probably take down the pot. if not let it go.

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Hero’s image is agg and they already have demonstrated that.  Change the pace and call with QQ, hoping for small cards to navigate and carefully chip-up.  If an o-card(s) flops, fold to a reasonable sized-bet. Folding is not an option; shoving at this stage tips the risk/return scale imo.

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Agree with PINE OAK. RR and find out what he has. The rest of the hand will be much easier to play.

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Easy shove – supported by our image we are quite likely to get called by a hand that’s not in a very good shape against our QQ and if not then I’m happy to take down the pot right here.

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There is this 300 people tournament in my city where I had QQ and reraise all in (to 8.5K) from a 1.2K raise in a 150 blind. After considering a Lot, this dumb ass called with AJs. I lost, but this is the kind of call i am looking for. I cant see a good player calling with AK here, so you are lost against AA or KK (you would be in bad shape anyway); and way ahead against most other hands.. and might even get called by one of those. Otherwise 500 chips is as good as it is too. No reason for not soving. Calling is terrible; unless you were much deeper (say at least 6K to flat here)

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I couldnt disagree more with Cristiano. First off, if you shove you could run into aces or kings and bust. if hes got ak youre a flip for your tourney life. Even if he calls with aj as you hope for, youre 30% to bust. Shoving and hoping is a losing tournament strategy. If youre all in repeatedly, even with the best hand every time, youre going to bust. Im not saying all in is always a bad move…by no means am i saying that. Im just commenting on the idea that shoving early in a tournament hoping for aj is exactly what you want.

What you really want, is to steadily grow your chip stack with good play that keeps the table off balance and guessing about your game.

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Shoving makes sense in a cash game maybe, but not in a tourney for all the reasons mentioned above. Call and consider calling a c-bet on the flop.

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