Daily Hand Quiz

Raise and call a reraise, easy one.

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If you’re gonna call a reraise which will, with a decent reraise size, in fact get you pot-committed, why not shove in the first place? It is not a hand you’re looking for a call with. You want the blinds and antes, but won’t hesitate to go allin against a lower pocket pair.

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Dan L Reply:
September 8th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

Because we actually expect our opponent to 3-bet all in with air or something like A-9 a decent amount of the time. If we open shove, we’re only getting called by some really strong hands. Maybe we get in coinflips with a few more hands like 66-99 by bet-call instead of open shoving, but that’s actually a really small part of our opponents range.

In short, we are quite happy to see our opponent shove over us, even if a small amount of the time they have a huge hand.

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Guess there are 2 samos now. Voted raise/call. Shoving more than 12x pot seems high risk for a low return. Although AJ is strong 3-handed, hoping to get fold-fold here. Unlikely though for the price the BB is getting, especially if the SB calls. Hero has position, so you have the option to check to turn. If BB shoves, hero is getting decent price to call unless v has JJ+.

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If everyone folds, and we have $1500 from the blinds, then how is there $2300 in the pot?

Gosh darn it, the editing on these hands really sucks from time to time.

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samo Reply:
September 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

$800 in antes.

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catcher Reply:
September 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

Because there’s also ante 100.

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A shove is appropriate because the big blind and small blind could be forced to fold. The big blind would be the only one to consider calling a shove, which still gives Hero really good odds. I doubt the big blind would call with a small pocket pair either, knowing that Hero’s shove could indicate higher pockets.

If Hero 3-bets then calls a re-raise, then it creates a committed pot. There’s also a good chance that AJo will miss the flop, which allows the small or big blind to shove on the flop. Furthermore, a 3-bet doesn’t always provoke a re-raise. What if the big blind flat calls with an underdog hand, that could be profitable post-flop?

Displaying a 3-bet already gives information that could be easily exploited, especially if the flop doesn’t show any face cards.

I would normally 3-bet to isolate weaker opponents if more hands were in play, but a situation like this should be a blind steal.

Perhaps if I had more reads on the SB and BB, then I could answer this quiz a little better. I mean, if I knew whether or not they were playing tight and regularly folding their blinds, then a 3-bet would be sufficient.

In the end, the odds are still good. A shove still shows profit.

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Pete Reply:
September 7th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

A 3bet isn’t what you think it is Stealth. You’re probably right that a shove shows profit, but I doubth it’s the most profitable course of action. When you consider your whole range here it makes it pretty obvious that you have to raise/call with a hand like AJ.

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A shove here just indicates that we have a decent hand but we don’t want any action. I mean, if we had AA/KK here, would we really shove 27 bb’s? Anyone who is afraid that a 2-3x raise here will be three-bet by the blinds therefore recommend shoving should not be playing tourney poker at all. Furthermore, given that we are shoving 27bbs, sb and bb will presumably only call with the very top range TT/AQs +, which makes a shove VERY unprofitable play.

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