Kings facing shove on paired board, NL cash

Game type: 1/2 NL
Your image: Aggressive
Opponent’s image: Pretty quiet
Your hand: K♦K♠

The setup: You’ve been pretty aggressive at this table opening the pot with lots of raises. Your opponent has been fairly quiet but has been aggressive when involved in pots. You have about a 170BB stack at the beginning of the hand and they cover. The very last hand you raised, got called and raised (a different) opponent off their hand on the flop.

Here two players fold and your opponent makes a standard raise to $7. You re-raise to $22 with KK. Table folds around and your opponent calls. The flop is pretty nice:

8♠8♥9♠

Your opponent checks and you bet $40. They think a bit and call. The turn brings 4♦. They check again and you bet $110 into the $127 pot. Your opponent goes into the tank and then re-raises, putting you all in for $168 more. Do you call here?

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5 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Waste_Of_Paint

This is the kind of quiz if I was asked a year ago I’d say snap call. But thinking about it, I don’t think we’re good often enough here.

Someone said a while ago here that ‘people make unlikely bets with unlikely hands’. I think this is one of those spots. The few hands that beat us (AA, 99, 88 98, 44) make a lot more sense than anything else.

Does he play TT-QQ this way? I don’t think so. Given the information that villain has played pots aggressively when involved, I think he’d have raised these sooner to define his hand. Same with JTs or AXs. And I doubt he’s going crazy with a lone paired 9.

Could he be running a goofy bluff against our image? It’s possible, but I don’t think it happens often enough to make this a profitable call.

I was in a hand very similar to this a couple of days ago, but I was in the villain’s spot. I had AA and flatted a 3bet from an aggressive player. The flop came 5-5-8 and I 5bet jammed the flop and got called by KK. Would I have built such a big pot with QQ? I’m not sure.

I think this is the kind of spot that separates the winners from the losers. Swallow it and lay it down.

t down.

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Waste_Of_Paint Reply:
April 4th, 2011 at 2:07 am

Forgot to include obv that any 8 also beats us, realisitically 78s, 89s and maybe A8s

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Rowdy

I can’t fold here. The odds are too good.

The line doesn’t make that much sense for TT-QQ but he could be playing it like this (call to trap on flop, then put his chips in thinking it’s good on turn), due to us being aggro. Other things in our favour are the fact he has been quiet (meaning he is likely to raise a good hand pre rather than something with an 8 in it), and a slight chance of some kind of turn bluff/semi bluff.

Mostly it’s the pot odds that make me call though.

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samo

I’d call.

I think AA or 8x raises OTF due to the slippery board. If this is a live game, early raises tend to get called at a much higher rate than later streets.

If they floated the flop w/44, lucky turn for them. 99 w/flopped FH, better yet. Most of their range we are besting, however, so I think our aggro image is priced-in at >3-1.

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Pirate21

I’d call, but not loving it.
There are a fair number of hands that beat us here, but I think our aggressive image helps make this a +EV play in the long run. Very likely opponent puts us on a pretty wide range – when, in fact, we’re right at the top of our range.
This will be a very high variance hand, but our KK only needs to hold up 1 in 3 times to be good. I think we’re ahead often enough to make it profitable.

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