Queens vs aggro opponent, NL cash
Game type: 25/50 Full Ring Cash, PokerStars
Your image: Active, possibly a little frustrated
Opponent’s image: Very aggressive preflop
Your hand: Q♦Q♥
The setup: You’ve had an uneven session so far and it’s been a bit since you won a hand. This hand there’s a poster in the hijack preflop. The table folds to him and he checks. You raise $200. The button folds and the SB three bets to $825. The BB and hijack fold, and you flat.
You have a good amount of history with the raiser. He is a very active three bettor and seems to have your number in recent sessions. He is very aggressive against your preflop raises, especially if there’s a squeeze opportunity. He’s also a pretty steady continuation bettor.
You flop about as dry as can be:
J♣2♥6♦
The SB leads for $985 into $1750. What’s your play?
Loading …9.6.10 / 5am
I 4-bet pre, but as played I shove here. Would only call if flop had a K or A.
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9.6.10 / 8am
Call and give him a chance to hang himself. We’re WA/WB (most probably WA) and I can’t see him calling a raise on this dry board w/ worse - if I were V I could fold AJ here against a solid player.
I agree to 4 bet pre FWIW.
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9.6.10 / 10pm
Well…. I guess it depends what we want V to do here. Any significant raise is pretty much the same as turning our cards face up. If we want V to fold, a good raise should do the trick. On the other hand, we’re waaaay ahead of his range, so we may get another bet out of him if we call. We just have to be smart if the turn helps him. To me, that means any A,K,J or T is a reason to be cautious. If H can’t do that, he needs to raise big now - otherwise it’s a great spot to extract some value.
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9.7.10 / 12am
I would call his check/fold raise.
No really though, I think both choices are ok. The only thing, is that if we’re going to only call and not shut it down now, and take more bets… we have to be ready to keep calling no matter what comes. We’re not calling here just to fold to a K turn. And also, remember that every good hand becomes less and less attractive with every new card that comes out. Keep that in mind if a T or 9 shows up here. So raise and shut it down, or call and be prepared to call down to the showdown.
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9.7.10 / 4am
I raise here. For reasons already mentioned plus on such a dry board what would calling represent. You could make the same case that you are playing you cards face up. Not the time to be tricky. You are ahead. Don’t give v a free shot at an over.
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Pirate21 Reply:
September 7th, 2010 at 8:13 am
I think this line is consistent with tournament play more than cash play though. I’ll admit I play more tournament/sit n go formats, so some cash game philosophies elude me from time to time - but thinking about it purely from a math standpoint it seems like that V probably has 5 outs at best and more likely only 3 plus maybe a couple back door possibilities. In this scenario, we’re almost certainly ahead and our opponent drawing pretty thin - we need to extract value from our hand. That comes with an inherent risk of being drawn out on, but since that will only happen <20% of the time, it makes calling a more profitable play in the long run. I’m certainly open to other opinions though.
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T Reply:
September 7th, 2010 at 8:44 am
With a board this dry, I don’t think there are many scenarios where v will double-barrel on the turn if we flat here.
On the other hand a reraise from hero at this point will seem like a bluff, and I think v will call with lots of worse hands than ours - pocket pairs, AK/AQ/AJ/KJ/QJ/JT.
That’s just my gut feeling about this hand though, helped along by the reads.
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Pirate21 Reply:
September 7th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Remember, this is an aggro V.
I think most of the range you mentioned (possible exception of AK/AQ) will fire again on the turn. If not, I’m not sure he’s calling a raise either.
9.7.10 / 7am
I am leaning toward a call, but could also go the raise route on another day.
Hero call can say a couple of things: I don’t believe that board helped you, and/or I have a decent pp. Hero needs to dodge A, K on the turn. Another suited card and a 10 would also be scare cards. I would save the heavy firing for the turn. Somewhat risky, but hope to get another shell from the V.
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9.7.10 / 10am
Given his aggressive image we could easily be flat calling a hand like 1010, 99, AJ on this board. Because of the stack sizes I would usually flat call this hand disguising the strength of my hand and give him another shot to bluff it off on the turn which is essentially an all-in bet on his side. In which case I snap it off and get paid :).
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Marty Reply:
September 6th, 2010 at 4:47 am
superb comment
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