Re: NLHE: Playing QQ UTG.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kevin Cline) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daxonovitch) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > What would you have done? TJ says to limp and fold to big bets
> > preflop, I usually thought otherwise, obviously I got burned here.
> > Should I have dropped this in a heartbeat?
> 
> Yes.  Your QQ is not good enough to call the 14x pot reraise.  Game
> theory suggests that you should call a 10x pot raise with about the
> top 10% of the hands you could have, given your previous action. 

Just a minor quibble.  Game theory does not suggest that you call 10x
raises with 10% of your hands before the river. There are a couple of
problems of major reasons why:

1) The pot is not heads-up yet, so the reraiser is risking getting
picked off in the field by someone with AA. This should lower the
burden of calling on the initial raiser.

2) The real problem though is the 10% figure does not take into
account the fact that the reraiser can be called by a better hand call
and still win.  For example if the two players were HU, and the
initial raiser were only going to call a 10x all-in raise 10% of the
time, the reraiser should raise with every hand.   90% of the time he
would win the pot, and some portion of the 10% of the time he will win
after getting called.   Hence the defender must call more than 10% of
the time.



> Suppose you are raising UTG with 99-AA, AKs, AQs, AKo.  That is 44
> card combinations.  Six of those are AA.  So calling with the top 10%
> means that you should only call with AA.

3)  The third problem is common cards.  I would actually say you may
need to call with some KK's too, otherwise your opponent can
profitably raise with AKs, since he will get called less than 10% of
the time.

But I agree that this is the right way to think about the hand.  I
think it's a fold with QQ.



> 
> Unless your raises UTG are fairly loose, your opponent made a mistake
> going all-in with KK here, unless he somehow KNOWS that you would not
> raise UTG with AA.

Actually even if he knows this the bet sizing is wrong.  He should
make a smaller raise with KK.   It's simply terrible to do this with
KK, since raising smaller should be +EV.

> 
> If you only raise UTG with the hands listed, then there is a 13.6%
> chance that you have AA, and he is risking too much to pick up the 225
> in the pot.  If you are tighter, and limp with 99 and TT, then his
> move is even worse.


Bill