An interesting article in Cardplayer was read too late by me, hopefully this will help you.

From Cardplayer 2-25-05 (J. Harman)

Barry Tanenbaum's article about no-limit lesson hands sounded pretty cool. He set up prearranged decks and "measured" what players did with them and discussed later how they could be played differently. Ten tables were played with these decks and notes were taken. Hand no. 1 is the most interest to me, as the rest should be imbedded in your brain by now.

The setup: Cash game with 1,500 and 25/50 blinds. You know NOTHING about these players.

The play: UTG limps and UTG+2 thinks for while and folds. It folds around to you in MP with JsJh and you raise to 200. Folds to SB who raises a significant amount. Folds back to you, what do you do? Answer what you would do before you go on, the results may surprise you.

Out of 10 tables that had this experiment, 8 people called and lost their money. SB had AA. Sure it was setup to go like that but when a SB or BB makes a big raise you can usually put them on a strong holding. Sure they might have crap but it is generally best to fold this PF.

The hand I was involved with happened almost exactly this way. I posted in the CO and picked up JJ. A guy I had notes on raises UTG and had about 35 left, he raises with some crap. I thought alright lets target him and so I raise 15. SB reraises all in and UTG calls as he is getting 3:1 on his money if I call. Which I do. SB had AA, lost my buy in right there. It sucked but I learned a lesson that you guys hopefully don't have to learn the hard way.

So 2 days later I read the article and my next session, the same thing happened. I had QQ and PT said this guys sees 8% pots and never raises. He min raised me but I felt I was beat and folded, he showed AA.

Good luck out there.

better to fold and lose $200 then call and lose 1500.. yeah, you might be laying down the best hand, but if this is a normal play in this guys arsenol, you'll bust him eventually. i can't tell you the number of people i've busted with aces who refuse to lay down 88-KK preflop.

Depending on his stack size you have to call with QQ and try to spike your set. A minimum raise isn't a sinigifant reraise as stated in the example. QQ and JJ are easy to get away from against guys like that, AA is hard for them to lay down. You are at an extreme advantage long term against someone playing AA that way. If you can fold QQ preflop, I imagine you can fold it post flop.

I totally agree...someone comes over the top of you for a big amount...sure...easy fold...but a small amount...if you hit your set....you're going to get paid off well...small risk..big reward. I say call the small raise...dump if you don't hit the flop. Just my 2 cents

Sorry about the typos you got me pre-coffee when brain was working improperly.

The JJ hand that was mentioned in actual play, not stacked deck, I'm still confused about the way the action went. I hate to sound weak, but JJ is rarely a hand I play all in preflop or on the flop with out very good reason. If the SB raised all in preflop, easy fold, if the SB got you stuck on the flop, could be an easy fold or an easy call depending on actual pot size and stack size, if you got milked, well we all get milked sometimes.

On JJ, the one thing I learned about from limit hold'em is that calling a three bet pot with Jacks against half way decent opponents is generally a bad idea. The same goes for a raise and reraise in NL. Jacks shrink up unless I'm against a whole table of yahoos and every pot is a raised and reraised or have an enormous stack and then I might consider pushing preflop with them.

Here's a situation where I was patting myself on the back after, and made the other guy go absolutely ballistic.

Prima $100 NL

We both have aroud $110-120 each, he is a solid player that I see on here often but we don't get into many pots against each other. We usually just tend to take on the fish at our tables.

I get dealt KK UTG + 1. I raise to 4. He is about 3 seats away from me and re-raises to 10. Folds back to me.

What would u guys do? Would you stick the re-raise in right now, or just call and hoping to flop the set, no set no bet. If there's an ace, then it would make it easier to get away from.

Most of the time I would just call, but this time I decided to test him again, I put the third raise in trying to indicate to him that I had Aces. He then re-raised me for the rest of his stack, which would basically be putting me all-in. I typed in, your pocket aces are good, I'm mucking my kings.

I folded, he showed aces then went crazy on me for the next 5 minutes, telling me how I was supposed to pay him off, etc.
I just figured in my mind there was absolutely no way he would do that with pocket queens, kings maybe, but it's just too difficult to put the other person having the exact same hand.

I thought also after, that if I did call, and a harmless looking board came down, it would then be way too hard to get away from Kings, having already put a quarter of my stack in. Agree, disagree?

Leafs... would you have made that read against someone that you weren't quite as familiar with...? Generally speaking, especially on TGC, if that's where you were playing, I've gotten into TONS of allins v. QQ or AK or AQ...

Guess those good reads are why your in the WPT, and I'm not,...

On these limits and the 1/2 NL that I play..I refuse to fold KK preflop. I've seen too many people min raising or moving all in with hands like AK, AQ, QQ, JJ and every other hand imaginable.

Go kings

First time trying the converter so hopefully it works.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (10 handed)

saw flop|saw showdown

MP3 ($118.6)
CO ($100)
Button ($27.05)
SB ($118.1)
BB ($67.15)
UTG ($100.75)
UTG+1 ($52.95)
UTG+2 ($80.3)
MP1 ($73.15)
BIG WORM ($118.35)

Preflop: BIG WORM is MP2 with , . CO posts a blind of $1. SB posts a blind of $0.5.
2 folds, UTG+2 raises to $4.5, 1 fold, BIG WORM raises to $15, 3 folds, SB (poster) raises to $34.5, 1 fold, UTG+2 folds, BIG WORM folds.

Final Pot: $56.50

Results in white below:
No showdown. SB wins $56.50.


The actually hand and how it played out... critique away.