QQ vs a fiesty table (1 Viewer)

DrStrange

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Playing 1-2 live, eight handed. We are middle/late into the session. The table is a little on the wild and crazy side even for us tonight. Buckle up! It could get a little bumpy.

Cast of characters:

Sitting in the Big Blind with $1,100 or so is a player who took an eighteen month poker vacation. This is his second game back. His game appears to be a little sharper but the sample is so small, who can say. Tonight he is loose, semi aggressive but not betting his draws as much as before. Historically this guy has an awesome reputation for spewing his early session wins until he busted and went home - not so tonight.

Crazy is Under the Gun with $350 on a $1,200 buy in. Crazy is a wildly loose, aggressive maniac who is here to gamble even if he gets poor odds. So far luck has not been with him.

Hero is sitting in the cut off with $400. Nothing much out of the normal tonight. Hero is tight, pushes his good hand hard and sometimes wins / sometimes loses.

The Button has $600. He is a moderately skilled LAG - marginally profitable in this game. He is wildly loose, aggressive and will bet his draws / bluffs as hard as bottom pair+

The hand:

Four limps brings the action to hero with :qh: :qc:. Hero raises to $20. Hero gets five callers (!) which was a little unexpected even from this crowd. $121 in the pot, six way action.

The Flop is :ts: :9d: :8h:

BB leads for $100. Crazy calls $100. Two folds brings us to Hero. Fold, call or Jam all in?

DrStrange
 
It's unlikely a jam will get rid of crazy. I'd call this, wait to see what BB does after the turn. Then we can see where we are at.
 
Am jammin all the way. many cards will kill you on the turn: a straight, and overpair, 2 pairs etc. The only favorable card will be a J.

I will jam, or eventually fold
 
There are serious problems with calling...

First, there can be hands like A7 and KJ out there, and we really want to shake them off - both the draws, and the overcards. So you'd rather jam.

Also, if you call, there's a chance the aggressive Button will get feisty, which he's prone to do on a bluff... you'd rather pre-emtp others' bluffs with your your legitimate bet on this.

If Button doesn't go aggro, the Button is still wildly loose - good chance he'll call. That makes the pot $521, and our stack will be at $280. Even if we're first to act on the flop, our shove doesn't have as much "shove" as we'd like - and if someone else bets out first, we have no raise at all. There's little point in calling in anticipation of making a move later.

The strongest rationale for calling and awaiting a turn, to me, is if we're looking for a card that will come which provides an excuse to fold!

I think my answer is jam now. If the opponents are making bad calls, now is the time to profit off of them. If they are making good calls, I don't see how I save money by waiting to put it in on the next card. The niggling question is whether folding is better... but with this overpair, I have the inside straight draw as a backup, and two pair or a boat are still not out of the question. It's risky, but I think the correct EV play is to jam (and mentally prep for the rebuy.)
 
I think I'm in the 'jam' camp. My thought process is that Crazy is certainly drawing, but more likely with a 7 than a J. If he were holding a J I'd think that he would be more willing to shove than just flat. BB's bet looks like protection to me so it's entirely possible that he has a hand like JT or QT and wants to protect his top pair.
 
Jam. Crazy likely is weakish. BB is likely on a draw with the big early lead bet and you've got blockers on most straight draws
 
Jam>Fold>Call. Normally I'd be worried about someone flatting $100 in this spot, but as someone who probably shares a kindred spirit with crazy, he is probably just floating to see the turn. A little worried about the donk better, but he could easily have something like j10, j9, a10, etc. I think you're ahead of most of his range, and even if you're behind, you aren't drawing dead. I hate a call here, there are too many bad cards that can come on the turn.
 
As an aside, this hand is a fine example for why Hero almost never makes a position raise with a speculative hand like 76s or A4s or even JTo. Six way action from a $20 pre-flop raise and then a pot sized donk plus a call.

DrStrange
 
Without a specific read on BB who led the flop, I jam.
 
This crew has enough air in their range to fly a hovercraft. Ship it, and hope it's not the Hindenberg.
 
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*** A new wrinkle ***

Ok so the advice for Hero is all over the map, Jamming is the top choice but maybe not even a majority choice. Hero is leaning towards a jam when . . . . .

Now add in this. While Hero is contemplating his options Button raises out of turn to $300. Hero objects a few seconds later. For what it is worth, neither the big blind nor Crazy react to the out of turn bet. Button looks a little surprised to Hero, not like he is trying influence Hero. Button's raise is NOT binding. {Yes I know this is irregular. I don't like it but I am about the only one who feels strongly that way.}

So Hero has something extra to consider before he acts. Does button's raise change anyone's opinion?

DrStrange
 
I know I'm in the minority but I'm calling. The button seemed very excited to get to crazy and forgot about Hero who was still in the hand (if I have this correct). If the button was so strong, he might flat call. I think the button and crazy could be weak, I want to see what BB does.
 
*** A new wrinkle ***

Ok so the advice for Hero is all over the map, Jamming is the top choice but maybe not even a majority choice. Hero is leaning towards a jam when . . . . .

Now add in this. While Hero is contemplating his options Button raises out of turn to $300. Hero objects a few seconds later. For what it is worth, neither the big blind nor Crazy react to the out of turn bet. Button looks a little surprised to Hero, not like he is trying influence Hero. Button's raise is NOT binding. {Yes I know this is irregular. I don't like it but I am about the only one who feels strongly that way.}

So Hero has something extra to consider before he acts. Does button's raise change anyone's opinion?

DrStrange

Bleh, I don't like this. Heavy action, and imo it's rare for button to be doing this without a big hand (not usually an angle). Hero has $20 in this pot, so with this info I'd now say fold. The good news is, there will be other spots.
 
Our read on button is

"He is wildly loose, aggressive and will bet his draws / bluffs as hard as bottom pair+"

If we trust this read then I still jam.

If we had no info or a different read on button then I fold but I think the chances QQ are good are still high
 
Hero was still doing the math prior to Button's premature betting. It was a wicked mix of possibilities, naked draws, draw + pairs, made hands hero could catch and everyone could have redraws. Hard to do with poker software but worse in your head. Hero was considering how bad it would be to have a donkey train effect when the out of turn bet happen. I'd say Hero was leaning towards shove but not sure yet. (and let me note that QQ is somewhat better than AA on this board due to the blocking queens and the gut shot draw if needed.)

DrStrange
 
I still can't find the fold button but I'm expecting to be behind sometimes and having to dodge about half the deck twice the rest of the time. We have 2 blockers to the nut str8 + a redraw. I think folding's fine too if you don't like variance. Ship it.
 
Neither here nor there, I was just stoving a bit after becoming curious how much better QQ is than AA here... it's more better than I thought. In a situation where QQ is 40.3%, AA is about 34.4%. (And JJ is about 47.3%.) Interesting.

The trouble is, those numbers are based on pre-flop knowledge. I don't know how to adjust the holding for our post-flop knowledge... so those numbers have little bearing on the question at hand.

Back to the hand - DrStrange said Button is moderately skilled. There's no hand for Button that's so strong he should flat call - slow playing to wait for action is silly when there's action falling all over the table. But that's no guarantee he has a hand - as indicated earlier, Button is liable to bet a draw very aggressively. Could he be raising from last position to take the lead, and be able to take a free card on the turn and or disguise his value bet if he hits on the turn?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suppose that Button, though willing to bet a draw aggressively, realizes that this is a 1/2 game. Raising $30 to $60 from the button is aggressive in 1/2. But raising $200 to $300 in a 1/2 game is another situation entirely.

With three people putting up strong bets, I suspect that at least one of them has a strong hand. I don't believe any one of them, but perhaps I can believe the group. There's a set, two pair, or a made straight out there, maybe even KK or AA, all of which have us soundly beat...

If I believe that, I have to fold.

If I know these players better, and think there's at least at least a 25% chance I'm witnessing a dick-waving contest with a donkey as a bystander, I jam.
 
Before the out-of-turn action it's close but I'm jamming. Button wanting to get it in as well tips the balance to a fold for me.
 
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Button's bet put Crazy and Hero effectively all in - the pot would be closing in on $1,000 and both of those players have less than $100.

Could be Button has his eye on BB's stack? Button does have half his stack at risk and exposes the other half to BB. If BB raises all in, button has to call. If button jams the turn, BB seems very likely to call.

DrStrange
 
All of this seems to imply that Button has a solid hand - he's not expecting to steal this, and he's not on a draw.

The question is what solid hand? Something we beat, like JT or JJ? I find AJ to be unlikely, but KJ is interesting... But neither of those look to be betting hard now.
Or something that beats us - AA? KK? QJ? T9? 87? 65? Set? All of these have us dead to rights.
Feh, might even be QQ for the chop, if we fade BB and Crazy's draws...

I'm currently advocating for fold.
 
Looking at this had and the knowledge we have gained I would lean to a fold and look for a better spot. Nothing wrong with erring on caution for this hand.
 
I suspect that I have a lot more gamble in my game than you do and I would find this a pretty easy fold if I'm playing my b game or better. I stack off a good 20% of the time though just to keep my image (and I do like to gambol)
 
*** and now the unsatisfying end ***

Hero folds. Button raises as advertised. Everyone folds, no one shows.

At the time I thought Hero made a good decision but in my after-action review aided by solid odds calculation I think hero made an error - perhaps a huge error.

Hero risked $380 to win $321 + $380 + $380 = $1081 ----> Hero needs 35% equity to shove knowing that Button calls and presuming the rest fold. Of course there is some risk BB or Crazy will have a good hand but Hero isn't truly unhappy with a donkey train. (I did consider that a really crafty BB holding a straight or even a set might make a micro bet hoping to trigger a shove by hero and maybe trapping BB into playing a mighty pot.)

Hero isn't fearful of two pair since he has better than 35% equity vs that hand (~38%), but sets (~22% equity) and straights (~16% equity) hurt, Hero has something like 70% equity vs a lot of draws. Even if we bias Button's hand towards made hands, I'd still give hero at least 40% equity. If Hero has 40% equity, the fold is a $52 error. (its basically $10 per percentage point of equity over 35%.) $50 off a session's win rate is a big mistake - - opps!

Hero's table error was misjudging the value of two pair vs his hand. Hero made a rule of thumb guess of 25% equity for an over-pair vs two pair failing to add value for the gut shot draw.

Thanks for the input -=- DrStrange
 
I think you may be falling into results based analysis here.

Let's look at the hand in the moment. You have three players who appear to be ready and willing to put in enough chips to cover you, two of whom appear to be attempting to rep the nuts. Lets say you do shove, what hands could you reasonably expect to be up against where you have enough equity? (again, you have to assume that the Donk bettor is coming along since he is repping a monster - unless you have a super read, and your crazy will come up with some type of "I have to call, there's so much in there")

Even if you assume that no one has QJ or J7 (which is a bold assumption given the action) what three hands can you be facing where you have enough equity?

I think you'll find that if you give the field any combo of pairs and draws you are a major dog here. I havent run it, but I'd assume you are 15% at best if no one has a straight yet.
 
Hero needs 35% equity to shove knowing that Button calls and presuming the rest fold

But that's a presumption. If the rest call, you have roughly 25% equity, assuming Button has two pair. I would not have been surprised to see BB or Crazy call.

But you're right to go through the logic... one thing pushing me towards "jam" earlier was the fact that the bet/pot are so big that we're effectively playing short-stack poker - there aren't reverse-implied odds for us, and the size of the pot seriously brings down the amount of equity we need.
 

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