Making that read on AK...

Ive been debating this with a friend, been wondering about others' opinions.

say you are at a 1/2 or 2/4 game. you hold 99 in middle position. the person to your right bets 5 BB preflop. you call. (full table btw)

flop comes 25T rainbow.

if he holds AK/AQ the flop completely missed and you have the best hand.

if he holds TT-AA you're screwed.

if the person is pretty tight you can assume he will raise here with TT-AA, and AQ/AK.

according to %s, about 47% of his raises will be with AQ/AK and 53% will be with TT-AA.

if you encounter this situations 20x a day and you fold everytime you dont hit a set, you are folding the best hand much too often. so ~9 hands out of 20 you make a fold because you arent sure if he has AK/AQ or a high PP where you are a huge dog.

if you are right and reraise and get him to fold here you will only win the continuation bet and his preflop bet. if you are wrong you lose 5x BB preflop, and 22 BB post flop (at a 1/2 table thats ~22 in the pot on the flop, and a continuation bet of ~15, and your reraise of ~42 equalling roughly 22 BB)

you have to be right 66% of the time to break even. but if you can pick your spot once a day and be right nearly every time, your daily profit goes up by almost 10% assuming you average 100-110 BB/Day ($200-220/day at 1/2 is my average)



some outside opinions would be welcomed here, i see enormous potential if you could get your reads down. my friend thinks its too risky

so in making that read, what are some crucial factors you look at? should this just be an automatic fold every time?

personally i think the percentages are wrong. Once you see the flop, the odds of him having TT are extremely low, and so are those of AA. Even if the guy were a tight player, I would definitly expect him to raise almost every time with A K or A Q with that kind of flop. A tight player need to make his money somehow, and thats with the hands he is waiting for... If he misses, they can always bluff, and i kid you not, tight players are forced to bluff a lot. AK and AQ... with a flop as low as that, isnt that bad of a hand if you see it from his perspective. You probably wouldnt have called that big of a bet with A T... so he disregardes that. Maybe a pocket pair, but other than that you are looking at Ace high hands or suited connectors... and even if you made a small pair, theres a good chance you would fold to a fair raise... and even if you called that guy can always catch an ace or king... its actually a good chance for him to catch... less than 50% but a good chance.... So overall i believe they usually would raise, and the best thing you could do is probably reraise him there. You dont want him to go trying to catch that A or K.

i think most of us face this kind of a problem where we call a pp hoping to hit a set...if we hit wooha but if we miss and there is a high card on flop and villain cb's the flop we don't know what to do..i think you must reraise many times in such a situation to get a feel...he will be folding much often to the check raises

First of all I dont think one should call a re-raise preflop with 99 in the first place if you´re only going to continue playing the hand if the flop brings you 3 lower cards, in your example of 2-5-T flop there right move is in at least 80% of the time to re-raise right there to find out where you´re at.

99 isn't the best hand to go on a rerasing spree with.

Not if you think his range is TT+/AQ+:

Board: Tc 5h 2s
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 53.604% 53.60% 00.00% 168756 0.00 { AA, QQ-TT, AQs+, AQo+ }
Hand 1: 46.396% 46.40% 00.00% 146064 0.00 { 99 }

That calc is also assuming that AQ+, the only hands we beat, is even more likely than the %53 or whatever that you stated.

If that's his range and we assume no fold equity vs the overpairs (as well as implied odds), then it's an easy fold.

well, with 99, you need to be raising about 5 times the big blind because you want to steal the blinds, but if he 3 bets you should fold. If the flop is low, then you should probabally lead out with a feeler bet, about 1/3 of the pot and if you get raised, fold. Most people tend to raise or fold with a king or ace in their hand instead of call. As well, look at their style of play, stack size. You need to be careful, when the flop is low and there is still an overcard on the board. if he is very aggressive he is probabally raising with a much wider range of hands.