Raise, float, or fold?

This situation is hypothetical, and is so commonly seen IMO.

You're playing a 25NL 6 max game and you're in the BB.

The CO, a standard TAG raises to .85 and you're in the BB with KJ. You choose to call.

Flop comes 8d 6h 3s

You check and the CO bets something like $1.50 into a pot of $2, a standard continuation bet.

Do you raise, call, or fold?

BenLZ said:

Do you raise, call, or fold?

Click to expand...

Yes.

RF

If we were BTN in this spot I would think about floating, it's so much harder to float out-of-position. But since we are indeed OOP, I much prefer a c/r than a float if we have a read and think we can take the pot away. Folding is probably fine, too, since we only have overcards and no other draw.

c/f or c/r, mostly c/f unless I've got reason to think the c/r will work.

What is your plan for the turn if you float? (directing that question at anyone who likes floating here)

If we're going to float this OOP, our villain must tend to fire only one barrel, so that when we check the turn, he'll check behind and we can take it away on a good river card. If he bets the turn, it's likely for value, so we can fold easily.

Since this is much more complicated and risky than floating in position, I don't really like the play very much, unless we have a solid read of some sort.

BenLZ said:

This situation is hypothetical, and is so commonly seen IMO.

You're playing a 25NL 6 max game and you're in the BB.

The CO, a standard TAG raises to .85 and you're in the BB with KJ. You choose to call.

Flop comes 8d 6h 3s

You check and the CO bets something like $1.50 into a pot of $2, a standard continuation bet.

Do you raise, call, or fold?

Click to expand...

the correct answer in this spot is to NOT call the raise preflop... flop is J/2/5 and your loosing to JJ/ JA/QQ/KK/AA/22/55, flop comes K/2/5 and your loosing to KQ/KK/KA/22/55 ... not a hand worth playing to a raise OOP unless you have a read on the opponent, in which case the answer of what to do after the flop becomes easy...

i would much prefer a re-raise preflop on this situation, put the pressure on him, not on yourself... if your going to float or check/raise on the flop than it would be more pressure and i feel more effective to re-raise preflop where your investing the same $ as a check raise, but are re-applying the pressure...

Check fold.

I have no problems with the call pre. Against his range and being out of position a 3-bet isn't too good with a hand like that. Also if we fold KJ to a LP raise what are we going to ever play?

That flop though hits his range pretty hard. We're looking at lots of straight draws, sets and at best he has over cards.

We're going to hate virtually every turn card as it's very likely to strengthen is range/hand.
Check raising is bad I think, because we're building a pot against a range that is likely to want to shove over you or call because he has lots of reasons to see the turn.

Give it up, you gave it a shot and the flop sucked.

InLecture9 said:

the correct answer in this spot is to NOT call the raise preflop... flop is J/2/5 and your loosing to JJ/ JA/QQ/KK/AA/22/55, flop comes K/2/5 and your loosing to KQ/KK/KA/22/55 ... not a hand worth playing to a raise OOP unless you have a read on the opponent, in which case the answer of what to do after the flop becomes easy...

i would much prefer a re-raise preflop on this situation, put the pressure on him, not on yourself... if your going to float or check/raise on the flop than it would be more pressure and i feel more effective to re-raise preflop where your investing the same $ as a check raise, but are re-applying the pressure...

Click to expand...

Why are you just spouting hands that beat him? Assign a proper range and go from there.

Tbh i'm loving a J high flop, but I agree that being OOP really sucks and unless you have a solid post-flop game folding isn't too bad. You're just recommending it for the wrong reasons.

its too hard to float OOP, folding is the best option here, not much point getting tricky when u've only invest 85c.

For the 3bet or call decision pre-flop, it's an easy 3bet but if for some reason you have a balanced range that calls a LP raise from the blinds then KJ is one of the best hands for it.

KJ isn't bad to call OOP against a weak range, if your opponent is going to spew post-flop with dominated hands. The problem is that there aren't many hands that dominate his range that you don't want to raise for value.
Only 3betting here is better for our value range and lets us play light occasionally.

Aside from all of that, the best reason, imo, is that 3betting is simple. You know that if you 3bet xbb you need folds y% of the time and it will show an immediate proffit. This is easily figured out, consider his CO raising range and the range you expect him to call a 3bet with and if he folds more than y%, it's proffitable. Stating the obvious, I know, but I'm making a point, this line is simple, obvious, precise.
We're also underestimating our value because he will call and give us a +EV opportunity to cbet some of the time (plus, we will actually make a hand some of the time).

If however we call pre-flop, we can probably make money. There is a lot of grey area in this though. Will he cbet air more or less often against the blinds, will he float a c/r lightly, is his bet sizing on this board texture when in position bigger or smaller than normal? Overall, we have the best hand against a weak range so it's probably going to be proffitable, but we KNOW 3betting IS proffitable.

It's simple, and we're OOP so simple=good, make things complicated when you're the guy in CO and have the edge in information gathering post-flop.


Sorry for the derailing of a thread about floating...



Regarding the actual topic though, since we decided to call pre-flop in this particular hand we have to play back without top pair a lot for this pre-flop call to be +EV. What flops are we going to play back on? A high is terrible for us because we called OOP and almost never have the A, he raised in LP so there are more A's than normal in his range. So we're really looking at trying to find fold equity on Q high flops and raggy flops, or we should have folded pre-flop.
Yes, KJ dominates his range, but it's not going to hit (and be good) often enough to call pre-flop and have it be +EV.
So we are bluffing, and if we're going to bluff, do we check-call or check-raise? - Because we can't donk bet, because obviously that causes too much action against regs.
Check-raising is stronger and the standard line if we hit the flop or picked up any kind of draw. So check-raising is good.
Check-calling is risky since we're building a big pot with a hand that isn't worth much, OOP against a wide range.



Out of all of that rambling, let me summarise as:
Calling pre-flop=bad. 3betting preflop=good. Check-calling flop=bad. Check-raising flop=good.

I would have to agree with the poker kid. I rarely (never?) call JK preflop in this situation. I either 3bet or fold. I really don't see JK being a profitable hand from the blinds.