$25 NL, Small Pair from the Button

A tough decision to be made here, would be interested to know what my fellow CCers think:

Reads virtually none. I haven`t been long at this table and the main villain, CJKelly, joined after me and has played only 3 or 4 hands. In that time, he has seen every flop, so is probably loose, but the sample is too small to be sure.


Stage #630469923: Holdem No Limit $0.25 - 2007-04-13 16:35:08 (ET)
Table: KING DR (Real Money) Seat #2 is the dealer
Seat 2 - EGONTOWST ($9.65 in chips)
Seat 3 - MAGUSMAN ($8.98 in chips)
Seat 5 - NLPLYR32 ($31.35 in chips)
Seat 6 - MUCKIT85 ($13.40 in chips)
Seat 1 - CJKELLY ($11.99 in chips)
MAGUSMAN - Posts small blind $0.10
NLPLYR32 - Posts big blind $0.25
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to EGONTOWST [5s 5h]
MUCKIT85 - Folds
CJKELLY - Calls $0.25
EGONTOWST - Calls $0.25
MAGUSMAN - Calls $0.15
NLPLYR32 - Checks
*** FLOP *** [5c 3s 4d]
MAGUSMAN - Bets $0.25
NLPLYR32 - Calls $0.25
CJKELLY - Raises $1 to $1

What would you do now, guys, and why ?

Considering for some reason I'm only sitting with little over a third of a buyin I'm happy to go broke here. Raise to ~$3, call a reraise.

I'd call for sure, with the rainbow board and even if someone limped in with A 2, 2 6, or 6 7, I'd still see the turn to try and make a boat. After the turn is a different story. Cash tables you can always reload and if you do hit that boat, nobody is going to put you on it and you could easily make a lot of cash if they did have the str8.

I don't call here simply because (a) we're ahead of his range, and (b) because of the chance of a scare card hitting the turn and killing the action if, say, he has a lower set or 2-pair, both of which make up a reasonable proportion of his range.

Dont call, raise to $3, im not totally against a shove either considering the stacksizes. If he has the straight then its just a cooler.

I'd often just shove. At $25NL shoving here will get it all-in a whole lot vs. 2 pair and honestly even 56/66/77, whereas a turn card could kill your action. If they're going to call a raise to $3, they'll probably call a shove.

I would shove, since there is no flush draws.

Dorkus Malorkus said:

for some reason I'm only sitting with little over a third of a buyin.

Click to expand...

I joined the table a few hands previously with $10. I usually try to sit down with a similar stack to the other players (but never less than 40 BBs).

Does anybody think that perhaps I should have raised pre-flop ? 55 is not a great raising hand, but may be justified from the button with just one limper before me ?

Ok, I promised in the OP that there was a tough decision:

Dorkus and Tenbob will be pleased to see I did this:


EGONTOWST - Raises $3.25 to $3.25



and the hand continued



MAGUSMAN - Folds
NLPLYR32 - Folds
CJKELLY - All-In(Raise) $10.74 to $11.74


so, there is the problem. Call or fold ?

easy call for me.

He may very well have straight but also tons of other hands. lower sets, 66s, A6 even.....

Even if he has straight, then so be it. We still have outs.

With the low limits, I would have pushed on the flop. But now it's a call for sure. If he's sittin on A♠ 2♠ or 6♦ 7♦ you still got outs.

Pretty standard call I would think, plus it's a reraise that smells like it maybe a draw A♦ 5♦ or he has something like 3's or 4's.

Either way a call is the right move in my eyes.

alan1983 said:

easy call

Click to expand...

Yep.

Guessing he had A2 or suchlike, but we're ahead of a lot of hands in his range - the shove doesn't really change that too much - we can still include hands like 66, lower sets and two pairs in there, and even if we are behind we have outs.

Easy easy call for me. I'm pretty much just repeating what was mentioned, but we're way ahead of his range and even if we're behind vs say 67, we still have boatloads of outs.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 72.078% 70.28% 01.80% 77233 1973.00 { 5c5d }
Hand 1: 27.922% 26.13% 01.80% 28711 1973.00 { 33+, A2s, 76s, 65s, 53s+, 43s, A2o, 76o, 65o, 53o+, 43o }

Instapoosh

Easy call here. The only time i seriously consider a laydown here, is if the stacks are much deeper, over 100BB and he shoves, then I would only consideration laying it down.

Well, I thought it was a toughie.

I see I`m going to have to find something trickier to test you guys. Too many poker-playing dudes round here.

Against a random hand, we are obviously a big favourite here. In practice, though, I think (or thought at the time) his most likely holding is A2o or A2s. That seems to best fit the betting so far.

If that is his hand, we are behind about 65/35, or 1.9:1. Allowing for the fact that $2.34 will be returned to him (because we can`t quite match his stack), we are being asked a price of $6.15 to call a pot of $14.15, or 2.3:1, so pot odds favour a call.

Now I know that you old lags understand all this , but bear with me while I put another way for the benefit of the newer members.

If we call this bet 100 times, the expected outcome will be:

65 times, we will lose $6.15, a total loss of $399.75.
35 times, we will win $14.15, a total profit of $495.25.

Long term, we will make more than we lose.

So, even though one may think, "Damn, he likely has the straight, we are beaten", the correct course of action is to call. (Actually, it`s even more clearly correct when you consider that he may not have the straight at all. It`s possible he might make the same move with {say} pocket 4s.)

So:


EGONTOWST - All-In $6.15
CJKELLY - returned ($2.34) : not called


Can you guess what happened next ??


Go on, guess.



*** TURN *** [5c 3s 4d] [Kh]
*** RIVER *** [5c 3s 4d Kh] [4h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
CJKELLY - Shows [7s 6s] (Straight, three to seven)
EGONTOWST - Shows [5s 5h] (Full house, fives full of fours)
EGONTOWST Collects $19.30 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($20.30) | Rake ($1)
Board [5c 3s 4d Kh 4h]
Seat 1: CJKELLY HI:lost with Straight, three to seven [7s 6s - P:7s,P:6s,B:5c,B:4h,B:3s]
Seat 2: EGONTOWST (dealer) won Total ($19.30) All-In HI$19.30) with Full house, fives full of fours [5s 5h - P:5s,P:5h,B:5c,B:4h,B:4d]
Seat 3: MAGUSMAN (small blind) Folded on the FLOP
Seat 5: NLPLYR32 (big blind) Folded on the FLOP
Seat 6: MUCKIT85 Folded on the POCKET CARDS



Poor guy got them all in with the nuts and still lost.

Isn`t it funny how what he probably saw as a stinking bad beat is actually correct play from our perspective.

That`s poker.