What about JJ in a Tournament?

What do you think about such thing:

early position fold J J because:

-too much people after u
-people who call your raise or reraise will have a better hand.
-out of position;you will have to talk early on the flop
-If you raise and get called the chance for higher cards than a J is too big to wasted money on J J early position.

JJ is a hand too good to ever fold in an unopened pot. If you are open folding JJ you will be an exploitable player. Much of the play should be based on your stack size, the stacks of opponents, your perceived range versus their calling raising ranges. Even when an over card hits on the flop a C-bet will often take the pot down or let you range your opponents more clearly. You can't play scared of the monsters because people call with tens in later positions too and that equity is to great to fold based on fear.

ALLIN.

People will not always call or reraise with better hands... You'll get called by lower pockets and you'll get Reraises from AK,AQ type hands and be flipping. You might even get 3bet by Pocket 10s and maybe pocket 9s here.

If you're scared of JJ, limp the pot, or call the raise, see the flop and decide from there. If you get 3bet then go ahead and fold IF you think this is right, otherwise, call.

There is 3 way how to play pocket JJ , and all 3 are wrong

I agree with Luke. You can't just lay it down. If I get JJ in an early position, I will usually raise to at least 3xBB. If I get 3 bet, then I have another decision to make, and that's where I have to rely on my instinct and the impressions I have of the other player. If you are late in a tourney and you are small stacked (say 8 BBs or less), then it's just an automatic shove and you hope for the best. If it's midway through a tourney, you are not near the bubble yet, your stack is maybe slightly below the chip average, then I might just try to limp in and see if you can catch a flop.

As somebody once said, there are 3 ways to play pocket Jacks. And they are all wrong.

how can you fold jacks in early position when nobody even raises? the best way to play jacks imo is playing it aggressively especially on early position like 4bb or 5bb raise
also if someone makes a 3 bet you can shove all in or make a 4 bet fold if you are deepstack like 100bb or more.

JJ is always a good hand to raise with if no one has 2-bet before, but in general it can be a 50/50 whether you should 3-bet someone with them or just flat call depending who did the raising initially.

if i got short stack all in, if not raise and see flop, never fold

There's absolutely no way that I fold JJ It depends on that in what phase is the tournament - if it's in the beggining I would raise 3x or 4x and see what happens but if it's in late phase and I don't have much chips all-in is the best decision. Also if I'm the chip-leader I would probably go all-in too

With JJ, the odds are still very good that you have the best hand pre-flop. After the flop, a C-bet will usually tell you if you have the best hand or not. If you don't have a big enough stack to find out this information (i.e. these bets will take more than half your stack), then I think you should just push and hope for the best.
After the bubble, once I am less than 10BB, I usually play very aggressively with JJ and will shove in mid or late position.

It depends on the stage of the tournament, and the size of the stack. In the beginning I will do 3-4 bet, if I did not have to raise. If my raise, I moved the call, hoping to set. On the bubble, I'll call if the stack is greater than 60 blinds and watch the street. In short, ALL in:Д course.

You can't fold this when you are on UTG2+ for example, for sure, you obv. will raise.. but If Button or SB re-raise and BB moves all-in you can fold there .. On other situations 1v1 on all in sutuation easy call.

-too much people after u
-people who call your raise or reraise will have a better hand.

There are only 3 (arguably 4 if it turns into a multi-way pot with like 7 or 8 people ) hands that dominate you pre-flop, so odds are you get called by a worse hand or take the pot without showdown.

-out of position;you will have to talk early on the flop
-If you raise and get called the chance for higher cards than a J is too big to wasted money on J J early position.

I think these are reasons to go all-in rather than reasons for folding. The only thing you've really got to worry about is running into a bigger PP. Here's a chart that might help you feel better about this risk:


Let's look at a couple examples where you might be better off than you imagine...

Scenario 1
You go all-in with JJ, villain calls with AKs (not what you wanted to see) and has a ~31% chance of hitting an A, a K, or both on the flop and even if (s)he misses the flop, there's still 2 cards to come (damn river!). There are more outs for flushes, straights, etc as well. That might sound discouraging, but realistically you're ahead! JJ 53.9% AKs 46.1% :deal:

Scenario 2
You shove with JJ in EP, get called by AKs, TT, and AQo You've got TT dominated, but surely AKs/AQo have you beat, right? Again, you're better off than you think... JJ 35% AKs 31.4% TT 17.2% AQo 16.4%

I don't think JJ is really as hard to play as people say, so long as proper BRM is in place and you're not on the bubble. At the end of the day it's really just the variance you have to worry about :joyman:

All that said, depending on table dynamics (stack sizes, player tendencies, etc) there could be better ways to play this hand than shoving. There's so much variance in MTT that avoiding coinflips can be beneficial, but only to a point. Hope it helps, I often raise more questions than I answer :stupid:

3-bet and call re-raise (excluding all-in)
if higher cards on flop - check/fold

It depends on many variables like table dynamics, stacks, etc.

But what is important, have to be very careful on this hand.

If you are scared to play a big pot, you can limp from early position.
A raise from another player will be most of time 3-4 BB, so then you call and see a cheap flop.

The best advice I ever saw about the way to play JJ is in this video.


I know it's been posted before but it is excellent.

It's not ****ing 2002, JJ is super strong. Stop being a bitch

onemorechance said:

It's not ****ing 2002, JJ is super strong. Stop being a bitch

Click to expand...

Was 2002 a particularly bad year for JJ then?

Henry Minute said:

Was 2002 a particularly bad year for JJ then?

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i guess that he mean that the style of play was tighter in those days and thats true. the style of play is much more aggresive now than 10 or 20 years ago. so folding jj in those days wasnt considered the same as folding jacks nowadays.

JJ fold............that was the mistake! you were more afraid of losing the tourney then you were of winning it. you have to know you were most likely to lose anyways. tourneys are 4 or 5 hours long. if your playing tourneys for entertainment then by all means drag it out as long as possible, but if you are playing to win.......shove that JJ every time

Only way to play JJ is to play for quads

Really like most things in poker the answer would be it depends. .... I mean against the looser players at the table JJ will be great to get it in with but against tighter or better players you'd be better treading carefully

onemorechance said:

It's not ****ing 2002, JJ is super strong. Stop being a bitch

Click to expand...

This is the answer.

That video was funny, but he played so badly in almost every hand...