Should I ever fold QQ/KK preflop in a 6 Max cash game?

[trippin]

how many hands beat you with kk? lol easy call. QQ depends on stack, how many callers, position, ect...

 

[bstest]

Just call. If an A shows on the flop, then it's time to think, you're probably skunked.

 

[paulsmall007]

Never pre flop folding and rarely folding flop either, hard to tell without specifics but 6 handed almost never

 

[rick rosamond]

KK short of playing an all in super nit go in..if villain has AA then out draw him...by the time you consider your favored against all other hold card and alive verses AA you gotta go..QQ is much weaker unless table is loose or wild pre-flop find a better spot

 

[chronical]

any decent Ax, is loosing 60/40% so it leaves you ~at 12 hands that are better than yours. Unless you know your opp to be uber NIT there i not point

 

[hcpalli]

I would say dont re-raise with Queens unless the players entering the pot are hella fishy and theres so many limpers you want to just take down the pot right there or there's only one player who raised the pot before you.

If there are two players + possibly going all in you lose to kings, aces ace king aceX Kx too often and you might get put all in by some micro fish with 66 and possibly have to lay down the best hand if you dont have a read on him.

I would definitely call a re-raise up to 5 max 10% of my stack and hope to flop a set or hope that no king or ace come on the board and the pot isn't getting pumped until i'm all in.

But if u flopped a set and there's heavy action there's now a larger number of hands that you have beat that justify you going all in that action.

Kings on the other hand i would play for all my chips pre flop because i'm hoping some baboon is playing jacks or queens or ace king or ace queen suited for all their chips pre flop.

 

[AjsmenX]

I would conisder folding QQ just if i know my opponents shoving range is AX and im in bubble phase with good stack

 

[Senneville]

Monster hand go raise and reraise preflop. Tell your opponement you have it. Dont slow play because all weak AS will call you. GL in your cash game.

 

[thomasguy3419]

Certainly! Mr Ineverjamwithlessthanaces shoves. Drop those kings like they were on fire! You're never good here.

Otherwise, what do you have? (K,K) or (Q,Q)? It makes a big difference. What do you know about this opponent? Have you seen him jam with jacks, tens, (A,K) (A,Q-suited)? What does he think of your play, your table image? Does he see you as a nit/TAG/LAG? That also figures into what he'll risk his stack.

Stack size does matter very much. If you're short (you do reload when short don't you?) or are against a shortie, then what are you waiting for? If you're short, and get one of the three top pairs in the pocket, it's double up or get up time. If he's the shortie, then break him, free his seat for a more well heeled fish. If you double him up, you haven't done much damage to your stack.

Makes no difference: 5NL plays just like 10NL and even higher. There are more fish in those games than at Sea World. It doesn't begin to change until you're well beyond the Micros.

I forgot to mention this is a ZOOM cash game. What does "well beyond the micros" mean?

 

[Dorugremon]

I forgot to mention this is a ZOOM cash game. What does "well beyond the micros" mean?

Don't play Zoom, doesn't work for me.

2000+NL

 

[donkcentralFF]

Raise re-raise and another reraise in cash.. I will let them go, but has to be a villian who you know is rock tight

 

[razzor94]

I was grinding zoom cash games just like you on stars for the last 2 months and i built my BR by taking shots with 10-15 BI at 10NL and i was very succesfull. The only diffrence is that i played full ring without a hud becouse it was faster. I also made my post flop decisions much easier playing the top of my range, taking advantage of my position and skill edge.
This is what i have to say about it:

1.Zoom tables are full of nits folding everything but the top 3-5% of their range which is TT+ AK. So how do you win ? Even though there are full of nits, there are 100x more fish there. Becouse i didnt use a hud i looked for other tells.
Firstly look at their stack sizes. Not a lot of good players will buy in with less than 100BB. So they are probably more fishy.
Secondly their bet sizeing. Its going to be some strange donk betting min raising, limping stuff like that. You should also look if they are positionaly aware which means look what they open with and from where.
And thirdly TAKE NOTES. I cant emphesize this enough. Especially against regs and multitablers. They are the ones that play similar to you. Preflop they probably wont make to many mistakes, but look for post flop leaks. They are either too loose-passive( value bet ), too tight (check raise bluff, barrel, steal...), to aggresive(call marginaly, trap...)

2.Never buy in with less than 100BB.

3.Bet your strong hands. Fish dont know what it means when you raise 3xBB or 5xBB or 7xBB. They will call if they think their hand is pretty or its their favourite hand or whatever. Exploit that. Also most of the time you will get less callers and go against hands that you dominate.

4.Steal like crazy and defend your blinds with some lighter 3bets. Since there are bunch of nits playing zoom they will fold roughly 65-70% the time in my opinion, which means your steal of 2.5BB from the CO or the BTN is mathematically a gold mine. Also they will fold roughly the same percentage to 3bets from the BTN and CO. Use some suited Ax, Kx,( having some blockers in your hand means more fold equity), suited broadway cards or some suited connectors. Be aware that this is full ring in my case. 6max calling ranges to steals and resteals are going to differ from full ring, so you might want to put in more value 3bets in your range, but you should also have some light 3bets as well. Generaly 6max is more aggresive and people get more stickier with their hands.

5. I would advise not to play zoom poker as a regular game type.
Swings happen more often and people dont cope well with huge downswings. Yeah you play more hands and there is more action but magority of the time you will play against unknowns with litle info so you will get into much trickier spots and will face some tough decisions pre and post flop.

5. So to finally answer your question do you fold QQ/KK.
Lets talk about KK firts becouse its not going to take long. In my 2 months of grinding zoom full ring i folded KK pre only once. And thats becouse we were both 200BB deep, he raised from UTG i 3bet he 4bets i fold + i had notes on him.
Generally speaking in a cash game 100BB deep its never going to be -EV to go all in with KK, especially when you put more than 1/3 of your stack in the middle. Lets say at 5NL you raise from EP standard 0.15$.
A nit with 5% 3bet 3bets to 0.5$ and you 4bet to 1.5$ which is about litle less than 1/3 of your stack and he shoves all in. You need to pay 3.5$ to wing 6.5$ so you are getting 1.8 to 1 so you need 35% equity to make that call, and lets say his shoving range is in worst case scenario KK+ AK. Even against a range as strong as that you have 47% equity so you have to call. You only fold there if you are certain that he shoves only KK+. Against an unknown in 6max i am never folding.

QQ is a litle bit different and would you believe me if i said that is the one of the toughest hand to play at full ring ? I have folded QQ plenty of times. I like full ring becouse its more straight farward and peaple dont raise marginal hand from EP or even MP. 6max is action full and would get more stickier with QQ.
To an EP raiser, say UTG raise, i am flating IP about 40% times against reg opponents, cause i dont think he continues with much worse when i 3bet(maybe 99, TT and JJ and AK which has really good equtiy against our hand), he 4bets KK+ and AK and you will probably have to go for a shove or fold. Calling the 4bet gets you in a small SPR pot and gets you pot commited.
Flating his EP raise IP gives you so much more ways to win the pot.
Against a fish i raise 100% from wherever he opened.
Blind vs steal i would flat 50% and i would 3bet 50% time against regs. Both have advantages. Lets say he steals light you call. You give him a chance to cbet when he misses (and he misses the board completely 2/3 of the time) and you get more money out of him whether if you 3bet he is more likely to fold and you only pick up the inital raise.
3bet is also fine couse he is going to call with so much worse hands and at 6max i would probably go for 30% flat 70% 3bet.
Blind vs blind i am never folding QQ pre against an unknown, simple as that.
Hope you find this useful. This is my first post in the past 18 months and i put much thought in it cause i went trough same thoughts as you did and gathered this information trough training, experience, cardschat collegues etc...
Good luck at the tables.

 

[Thinker_145]

You should always be open to the possiblity of folding any hand in poker that is not the nuts. I have folded QQ many times pre.

I have not folded KK yet but I am open to the possibility. Not folding it for 100BB but with deeper stacks it might happen one day.

 

[plyto777]

QQ against a tight player will not play .. KK I can not lose pre-flop)

 

[bnasp2]

On NL20 and less, you can go all-in with KK. Be more carefull with QQ (at best you will see AK, other times KK/AA).
For that KK its for 100BB deep and less. For like 200BB it depends also on opponent and there are situations where you could fold KK.

 

[BentleyBoy]

So! Is it your cards that you are interested in, or is it the situation? For starters, forget your cards and consider everything else on the table and around the table and everything you know about the players you are up against (not forgetting position). All of these things need to be considered way before you even think about your cards. that way you may be able to provide yourself with an easy answer to whether to play the cards you have in the way that you describe.

 

[Poker Orifice]

I was grinding zoom cash games just like you on stars for the last 2 months and i built my BR by taking shots with 10-15 BI at 10NL and i was very succesfull. The only diffrence is that i played full ring without a hud becouse it was faster. I also made my post flop decisions much easier playing the top of my range, taking advantage of my position and skill edge.
This is what i have to say about it:

1.Zoom tables are full of nits folding everything but the top 3-5% of their range which is TT+ AK. So how do you win ? Even though there are full of nits, there are 100x more fish there. Becouse i didnt use a hud i looked for other tells.
Firstly look at their stack sizes. Not a lot of good players will buy in with less than 100BB. So they are probably more fishy.
Secondly their bet sizeing. Its going to be some strange donk betting min raising, limping stuff like that. You should also look if they are positionaly aware which means look what they open with and from where.
And thirdly TAKE NOTES. I cant emphesize this enough. Especially against regs and multitablers. They are the ones that play similar to you. Preflop they probably wont make to many mistakes, but look for post flop leaks. They are either too loose-passive( value bet ), too tight (check raise bluff, barrel, steal...), to aggresive(call marginaly, trap...)

2.Never buy in with less than 100BB.

3.Bet your strong hands. Fish dont know what it means when you raise 3xBB or 5xBB or 7xBB. They will call if they think their hand is pretty or its their favourite hand or whatever. Exploit that. Also most of the time you will get less callers and go against hands that you dominate.

4.Steal like crazy and defend your blinds with some lighter 3bets. Since there are bunch of nits playing zoom they will fold roughly 65-70% the time in my opinion, which means your steal of 2.5BB from the CO or the BTN is mathematically a gold mine. Also they will fold roughly the same percentage to 3bets from the BTN and CO. Use some suited Ax, Kx,( having some blockers in your hand means more fold equity), suited broadway cards or some suited connectors. Be aware that this is full ring in my case. 6max calling ranges to steals and resteals are going to differ from full ring, so you might want to put in more value 3bets in your range, but you should also have some light 3bets as well. Generaly 6max is more aggresive and people get more stickier with their hands.

5. I would advise not to play zoom poker as a regular game type.
Swings happen more often and people dont cope well with huge downswings. Yeah you play more hands and there is more action but magority of the time you will play against unknowns with litle info so you will get into much trickier spots and will face some tough decisions pre and post flop.

5. So to finally answer your question do you fold QQ/KK.
Lets talk about KK firts becouse its not going to take long. In my 2 months of grinding zoom full ring i folded KK pre only once. And thats becouse we were both 200BB deep, he raised from UTG i 3bet he 4bets i fold + i had notes on him.
Generally speaking in a cash game 100BB deep its never going to be -EV to go all in with KK, especially when you put more than 1/3 of your stack in the middle. Lets say at 5NL you raise from EP standard 0.15$.
A nit with 5% 3bet 3bets to 0.5$ and you 4bet to 1.5$ which is about litle less than 1/3 of your stack and he shoves all in. You need to pay 3.5$ to wing 6.5$ so you are getting 1.8 to 1 so you need 35% equity to make that call, and lets say his shoving range is in worst case scenario KK+ AK. Even against a range as strong as that you have 47% equity so you have to call. You only fold there if you are certain that he shoves only KK+. Against an unknown in 6max i am never folding.

QQ is a litle bit different and would you believe me if i said that is the one of the toughest hand to play at full ring ? I have folded QQ plenty of times. I like full ring becouse its more straight farward and peaple dont raise marginal hand from EP or even MP. 6max is action full and would get more stickier with QQ.
To an EP raiser, say UTG raise, i am flating IP about 40% times against reg opponents, cause i dont think he continues with much worse when i 3bet(maybe 99, TT and JJ and AK which has really good equtiy against our hand), he 4bets KK+ and AK and you will probably have to go for a shove or fold. Calling the 4bet gets you in a small SPR pot and gets you pot commited.
Flating his EP raise IP gives you so much more ways to win the pot.
Against a fish i raise 100% from wherever he opened.
Blind vs steal i would flat 50% and i would 3bet 50% time against regs. Both have advantages. Lets say he steals light you call. You give him a chance to cbet when he misses (and he misses the board completely 2/3 of the time) and you get more money out of him whether if you 3bet he is more likely to fold and you only pick up the inital raise.
3bet is also fine couse he is going to call with so much worse hands and at 6max i would probably go for 30% flat 70% 3bet.
Blind vs blind i am never folding QQ pre against an unknown, simple as that.
Hope you find this useful. This is my first post in the past 18 months and i put much thought in it cause i went trough same thoughts as you did and gathered this information trough training, experience, cardschat collegues etc...
Good luck at the tables.

FANTASTIC Answer razzor94!!!

You obviously put some time & effort into this post & I feel this is a great oppurtunity for others to gain a ton of knowledge from it!

Reading through the other posts in this thread there's mostly a ton of useless garbage. It had me thinking that I wanted to post a comment with some real info. for the original poster but then I came across your's which is far better than anything I was going to write. Well done!

 

[razzor94]

FANTASTIC Answer razzor94!!!

You obviously put some time & effort into this post & I feel this is a great oppurtunity for others to gain a ton of knowledge from it!

Reading through the other posts in this thread there's mostly a ton of useless garbage. It had me thinking that I wanted to post a comment with some real info. for the original poster but then I came across your's which is far better than anything I was going to write. Well done!

Thanks mate i appreciate it.

 

[underdog140]

It would be hard to find a spot that I would lay down KK pre-flop. Generally speaking when there are multiple players all in pre-flop I would consider laying it down. At the penny tables I likely just call.

QQ is much easier to fold pre-flop since the hands we are going to be running into has us flipping or dominated AK/AA/KK.

 

[ChuckNola]

I would conisder folding QQ just if i know my opponents shoving range is AX and im in bubble phase with good stack

There is no bubble phase in a cash game