Reraised, holding TPTK

[t1riel]

I've noticed that I'm making the wrong move when I get reraised after the flop with TPTK. I'll provide two scenarios:

50/100 blinds. Everyone roughly has 3,500. I get dealt in middle position. I raise to 350. Late position folds, Button reraises to 800. The blinds fold. I call. The flop:

.

I bet 800. Button reraises to 2100. It's either all in or fold from here, right? I fold. Button reveals .



Now, same scenario but different player. I go all in this time and my opponent shows .


Am I valuing A, J too much preflop? Am I too aggressive postflop?


Edit: After reading this, I realize this may be better suited in the poker strategies forum.

 

[SeanyJ]

You need to have some information on your opponent. Usually if I have no information on an opponent and they put me all in with TPTK I will lay it down.

 

[Chris_TC]

50/100 blinds. Everyone roughly has 3,500. I get dealt in middle position. I raise to 350. Late position folds, Button reraises to 800. The blinds fold. I call.

No, you don't call a re-raise with AJo out of position. What can you beat? Tens? Not really because you're only going to see 3 cards, so any pair is a big favorite. AQ and AK have you dominated.
Even if he has a random hand, he'll have position and can take this pot away from you unless you flop a straight or two pair.

The flop:

.

I bet 800. Button reraises to 2100. It's either all in or fold from here, right?

Most players will re-raise preflop only with Queens, Kings and Aces. All of these hands have you beat. Leading out isn't bad in case he has e.g. 99, TT or AK high (all of which I consider much less likely than QQ, KK or AA), but you must fold to the raise.

I fold. Button reveals .

I'm not sure whether this hand really happened. Extremely few players will make a completely random bluff like that.
As mentioned above, leading out with top pair is a good move to stop him from c-betting. Bluffers will usually not raise here and simply give up the hand.

Now, same scenario but different player. I go all in this time and my opponent shows .

This is what I would expect to happen most of the time. As mentioned, you really can't beat much more than a bluff.

 

[tosborn]

This is very dependent on the stakes and size of the table that you are playing. As the stakes increase 3-betting preflop becomes more and more common. If your short handed the 3-betting range also increases exponentially.

3-betting is a very good play at the smaller stakes. If you are at a table that doesn't have any calling stations and is predominantly TAG then this play will take the pot down preflop most of the time.

What I'm trying to point out is that your reads are very very important. Without reads at smaller stakes a 3-bet is considered a premium pocket pair most of the time. The mini-reraise in the first example is horrible by villain. This should not have worked if you had anything better than AJo.

I think my range to call this and shove any flop would have been AJs+, KQo+, TT+, and suited connectors as low as T9. The mini-reraise is always very strange and I usually see it as "50% has a strong hand, 50% doesn't want a call". Usually the mini-reraise is done by somebody that is fairly bad at poker at the micro stakes. This means that they also don't understand the value of good starting hands.

In your example, since this is either a MTT or STT, this should be a fold simply because we don't want to put our tourney on the line for a coinflip, but it is very close in my opinion.

 

[Chris_TC]

This is very dependent on the stakes and size of the table that you are playing. As the stakes increase 3-betting preflop becomes more and more common. If your short handed the 3-betting range also increases exponentially.

I think this is mainly true for cash games unless the tournament is extremely deep-stacked.
In tournaments, the stacks are generally fairly small in relation to the blinds, so most people will not 3-bet light, not even shorthanded. I currently play tournaments in the $100 to $150 range, and I don't think it changes much as you play higher.

In cashgames, the story is different. 3-betting is extremely common from NL200 upwards, especially shorthanded.
But as stated above, I think there's a huge difference between tournaments and cash games due to the stack sizes.

And by the way, I wouldn't call a preflop 3-bet with AJo out of position in a cash game either unless I'm up against someone who 3-bets frequently.

 

[switch0723]

instfold a,j pre flop to a re raise. If they are bluffing good on them, but by calling you will only feel good hitting nuts straight or trip jacks

 

[vanquish]

preflop is bad in the first hand. raise to 250-300 preflop, fold to his reraise with your stack size/position/hand