50 NL: 99 Facing 3-bet preflop, Call?

[czGLoRy]

Simple, sure, but how do you proceed? Do you call this preflop vs a standard, 22.3/16.2 "tag"?

Full Tilt Poker, $0.25/$0.50 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LegoPoker (http://www.legopoker.com)Hand History Converter (http://www.legopoker.com/hh)

Hero (MP): $58.40
CO: $57.10
BTN: $30.55
SB: $51.85
BB: $52.30
UTG: $32.95

Pre-Flop: 9/images/graemlins/heart.gif 9/images/graemlins/club.gif dealt to Hero (MP)
UTG folds, <font color="red">Hero raises to $2</font>, 3 folds, <font color="red">BB raises to $8</font>, Hero calls $6

Flop: ($16.25) 2/images/graemlins/spade.gif A/images/graemlins/spade.gif K/images/graemlins/spade.gif (2 Players)
<font color="red">BB bets $10</font>

[Ranma4703]

call pf is kinda loose, depends on how often I've seen him 3bet (less often, the more I call, because the greater chance he has AA/KK and will stack off. If he is reraises AK or AQ pf, then you are [censored] because you will not know where you are). Flop fold is super standard, unless you want to be an aggro monkey and reraise to represent something retarded. Which you shouldn't do. And you shouldn't call, because even the hands you were a slight favorite against are beating you.

In short, I would fold pf w/o a read that this is AA or KK 90% of the time.

[Nick C]

If Villain's range is what I'm guessing it is versus an MP raise: about 50 percent AK/AQ (with a little of something more random mixed in) and about 50 percent better PPs, then you're simply in a very tough spot here. You can't profitably call for set value, partly because you frequently will not stack Villain when you catch, and partly because even if you knew Villain had AA-QQ, you would occasionally lose your stack to set over set (which may not sound so significant but does matter here since even if you knew you would always stack Villain when you flopped a set, the call would only be marginally profitable).

So playing exclusively for a set is out (and in fact is very bad in this spot), so that leaves the question of whether we can call now and then proceed on a favorable flop (such as a flop with just one jack overcard). But there's no way this can be good if my initial assumption about Villain's 3-betting range is correct. I mean, even if Villain plays very predictably postflop (c-betting nearly any flop and then checking the turn when he just has unimproved high cards), you're only calling favorable flops because there's money in the pot already -- it's not a profitable call on its own, since Villain will have you beat ~ 1/2 of the time. And to add to your problems, occasionally Villain will hold a hand like 55 or AQ on a K93 flop and will c-bet and you'll be forced to fold immediately since you're going to be losing so often on that flop.

It sucks, but I don't see anything to do but fold immediately. To proceed, we need for Villain to have a wider 3-betting range than I think he really has (or we need for him to be super-weak-tight postflop, but I doubt that he is).

This is just one of those situations where, if we had somehow known that 3-bet was coming, we'd be much better off open-limping and calling BB's standard raise. Or, more realistically (I'm not really recommending an open-limp here), we'd be better off if Villain had been UTG and had raised to $2 and we could cold-call that. In either situation that I just described, we'd have better implied odds in the sense that we'd have more money to play for compared to our investment, and also we'd be in better shape (versus Villain's wider 2-betting range) to play poker with Villain postflop.

[czGLoRy]

ok, thank you for the input Nick, insightful and what I was looking for. Basically, if he had a very narrow 3-bet range (AA,KK) we could call to set mine profitably, or if he had a very wide range that we were ahead of, we are ahead of his range and can proceed, right?

[oh well...]

Folding PF is standard here. Maybe if effectives are 125 or more its a call. Flop is instafold.

[Nick C]

[ QUOTE ]
ok, thank you for the input Nick, insightful and what I was looking for. Basically, if he had a very narrow 3-bet range (AA,KK) we could call to set mine profitably, or if he had a very wide range that we were ahead of, we are ahead of his range and can proceed, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Unfortunately, you can't even set mine profitably versus AA/KK. Villain reraised too big for that. Even with perfect implied odds, you're only getting about 9:1. Which would be enough if you always stacked Villain when you flopped a set, but sometimes you won't. Occasionally you'll lose to a bigger set -- infrequently, but it'll be costly when it happens and you still need to get at least 7.5:1 overall, which means you need to win about $35 postflop on your sets on average, which is nearly all of Villain's remaining stack (so we don't have much wiggle room here). Also, on occasion you'll flop your set and an ace when Villain is holding KK, or the board will in some way (think QQ4 or JT9 monotone) be super-scary and Villain won't play his big pair for stacks.

I believe you should be looking for roughly 12:1 to play for set value alone versus a super-tight 3-betting range. (Someone has done the math, and I think that's how it works out.) So, in this case, you'd want the effective starting stacks to be about $70. And the primary reason, really, is that if you're definitely up against a bigger PP that Villain will take to showdown most of the time, you're going to lose to a bigger set about 1/6 of the time that you flop a set.