Can you Ace my quiz?

[Isura]

All,

I think that calling in hand 4 for purely set value is wrong.

[Paul Thomson]

I like this kind of thinking. I think similar logic applies to the other hands. And yes i'm being obtuse on purpose.

[xwillience]

[ QUOTE ]
All,

I think that calling in hand 4 for purely set value is wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

you suggest reraising more often then calling then?

I dont like playing this hand OOP and against a wide range, you dont know where you at. Either way i think you have to lead the flop though or c/r maybe a strong line?

[Isura]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
All,

I think that calling in hand 4 for purely set value is wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

you suggest reraising more often then calling then?

I dont like playing this hand OOP and against a wide range, you dont know where you at. Either way i think you have to lead the flop though or c/r maybe a strong line?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's okay to call, but I try be aggressive on flops where I can represent a lot of hands (combo draws and stuff), or very dry flops that are unlikely to have hit villain. Most tags just give up in these situations if you don't play back at them too often.

[yad]

I think 3 and 4 are both clear reraises.

Calling in hand 4 and playing exclusively for set value is just asking for the button to take your money IMO. Against his range, you have terrible implied odds for your set. But you do have lots of FE: reraise and make him pay for trying to steal your blinds.

I think #2 is a clear call. You can play for set value only and be fine, or you can play a bit more aggressively if you know what you're doing.

#1 is the most difficult IMO. I will sometimes call, sometimes reraise, and sometimes fold in this spot. I think calling is probably not a great idea but I will do it sometimes. My default is to reraise, but if UTG really is that tight in his raising standards I can see folding.

[Paul Thomson]

YAD-

THE BIG WINNER!!! You ACED my quiz.

But I'd fold Hand 4, the vast majority of the time. On occasion, I'll reraise.

And you're right, Hand 1 is tough. I thought of making his hand range tighter to make it a more obvious FOLD!

Well done.

[Pokey]

To everyone advocating reraising with ANY of these hands:

Position is king in SSNL. Why would you build a pot preflop and OOP with a speculative hand against a player who plays "an aggressive smart post-flop style"? You've got the odds to call in these situations, but to me these don't seem like reraising hands without position. A decent reraise would be bumping it to $10 to $12. Let's say we make it $10. I assume we're also planning to c-bet any flop, yeah? That's $15 more. We've now committed 1/4 of our stack with a highly speculative hand and with no idea where we stand. Someone who is aggressive and smart postflop could easily float us and steal a quarter of our stack on the turn, or slowplay us and take even more of our stack when they hit.

Being OOP sucks hot sweaty monkey balls. Given that we're going to be OOP against a smart AND aggressive opponent, I see no reason to bloat this pot with a speculative hand. If he were a total nimrod, raising would be more reasonable, especially with the AQ hands; as it stands, I'm really just wanting to see a flop before I start throwing in big fractions of my stack on these hands.

[ValarMorghulis]

[ QUOTE ]
To everyone advocating reraising with ANY of these hands:

Position is king in SSNL. Why would you build a pot preflop and OOP with a speculative hand against a player who plays "an aggressive smart post-flop style"? You've got the odds to call in these situations, but to me these don't seem like reraising hands without position. A decent reraise would be bumping it to $10 to $12. Let's say we make it $10. I assume we're also planning to c-bet any flop, yeah? That's $15 more. We've now committed 1/4 of our stack with a highly speculative hand and with no idea where we stand. Someone who is aggressive and smart postflop could easily float us and steal a quarter of our stack on the turn, or slowplay us and take even more of our stack when they hit.

Being OOP sucks hot sweaty monkey balls. Given that we're going to be OOP against a smart AND aggressive opponent, I see no reason to bloat this pot with a speculative hand. If he were a total nimrod, raising would be more reasonable, especially with the AQ hands; as it stands, I'm really just wanting to see a flop before I start throwing in big fractions of my stack on these hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well you have to re-raise from the blinds with hands other than your BPP. AQ (sometimes) is a good candidate. You dominate a large proportion of his range. You hit top pair top/good kicker 30% of the time. You shouldn't mind going to the felt with those hands, with so much of your stack in preflop.

[Pokey]

[ QUOTE ]

Well you have to re-raise from the blinds with hands other than your BPP. AQ (sometimes) is a good candidate. You dominate a large proportion of his range. You hit top pair top/good kicker 30% of the time. You shouldn't mind going to the felt with those hands, with so much of your stack in preflop.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, we shouldn't mind stacking ourselves with these speculative hands because we're pot-committed preflop, but we should reraise preflop in order to pot-commit ourselves postflop? This line of reasoning strikes me as circular, risky, and typically unprofitable.

Think of it this way: if we smooth call against this aggressive opponent and check to him on the flop every time, he's going to c-bet, and his c-bet would be about as large as our preflop raise. Now, which is better: committing that money to the pot preflop when we know very little about our hand other than that it is speculative, or committing that money POST-flop when we know we've got something worth chasing?

Similar line of reasoning: our preflop raise knocks out some of the more speculative hands that we fare VERY well against (moreso with AQo than with 33, here), whereas those hands will commit the same amount of money just about 100% of the time on the flop if checked to. Is it better to let our opponent escape with a $3.50 loss when he's got A4o, or would we rather get him to spend $10 on the same hand by letting him c-bet uselessly?

We're not getting all the money into the pot preflop (well, we'd BETTER not be -- that would be a huge mistake), so we're going to have to play our hand postflop. Against a savvy and aggressive opponent who has position, I'd rather have as little money in the middle as possible before I have to decide if I want to go to war.

I guess I'm still not convinced of the efficacy of reraising preflop OOP with speculative hands, especially heads-up against smart and aggressive opponents.

[ValarMorghulis]

Consider this. If opponent will call the re-raise and given that opponent will always CB the amount of the pot. If you check-raise allin on every flop and he only calls your check-raise allin with top pair or better then that is surely +EV.

You are raising for value, because you are so far ahead of his range.

Maybe it doesn't apply so much for SSNL, but for metagame reasons 3-betting someone who raises with such a large range is surely important.