Meat And Potatoes Real Life Good Question

[catlover]

A couple of things. First of all, a quick n dirty calculation shows that if we put in a big reraise, our EV for the hand is roughly -$275. (Basically, if our opponent pushes, pot odds combined with the fact that 1/4 of the time he has AKs will force us to call. Now we are giving up $2200ish vs. aces, but win 1100ish vs. AKs. In addition we have the $500 win against the other hands. Do the math on the whole thing and it comes out to roughly -$275.) If we fold, our EV for the hand is -$100, so folding is better than reraising.

This leaves the question of calling. The postflop issues are not at all easy. For instance if your opponent has AA, and you call, a queen might flop, which would probably save you a lot of money. What if you announced ahead of time that you would always flat call such reraises with AA-KK, AKs, half the time with QQ, and occasionally with something else? Now your range is slightly tighter than your opponents, but you are out of position. It is very unclear to me who would have the equity advantage postflop in that scenario.

One thing about this whole scenario bugs me. If folding KK is better than playing it, then our opponent should be reraising with goofy hands more than 10% of the time! Because basically what this whole thing is saying is that all we can play against a reraise is AA (and possibly AKs, but that is an even more difficult calculation). By reraising, our opponent is risking $500 to win $125, and we will have AA less than 1/5 of the time. So as long as there aren't a lot of people behind him, our opponent should do fine putting in this reraise with (say) A3s, because usually we won't have AA -- and we will fold.

The reason this bugs me is that our opponent was described as a "good" player. And yet these admittedly quick calculations strongly suggest his play is not correct.