the call re-raise preflop

[osoverride]

seems a lil like a dead give away most of the time when play against weak players. 10/10 times they seem to have AA or KK and 8/10 its always AAs. is this an effective weapon to use agents weak players? what are your thoughts on using it in a blind vs blind situations with med stacks out of position? also do you think it would work in a fairly tight game with more skilled players? or perhapses its just a nurf gun compared to a sling shot!

[osoverride]

bump*

[Albert Moulton]

I usually see this as "limp/reraise."

Occasionally, I do this with AK as well as AA/KK in live games when I know a LAG in LP or the blinds likes to raise too much with a variety of weak hands when people limp to him. This is especially true in a straddle situation where I have AA or KK in UTG+1 and UTG is frequently known to move all-in or overbet with weak hands to steal all the dead straddle calls in the middle.

More often, I'll also min-raise/reraise with AA/KK/AK. I usually play in a pretty deep (150bb stacks) game, and small raises to open a pot in EP/MP with smallish pairs and some other weak but playable hands (like A9s) is good to sweeten the pot in case I flop a big hand or a big draw, but those small raises will get snapped off by aggressive guys in LP making big reraises unless they think I've got AA or some other big hand from time to time.

So, I think limp/reraises and min-raise/reraises are fine depending on the game, stacks, and players' tendencies. If it is a short stacked game with loose players, just raise. If it is a medium stacked game with passive players, just raise. But in medium and deep stacked games with aggressive players, or even in short stack games where you expect one or more to go all-in if you limp, then go ahead and limp/rr or min-raise/rr.

WARNING: Just don't stack off with AA in an unraised pot if it doesn't get raised. AA just isn't a big hand OOP in an unraised, multi-way pot. If you try for a limp/rr but don't get raised, then don't go big OOP with AA unless you flop a set.

Edit: In low stakes cash games where people are playing actual "money" instead of considering bets in relative to pot sizes, the "Move of Honor" is sometimes a good play. For example, in a .05/.10 NL game where people don't care much about losing $10, then if several limpers limp to you in the BB and you have AA, then just pusing all in will get called a surprisingly large number of times. Even open pushing from the button or SB will get calls from AQ and TT sometimes.

In general, however, you give up too much value by over betting your great hands preflop so that decent players can fold just about everything without paying to see the flop.

[jtr]

OP, sure it can be a dead giveaway. The thing to think about, if you're planning to do it yourself, is how much AA expects to win if you just raised with it in a standard fashion, versus how much it wins if you limp/re-raise.

Clearly if you limp/re-raise big and someone calls you, you can expect to make a lot of money. If they hit their set or something, too bad; as long as your re-raise was big enough to deny them proper odds, you're laughing. The curious thing is though that even if the limp/re-raise gets seen as AA and everyone is smart enough to fold to it, that's still no disaster if, say, the raise was to four times the blind and it got one caller. You get to pocket 8 or 9 times the blind with zero risk. Sure, you will sometimes make a lot more than that by playing your AA properly after the flop, but especially if you're the kind of player who finds it hard to figure out when your AA is beaten postflop, it may be better to try for the limp/re-raise.

As Albert points out, a lot depends on not playing foolishly if nobody raises and you miss your chance to re-raise.