99 hits turn straight

[HermannTL]

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Herman, this is a a preflop raise but I want you to tell us WHY people are saying it is a raise. Be as detailed as you can.......hopefully youll read this before some partypooper puts on their smartypants and answers it for you.

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Well...I can click "Reply" before scrolling down. First of all I'd say this is a marginal hand which is more arguable than the 2+2 consensus. 99 is either a strong medium pair or a weak big pair, and SSHE places it as a medium pair, then saying that medium pairs should be limped in early position and raised from late position after a single limper (or perhaps first in). If a medium pair is good against a lot of opponents (presumably for set value) then a raise in MP will cut that down. If it's good against few opponents (as possibly the best hand) then a raise after one limper may keep it there. In between I guess you're drawing to a 2-outer. I guess a tighter game makes a raise more effective as you might get rid of some dangerous overcards and medium-strength suited connectors. It seems like a really borderline case, too weak to raise in early position, strong enough to raise in late position if there aren't too many limpers, and here we are in the middle with one limper. SSHE does put this as the weakest raising pair in middle position. If the players behind me are tight I'll be more inclined to raise. If they are loose aggressives I'll be VERY inclined not to raise as I don't really want to be playing this OOP for three bets.

Looking at my stats (over only about 4500 hands) there is the curious coincidence that my winning percentage and my PFR percentage are identical. Looking more closely I see that when I raised 99 I have won 25% of the time.

One remaining factor is table image if I want them to think "when he raises sometimes he has as little as 99."

OK, I'm not convinced that it's more than a borderline play. Now you tell ME why it's a raise here.

[ghostface]

isolation, value, initiative

[ASaysFull]

In this case, there were already three folds before you 9 handed, so hoping to play the "medium pairs against a large number of opponents" is already in jeopardy. It could have been 6, but turned out to only be 4, 2 of which were blinds. At most it would have been 6 way, which is unlikely, but only you can tell us how the table had been.

[OziBattler]

nice work Herman.

medium pairs play well against alot of people or a few. this is a clear case of wanting to play it against a few.

to strenthen the case for raising we see that "UTG+1 63/12.5 (~20 hands) twice saw him bet TPNK on flop&turn"which implies that
a. he is very loose and aggressive
b. he goes to far with hands probably

from that you can conclude that if he had a hand better than yours (bigger pair) or that is a coinflop (2 overcards) he would have raised preflop. He probably has as something like 1 ovecard to your pair.

UTG is your friend, you want to be getting him isolated as much as possible....you can do it with weaker than average hands since you know he plays allsorts of junk so when you have a hadn that is good against his range...RAISY DAISY.

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If the players behind me are tight I'll be more inclined to raise. If they are loose aggressives I'll be VERY inclined not to raise as I don't really want to be playing this OOP for three bets.

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I see where you are coming from here but even a LAGs probably needs a somewhat decent hand to 3 bet you here unless they are certified morans so youll actually ahve a much better idea of where you stand when you raise and get 3 bet as opposed to limp/call. I'd rather raise as opposed to limping in and letting him punish me for 2 bets preflop and making me fold when I inevitably dont spike a set or some other dreamflop.

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One remaining factor is table image if I want them to think "when he raises sometimes he has as little as 99."

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this can work for and against you....but that being said at most micro stakes even IF people see you isolating a fish they stilll probably will just sit there and wait until they have something.

btw if I had to try and make an argument for limping it would probably include a read that said that the rest or a significant majority of the players to act are
a. passive preflop
b. going to call 2 bets if they consider their hand worthly of calling a single bet

[HermannTL]

Thanks, Ozi.

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btw if I had to try and make an argument for limping it would probably include a read that said that the rest or a significant majority of the players to act are
a. passive preflop
b. going to call 2 bets if they consider their hand worthly of calling a single bet


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There's a lot of that going around down here in the nanos. At least when I see five cold call my PFR I know I'm at a good table... [The rare one I see is when a limper folds to the PFR! Must be a variant of the "making a good fold" syndrome.]