Extracting value from mid 2-pair

[Bob T.]

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like a snowball rolling down a hill...

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POTD!

[Harv72b]

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Please ignore preflop, because "fold preflop" makes for a short discussion. I make these raises occassionally to loosen up my ultra-nitty fit-or-fold image.


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Actually, I think that this is the most interesting play of the hand. But I think your approach is all wrong here, although the play might not be.

It is not your image that you should be concerned with, it is your opponents image that makes, or breaks the play.

If you have tight opponets still to act, I make this raise a lot of times, because I have a number of ways to win.

1 - I might win the blinds.
2 - I might hit the flop, and have the best hand.
3 - I might miss the flop, but combined with my preflop raise, and the flop, it might look like I have the best hand, and I might win with a continuation bet.
4 - I might miss the flop, but my tight opponent who called in the BB, might also have missed the flop, and a flop bet will win the hand.

Anyway, the key, isn't what my image is, but what you know about the players left in the hand. The best case, is that you have a lot of very tight players left to act, and you will either win outright, or likely get it headsup, with an opponent who has a predilection to folding to your flop action.

On the other side, if you have a very loose showdown monkey left to act, this is a HORRIBLE play, because you have very little showdown value with this hand, and you are going to be playing a weak hand, Out of position, against a hard to read player.

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You should seriously write a book.

I would only add one thing to what you said about the preflop raise (which I also thought was the most interesting part of the hand). .50/1 players fall into one of two categories: people who pay attention to what's happening around them and attempt to assign hands to their opponents, and people who don't. The ones who don't, don't matter--they aren't paying attention to your image, and it doesn't matter if you've shown down AA the last 5 times you raised or 72 offsuit; they're still calling with whatever they consider to be a playable hand.

The ones who are paying attention...also don't really matter. Because quite frankly, they're not going to be giving you action unless they have a good starting hand, unless you make plays like this so often that you actually do become a LAG. The good players at these stakes know that they aren't at the table to make money from the other good, or even mediocre, players. They are there to gut the fish, same as you.

Oh, I lied--one other point. When you're on a losing streak at the table, that is also an absolutely horrible time to try changing things up or raising with weak/borderline hands. The fish aren't scared of you because they've been taking your money, however horribly the beats have occurred. The good players can see that you're losing & sense that you may be tilting (plus, you've probably taken to calling down with worse and worse holdings as the losses continued, hiking up their implied odds). You make raises like this when you're doing well, or at least not doing badly, because that's when you're most likely to get the desired effects that Bob talked about.

[anotherFliplost]

I'll be sure to only post KK hands in the future. No worries.