Gross spot with 9's

[One Outer]

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just curious what raising preflop here in a game like this without position accomplishes?

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I think James covered it, but since you're asking me...

You raise this for value. It has an equity edge, and it's not negligible.

There is also metagame value there. Bad low limit players tend to make "one hand reads", IMO. They see you do something that may look bad to them once and they'll forever see you in that light. This happened to me the other night when I called a serial bluffer w/ J high on the river. MHIG, and for the rest of the night he was three betting me super light (by super light, I mean w/ 97o) and making ridiculous calldowns. Show them your raising range isn't just TT+ and AQ+ and you make yourself very difficult to play against.

[fuzz66]

like i said, im a nit!

[swifttarrow]

I still don't understand the reasons for raising 99 preflop; in these types of loose games, i just don't see myself folding out anyone very often, and i end up inflating the pot and forcing myself to play OOP on a flop with a very high likelihood of overcards. Equity wise, I ran 99 up against 10 j offsuit, q 7 suited, k4 suited, and ace 5 offsuit (a pretty common range for opponents in 3/6 live games), and it's actually 4th place in terms of win percentage to the river! Even a flop, say, 457 rainbow, where everybody gets a piece but im currently ahead, im still only 19% to win, which is not even break even equity. Does anyone support NOT raising the flop? Im often finding people peeling for the turn with two overcards anyways; ak, qk, ace jack type of hands are so tied to their hands that they want to take a turn card no matter what.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

I'm coming up with 99 as having a fraction over 20% equity against those four hands (third best) with PokerStove. Change the JTo to 87o and 99 becomes a solid favorite. You're not going to run into too many lineups where you're not at least break-even unless people are limping hands like TT and AK (which can happen) and you're sometimes going to run into lineups where you have much better than average equity.

So, people who think that you should raise any time you have an equity edge do have a point. I just happen to think that the game conditions as described probably put you into a few too many reverse implied odds situations so that you'll probably underperform you equity if you raise. Still, I think it's a close decision. If raising is actually the better option, it probably isn't +EV by that much more over just calling and comes with a sharp increase in variance. It's quite possible that someone who likes playing LAGgy should probably raise and someone who likes playing tighter should just call. I do know that David Sklansky has said that weak-tight play is close to correct in truly wild and crazy games.

I would consider not raising the flop, but it depends upon my read of the initial bettor and the people behind me. I can't really explain how that all works, though.