TT first hand at table!

[Hail Eris]

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I prefer calling because you have no reads.

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you do realize that it was a min-raise pf?

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No, it didn't even occur me since I saw everyone ragging on PF.

WTF people!

[Pokey]

Two comments:

<font color="blue">1. Smooth-call preflop.</font>

Yeah, it's a small bet. Yeah, you've probably got the best hand. Yeah, you're probably ahead at the moment. But -- so what? The flop is going to 100% transform this hand. With $4 in the pot, getting all-in when you hit your set will become quite easy if anybody has an even remotely-decent hand postflop. If you raise you take a big chance to win a small amount of money: you're going to be OOP in a possibly multiway pot where there's a roughly 70% chance that an overcard will hit on the flop. Which overcards kill your hand? You won't know until showdown. Are you really going to be comfortable getting all-in with an unimproved TT if there's a J, Q, K, or A on the board? Do you really think that if a scare card hits you're going to be able to check it down for a cheap showdown? On the flop your hand will either go W*A*Y up in value (if you hit a T), W*A*Y down in value (if an overcard hits), or go up in value slightly (if all undercards hit). Why build a huge pot while there's this much uncertainty? Postflop you'll either be comfortable getting it ALL in or comfortable folding; pay your fifty cents and see if you've got a winner. If you do, you'll be winning TONS of money for your monster. At this point, you literally have POT odds to call for set value -- take those odds. Otherwise, you'll be OOP in a HUGE pot with what is likely to be a below-average hand, and three looooong streets away from a showdown.

<font color="blue">2. Push.</font>

As played, I think you have to plug your nose and put it all in; the reason is Button. He's smooth-called twice, which indicates a mediocre hand. Ideally, you'd like to take some more dead money from him, but if you've got money behind you're setitng yourself up to make some serious postflop mistakes. Smooth-calling leaves you pot-committed and hating it on about 2/3rds of all flops. Better is a push which puts the money in while you have the likely best hand. SB is coming along for the ride, because he's only got $7 behind and the pot will have over $50 after you push and button folds. You trap an extra $6.25 in dead money from button. You also isolate for 55 BBs instead of risking all 100 BBs.

SB scares me, here -- that reraise could be aces if he's a trappy player. Without reads, I really can't say for sure what he's got, and it scares the bejeezus out of me. However, I'm getting almost 2-to-1 odds if Button folds, and it's hard to put SB on a range narrow enough to make those bad odds with TT.

I'm still pissed at myself for turning a speculative hand into an all-in preflop commitment, but against SB I think I'm pot-committed. I push to isolate and get Button out of the hand, or at least to charge him the maximium to try to draw out on me. I also give him the biggest possible chance to make a FTOP mistake right now.

And to think that you could have closed the action for only fifty cents.... *sigh*

[Hail Eris]

One thing that people seem to be missing is that there is so much money in the pot by the time the action gets to us, that taking it down immediately returns 3.5ptbb/hand with TT, which is more mileage than most people get with it (more than you get when you setmine with small PPs). Moreover, it does not turn our hand into a bluff, because

1) after this donkish PF action, we can play TT +EV postflop even oop in a 3bet pot unless we suck, and

2) squeezing here gives our opponents rope to make precisely the mistake that SB is making here, and we can snapshove and profit because we have the 5th best starting hand in NLHE and it's highly unlikely that anyone has better.

For these reasons, I think turning TT into 22 here is burning money, which is not very surprising when you think about it.

[Noobler]

Pokey and Ama, thanks for the excellent explanations.

I am somewhat of a nit so I was curious about what scenarios would I want to make a raise. Lets say that I am still OOP and still no reads, what hand would I want to make a raise with QQ+? JJ+(I did not see the post Ama was referring too. I didn't see any posts dealing with JJ on the first couple of pages).

What about if there was one less person in the pot does that change your decision? Say the button folded, do you still see a cheap flop or raise it? What if button called, but sb folded(a little worse position then button folding scenario)?

[wslee00]

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One thing that people seem to be missing is that there is so much money in the pot by the time the action gets to us, that taking it down immediately returns 3.5ptbb/hand with TT, which is more mileage than most people get with it (more than you get when you setmine with small PPs). Moreover, it does not turn our hand into a bluff, because

1) after this donkish PF action, we can play TT +EV postflop even oop in a 3bet pot unless we suck, and

2) squeezing here gives our opponents rope to make precisely the mistake that SB is making here, and we can snapshove and profit because we have the 5th best starting hand in NLHE and it's highly unlikely that anyone has better.

For these reasons, I think turning TT into 22 here is burning money, which is not very surprising when you think about it.

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thank you hail - i really think the two decisions being discussed here are pretty straightforward

[Jay_Whufc]

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And to think that you could have closed the action for only fifty cents.... *sigh*

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Almost as condescending as Ama...

[IlPug]

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I don't know. Im a pessimist?

There are so many reasons that someone could play a hand like this, "he's a retard" being only one of them. When I play poker I like to take information from as many different sources as possible to form a coherent whole, which I can then act on. This line is no specific hand, it is up to how you feel about the situation, and I feel like its a mandatory fold. I like to give total unknowns the benefit of the doubt as I think that 100bb is too much to pay for a read.

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Lol, okay. Thanks, wasn't sure if I was missing something huge there. I pretty much agree with you - as I said, I dont really like the idea of gambling here, when the potential edge is quite small. This is def. not as clear cut as I first thought though.

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ilPUG, in your previous post you say that you weight 10% of his range to be premium hands, now you're saying the potential edge is quite small - seems like you haven't really made up your mind yet...

and ama - you can definitely put him on a range with how the action went, to say that your decision should be based on feel seems wrong here

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I never said that I'd weight 10% of his hands as premium. I did say, I didn't think it was as high as 65 nor as low as 10%. And no, I really haven't made up my mind and I'm flip flopping alot [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].