2/4 A5s in the BB

[Douglas Leslie]

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HEFAP suggests that you should mentally turn the J of spades into a 2 of spades when deciding whether to continue in this kind of HU situation.

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Really? whats the logic behind that?

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It's in the context of how often you should call against an aggressive blind stealer from the small blind. For reasons related to the odds you get on calling, you should be calling the steal raise with around 40% of your holdings. After you call, the small blind is more or less guaranteed to bet again regardless of his holding. You therefore have to make an adjustment to your calling standards in order to allow for this. The suggestion in the book is mentally to substitute the highest card on the flop for a two of the same suit and decide from there whether you want to call the flop bet. This is however in the context of a hand where you just called the pre-flop raise. It might not apply so strongly where you have shown stength by three betting the raise. The short handed section in HEFAP is worth buying the book for alone.

[n.s.]

What's confusing me is why we 3-bet PF if we are going to call down (or even peel the flop) when we miss so badly. Since this guy is aggro enough that A-high will be good here fairly frequently, why not just call and encourage him to bluff at us the whole way (and save a little when we are behind)? I understand the desire to take control of the hand, but it seems like we can't really "take control" unless this guy will sometimes fold a better hand than ours.

But I suck at blind defense, so maybe I'm missing something key here?

[tsrcess]

jeez this is, after all, small stakes. do you really put that much thought into this type of situation? to me, easy call of sb raise....easy fold with that flop....has sb maybe stolen from me with 7,2? maybe.....who cares? next hand, please....it's only a question of a little time until conditions are more favorable for investment of my hard earned money...

[James.]

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What's confusing me is why we 3-bet PF if we are going to call down (or even peel the flop) when we miss so badly. Since this guy is aggro enough that A-high will be good here fairly frequently, why not just call and encourage him to bluff at us the whole way (and save a little when we are behind)? I understand the desire to take control of the hand, but it seems like we can't really "take control" unless this guy will sometimes fold a better hand than ours.

But I suck at blind defense, so maybe I'm missing something key here?

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for me it's not about this hand, necessarily. i mean Ahigh headsup has an advantage, but let's not pretend it's a monster. i want to accomplish a couple things with this hand. first off we can 3bet because our hand is usually best, but hand values change most significantly from the first two cards then to the flop so let's get money in while our hand is usually at an advantage. it sets up postflop better in alot of cases. a simple flop or turn continuation bet wins it uncontested frequently. so it gives you more than just having to hit the flop to win. we flop a good hand and go on to win another portion of the time. but for me, more importantly, we are sending a message to the SB, button, anyone watching: "don't try to steal from me [censored]". keeping them from getting fancy or overly aggressive/tricky when it is your blind is to your advantage because it will cost you less to play in the future. look in your PT database and tell me you couldn't use some savings from the blinds. and also, in this case we have position for the entire hand; that adds value in and of itself. 3 bet.

[n.s.]

Your reasons make a lot of sense - thanks.