Play a Hand With the Masters #1 Pre-Flop

[Lloyd]

Welcome to our first "Hand With the Masters". Thanks again to jccookjr for suggesting this as a way to make the forum more valuable.

Here's how this is going to work (this time, I'm open for suggestions for our next hand):

1. I've sent the hand to our expert panel (who will be announced soon) decision point by decision point. So they only had access to the information that they would have had if they were playing the hand themselves. Obviously, this was an actual hand (contributed by Sossman) and when a panelist's line deviated from how the hand was played they still played the hand out as it actually went down. So if they said they would fold and in the actual hand it was raised, they played the next decision point as if they had raised.

2. I'm going to post the hand here step by step over the next couple of days. This will make it as real as possible. Additional decision points will be added to this post so you'll have to check back here every day (I plan on adding a decision point approximately every 24 hours).

3. Once everyone has had a chance to comment on all aspects of the hand, I'll post how our experts played it out along with the thought process they have presented. We'll then give them an opportunity to post and discuss why they liked one approach versus another.

4. We'll bring the forum back to continue the discussion. Essentially, this will be the hand we'll talk about over the next week.

So without further adieu:

Setup

$10,000 Buy-In Event
Day 1
Blinds 75/150 and will go up to 100/200 on the next hand
Hero has been at the table for about an hour with no unusual play. All players are unknown except for Miami John to his direct left. The CO in this hand has been playing pretty tight.

Relevant Stacks

CO 25,000
Hero 11,500
MJ 13,000
BB 9,800

Pre-Flop
Everyone folds to the CO who limps for T150. Hero is on the button with A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] and ????????

Do you fold, call, or raise? If you raise, to what amount? What's your thought process behind your decision? What range of hands would you put the CO on at this point?

[b]The hand is continued here but make sure you read this post first, think about, and respond as to how you'd play so far.

[Exitonly]

raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[SoBeDude]

[ QUOTE ]
raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[/ QUOTE ]

Ditto.

[curtains]

I would raise to around 550-650. My normal open raise on the button would be 400-450, but okay there is a limper. Raising to only 450 basically guarantees a call. I like to generally make raises that give my opponent a decision, instead of making poker easy for them. Raising to 550-650 should give the cutoff a difficult decision to make, whereas raising to 450 should convince the cutoff call the large majority of the time.

I think worrying about the cutoffs range is a bit much at this point. The stacks are so deep that he could have virtually anything. Even someone who seems tight may open limp with something like 74s from the cutoff seat with such deep stacks. Sometimes people start splashing around a bit more after the first hour anyway.

Calling preflop is OKAY and I'm sure I'd do it sometimes, but it's not my default play here. Everything is okay here from calling to raising less than I stated above or to making a larger raise. It's hard to go wrong, it's all a matter of style/image etc etc.

I'd say that folding or raising more than 1000 are where one can start to legitimately criticize the preflop play.

[Allinlife]

i agree with curtains

[Lloyd]

[ QUOTE ]
raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[/ QUOTE ]
Your dismissing all pairs under KK?

[NoahSD]

[ QUOTE ]

Your dismissing all pairs under KK?

[/ QUOTE ]

[Exitonly]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[/ QUOTE ]
Your dismissing all pairs under KK?

[/ QUOTE ]


i thought the other pairs wouldn't make as much sense... he'd probably raise with the other ones.

But yea i guess he very well could have lower pairs...but what i said i think affects the likelyhood of which hands he woudl have.

[NoahSD]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[/ QUOTE ]
Your dismissing all pairs under KK?

[/ QUOTE ]


i thought the other pairs wouldn't make as much sense... he'd probably raise with the other ones.

But yea i guess he very well could have lower pairs...but what i said i think affects the likelyhood of which hands he woudl have.

[/ QUOTE ]

For the record, I think his least likely holdings (other than the really obvious garbage) are TT-QQ. Agreed? I think his most likely holdings are 22-99 or so, but I can understand why people would disagree with this.

[AtticusFinch]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
raise to 450.. CO could be trrapping, but i think most likely hero is ahead here... i put CO's range at [KK+,AKs,QJs,QJo,JTs,JTo,KJs,KJo,89s,9Ts, J9s, T8s, 57s, 56s, A5-A9o, A2-A9s]

[/ QUOTE ]
Your dismissing all pairs under KK?

[/ QUOTE ]


i thought the other pairs wouldn't make as much sense... he'd probably raise with the other ones.

But yea i guess he very well could have lower pairs...but what i said i think affects the likelyhood of which hands he woudl have.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think him limping a big pair from that position would be unlikely (but not impossible). Honestly, a small pair seems like one of the more likely hands he could have, to me. Sure, many of us would raise, but many others routinely limp with them from any position, especially when the stacks are this deep.

I'd put him on 99-22, KQ-KT, maybe QJ-JT. I'd keep the possiblity of a trap with aa-qq in mind, but honestly those don't play all that differently from my suspected small pair hitting a set. My range seems to be narrower than other folks's, but I have a hard time imagining a player at this level limping with anything worse. A raise seems far more likely.

If he has a small pair, he might call a raise, even a modestly over-sized one, just for set value, because he has plenty of implied odds with these deep stacks. Of course, on the flop, you can often get him to lay down the better hand even if you miss. (E.g. villain has 66 on a K73 flop).

In the end, though, I agree with other posters as to the action. A raise to something like 3.75-4 BB seems best, followed by a continuation bet on almost any flop. I'd strongly consider folding even TPTK to a check-raise, though.