Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[Sunny Mehta]

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I have a question about the AQ hand on p.131.

According to SPR min-reraising maximizes your ev postflop when called, so you min-reraise. Given the range assigned to villain do we want him to call? If not how do we know that minraising, which has zero fold equity preflop, is better than for example making a 3x reraise which has some fold equity.

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you want him to call because we're assuming that he re-re-raises with the hands that dominate you, so if he flat calls it means that he has a hand which you have very good pot equity against, as well as initiative and fold equity on the flop....

making a bigger re-raise is certainly an option (and probably the more "accepted" line - along with calling) and will yield more PREFLOP fold equity, but you are essentially turning your hand into a bluff because he's only calling with hands that crush you.....

so then it becomes a comparison of the EV of winning the immediate preflop pot vs. the EV of thickening the preflop pot and playing out the hand postflop....it's a complicated calculation because of the large decision tree branches of possible ranges of flops with possible ranges of his hands with possible actions by both of you....

but the point of the example is just to show an alternate way of dealing with a hand like this by using REM creatively....sometimes rather than playing your hand preflop to "take the pot down right now", you can make more money by playing postflop poker.....