facing a 3 bet with QQ oop: 3 ways to play it

[kev]

This is a fairly common situation: you are playing a 6max game, stacks are around 100bb, you make a standard 4bb raise in early position with QQ, a late position player makes a 3x reraise and everyone else folds. You don't know the opponent all that well but from what you've seen of him you think his range is AKo,AKs,AA,KK,QQ,JJ,TT with AK being most likely due to card combinations and QQ and TT quite unlikely. You have enough pot equity to play the hand, but there are 3 different ways you can play it, each with their own pros and cons:

1. Just call it and see a flop
pros: An Ace or King will flop about a 1/3 of the time, and if so you are probably beaten and can save yourself a lot of money. If no Ace or King on flop you can make it too expensive for AK to draw, and JJ/TT probably won't be able to fold to another bet or two.
cons: you have to play this hand out of position, and if your opponent is aggressive or tricky he might make a bluff bet with QQ/JJ/TT when an ace or king hits the board. With 100bb stacks and only 12bb in JJ/TT just about has set value if you stack off.

2. Make a standard 3x 4bet (intending to call a push)
pros: there is some chance that JJ will put you on AK and push allin. There is a slight chance that AK will fold.
cons: Little chance of getting action from TT

3. Push allin
pros: substantial chance that opponent will make small mistake of folding AK, some chance of QQ folding
cons: unlikely to get action from an underpair

So which play do you prefer to make and why?

[nazahl]

typicall call and see a flop. crai if you flop an overpair unless it comes like JTx, then u might wanna play it cautiously

[Snipe]

Calling oop here is pretty standard.

Hate shoving against an unknown. Think it's about the worst option possible.

Do like 4 betting, but I 4 bet small usually (depending on stacks - actually 100bb gets a little awkward to do this with) as I do this quite often with most of my range (though rarely against unknowns).

The real question is how you like to play various flops oop after just calling.

[johnnybeef]

4 betting pot is horrible. It does 2 things. First it eliminates the possibility of him 5 bet bluffing. Second, it creates odds for you to call his 5 bet shove. What I will often do is 4 bet about 2/3 pot. Usually by their timing, you will know exactly what to do.

[kev]

[ QUOTE ]
typicall call and see a flop. crai if you flop an overpair unless it comes like JTx, then u might wanna play it cautiously

[/ QUOTE ]

Assuming its a rag flop and the villain is an average nl200 player, would you c/r enough to commit yourself to a push or would you c/r a small amount and fold to a reraise?

[MichaelBolton777]

[ QUOTE ]
4 betting pot is horrible. It does 2 things. First it eliminates the possibility of him 5 bet bluffing. Second, it creates odds for you to call his 5 bet shove. What I will often do is 4 bet about 2/3 pot. Usually by their timing, you will know exactly what to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

i just started playing NL - still a bit unsure of what 4 betting pot would be, exactly. So we open to 8, and get raised to 24. What would a raise to 2/3 pot be? Standard from what ive seen generally is slightly more than 3x.

[TJ Eckleburg12]

1 + 2 + 8 + 24 + 16 (to match his raise) = 51 more, which would be a reraise to 75.

Or just a little more than 3x, like you said, which is a good rule of thumb (:

Or just press the handy "bet pot" button on some sites.

[TJ Eckleburg12]

To answer OP...

I think reads are very important in deciding which to do here.

I also think calling OOP is standard, intending to crai if we flop over the board.

[MichaelBolton777]

[ QUOTE ]
1 + 2 + 8 + 24 + 16 (to match his raise) = 51 more, which would be a reraise to 75.

Or just a little more than 3x, like you said, which is a good rule of thumb (:

Or just press the handy "bet pot" button on some sites.

[/ QUOTE ]

ahh, i was forgetting to add the 16 more. pstars doesnt have a pot button. also annoying to type in 7 everytime i want to raise preflop. 3.5x seems standard pre. does it really matter if you do 3x or 4x instead? (im sure this has been discussed ad nauseum [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

[TJ Eckleburg12]

3.5x is the pot preflop, because of the small blind. 1 BB + your calling BB to match + SB = 2.5 on top of 1 BB = 3.5x.

I used to be a dealer, and you learn shortcuts for PL games.

It doesn't make a difference if you're 3x or 4x raising a 3-bet, it's still a pretty big 4-bet... and villain probably reacts the same to either, haha. So it doesn't really matter.