JJ...your next move is?

#Game No : 1097579049
***** Hand History for Game 1097579049 *****
$25 NL Hold'em - Sunday, October 24, 20:59:32 EDT 2004
Table Table 11354 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: DICKNIXON72 ( $26.6 )
Seat 3: Lomin ( $57.75 )
Seat 5: hartdowg ( $52.92 )
Seat 6: DrNoChance ( $28.25 )
Seat 7: atmarotta1 ( $83.9 )
Seat 8: PowerPlayer ( $35.86 )
Seat 10: nasseemhamed ( $72 )
Seat 2: eMllaC ( $27.65 )
Seat 4: Willbe99 ( $28.15 )
Seat 9: shocker_25 ( $24.2 )
Willbe99 posts small blind [$0.25].
hartdowg posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DrNoChance [ Jh Jd ]
>You have options at Table 11323 Table!.
PowerPlayer: nhy
DrNoChance calls [$0.5].
atmarotta1 calls [$0.5].
PowerPlayer folds.
shocker_25 calls [$0.5].
nasseemhamed folds.
DICKNIXON72 folds.
eMllaC folds.
>You have options at Table 11323 Table!.
>You have options at Table 11381 Table!.
Lomin raises [$3].
>You have options at Table 11381 Table!.
Willbe99 folds.
hartdowg folds.
DrNoChance calls [$2.5].
>You have options at Table 11381 Table!.
atmarotta1 folds.
shocker_25 calls [$2.5].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 4c, 8h ]
DrNoChance bets [$7].
shocker_25 folds.
>You have options at Table 11381 Table!.
>You have options at Table 11323 Table!.
Lomin raises [$14].
DrNoChance..........?


Call, raise, or fold after the pre-flop raiser raises my flop bet?

Comments on pre-flop play are also welcome. I know many of you raise JJ from any position, and many of you would have limp/re-raised. I normally limp JJ from UTG and raise it from most other positions pre-flop. I call most reasonable raises with it but normally fold to re-raises pre-flop.

Pre-flop stradegy is fine: calling with jacks to see if you can win with a safe flop.

What sort of read do you have on him? If hes the kind of player who follows through every flop with agression then Id put him on high cards and push.

He might be taking an opportunity to take a decent pot away from you since not many hands hit that flop hard (Except pp 8s,5s and 4s). I'm not feeling much strength from the minimum reraise here, I say you push.

Your worst move would be to just call. It's allin or fold and I'm personally not laying down an overpair to that raise.

-'rilla

raise it up preflop, even utg. try to get those 74 suited hands out. if you get reraised preflop, then you've got something to think about.

good bet on the flop. based on lomin's reraise, i'd say an over poc pair to the board (unless you think he would have raised preflop with 88), the question is, more over than your jacks???

although, he's on the button, would he have done a pseudo positional raise with a8 suited?

he's got position you, and he's pushing hard. he's also making "callable" reraises which scares me.

i'm probably, maybe, reluctantly, probably folding, and if my hand was better, compliments to him for his play.

edited: gorilla and i have different takes, but i definitely agree that it's EITHER a push or fold.

edited: gorilla and i have different takes, but i definitely agree that it's EITHER a push or fold.[/quote]

Completely agree. You're pot committed with a call, so you may as well get the tiny bit of folding equity out of a push that you can (fold out semi-bluffing AK, A8s, 77, maybe 99) if you're going to take the hand any further. Only a better hand probably calls a push (or maybe TT) but there's no point in giving worse hands a free card if you're committed to the pot anyways.

For the record, I had no read on him other than his stack size suggests he may have a clue.

I'll wait for another person or two to post an opinion and then I'll post my thoughts and what I did.

Thats a tough one but if I was in your spot and had already pushed 7 I would go all in right there and cross my fingers. Your bet considering your previous limp may have looked like a buy to him and he didnt want to let you have it. Usually about a pot sized bet is what is used to try to buy and keep your odds decent of winning 51% to make it positive play. My move is push all in. Hope u either did and were right or didnt and will never know lol.

I have seen too many players play 99 and TT like that thinking their overpair is invinsible not really thinking someone will ever have higher.

I put this play at 50% u got it and 50% you dont but considering what like 40% of your stack is already in the pot that 50% is worth the risk.

Hands like this drove me towards playing limit...

Originally Posted by Fnord

Hands like this drove me towards playing limit...

Lol, hands like this have me considering switching to limit

I used up the entire time limit on this one.

The pre and post-flop action has me thinking it's highly likely he has a pocket pair of about 77+, and probably 99+. Maybe AK, but doubtful.

I can beat 77/99/TT but not 88/QQ/KK/AA and these are more likely. It's a bit less likely in his mind that I'm trying to steal since it's a three-way pot, but I did limp in pre-flop which might make him more likely to challenge me with any decent holding.

I don't think it gets any tougher of a choice than this, but I folded.

We'll never know.

On a side note, I tend to find that on Party Poker $25 NL rooms $3+ pre-flop raises tend to often represent big pairs. If the pre-flop raise had been like $2 in this case, I may very well have been more likely to push.

I don't think it gets any tougher of a choice than this

I second that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fold was a good choice because now you cant tell me I was wrong

I remember playing a hand like that in the 25$ NL games, almost exactly the same, he min raised my pot sized bet on a raggy flop.

I pushed... My JJ didn't look to good next to his KK...

So I think I would've folded too.

Jacks get me in trouble. I'm MAYBE raising from late position, but limping anywhere else. If I get reraised, I'm treating them like a pair of 7s, I either hit my flop, Or I get the f--- outta dodge. If it's an overpair, I may continue to play aggressively, but I'm out of there if anyone plays back too strong, and a scare card hits.

Originally Posted by Fortune 500

Jacks get me in trouble. I'm MAYBE raising from late position, but limping anywhere else. If I get reraised, I'm treating them like a pair of 7s, I either hit my flop, Or I get the f--- outta dodge. If it's an overpair, I may continue to play aggressively, but I'm out of there if anyone plays back too strong, and a scare card hits.

That's a weak, wussy way to play them in my opinion.

I think JJ is too good a hand to not raise it from mid-position onwards. I think you can only justify a limp from early positions, and even then I have mixed feelings depending on the tightness of the table. It's a very strong hand....how often do you see something better?

I hate calling re-raises pre-flop with JJ. Unless implied odds are there for making my set post-flop I usually fold at a full ring table to a pre-flop re-raise. There's times I feel like folding QQ to pre-flop re-raises too, but I know that's way too weak for Party Poker. Plus, if I started folding QQ to a single re-raise pre-flop I'd have something in common with Phil Helmuth and I don't want that

What about checking the flop to feel him out? If he bets weakly and you feel like you've got him beat, check/raise. If he bets it hard, fold. I've seen too many people on Party think that there AK is the best hand after a raggy flop to just toss JJ to any show of strength. I beat AK the other day with TT in early position the other day after check/raising a seven-high flop. Of course, he only called, which gave me the confidence to bet it out on the turn. He called all the way and I ended up taking a big pot. Of course, if any over had come, I would've given it up.

Originally Posted by rivercrest13

What about checking the flop to feel him out? If he bets weakly and you feel like you've got him beat, check/raise. If he bets it hard, fold. I've seen too many people on Party think that there AK is the best hand after a raggy flop to just toss JJ to any show of strength. I beat AK the other day with TT in early position the other day after check/raising a seven-high flop. Of course, he only called, which gave me the confidence to bet it out on the turn. He called all the way and I ended up taking a big pot. Of course, if any over had come, I would've given it up.

Theory of Poker disagrees with that play. It states that a pair of jacks is too vulnerable to overcards to check it and risk giving up a free card. You'd have to be pretty confident that somebody will bet if you check in order for a check here (with the intention of raising) to be +EV IMO. There's too many passive post-flop players on Party Poker for me to check my JJ here.

you're right, of course. but, if it's heads-up, i think you can expect a bet an overwhelming majority of the time. I know I'd bet if I raised pre-flop with only one caller, and it's checked to me. Even with trash. Wouldn't you? Though, in your hand, there were two callers, which makes it different.

Originally Posted by allLiving

Originally Posted by Fortune 500

Jacks get me in trouble. I'm MAYBE raising from late position, but limping anywhere else. If I get reraised, I'm treating them like a pair of 7s, I either hit my flop, Or I get the f--- outta dodge. If it's an overpair, I may continue to play aggressively, but I'm out of there if anyone plays back too strong, and a scare card hits.

That's a weak, wussy way to play them in my opinion.

Jacks are a way overrated hand. The over cards (AKQ) are the ones that are going to call you down post flop. If the scare card hits, I'm probably going to push it, but if I get reraised, I'm likely going to lay it down. Call it weak and wussy if you like, but JJ is just high enough to get you in trouble, and get trumped about 30 different ways. In my mind, that's no different than saying "No way I'm laying down pocket 7s to a reraise with an ace on the board." JJ is not a premium hand to me. It's a drawing proposition, like any small to medium pocket pair.

Edited see below.

I think this is why you should raise JJ from UTG this way higher pairs will be likely to reraise you preflop. Now I think you have to either fold to this reraise or play JJ for set value only though. Some players may reraise you preflop with AK however and that makes things much more difficult. Hands like this are one of the reasons I switched to a site that allowed a 100 BB buy in as opposed to a 50BB buy in like Party Poker. I think you need to play JJ for set value since you limp/called but with your flop bet you have to fold to that reraise. Lots of players will bet out AK on that flop when checked to in position, but not nearly as many will reraise you there. If they do then they are bad enough that you should get their money in the end.