Reraise with AA.

Alright, suppose you have AA and it's raised infront of you (Though it doesn't matter, let's say 4bb).

Your plan is to reraise. Both you and op have equal 100 bb stacks.

To what minimum value should you reraise so that you can commit yourself to any flop (Simply push reguardless of action or texture of the board) so that it is +EV?

Make the following assumptions:

You will be commited to any flop reguardless of op, action or board.
Op is not commited to calling.
Op will call preflop reraise.
Hand is HU.
If op outflops you, you will not catch up. (You wont hit any outs)
Hand basically ends on the flop as you will push.

-'rilla

that kind of question depends on a huge list of variables. is this a person who overplays big cards/smaller pairs? does he understand that limp/raises or raises from the blinds indictate big hands?

im not sure you can find any generic amount to raise that would commit him on any flop if you both had 100bb stacks.

if you raised 4x his bet it might be possible, but i think hes going to be wary on any flop and only call if he has you beat - especially considering that he does have position on you.

do you think strategies like that can be applied at your stakes?

I'm just trying to avoid specifics right now. I want a no-brainers approach. 1/3rd of the stack seems a bit too much, though. Surely even 1/5th would be profitable.

-'rilla

slightly related story:

I have a friend who was in a big 10-20 NL game at the Bellagio, with no max buy-in. A person raised, and another guy pushed all-in for $7k. He looked down at 2 aces, and had about $5k in chips, and told me he almost considered folding for a minute.

Most people would say "omg call", and he did call and won a huge pot, but he also said the game was so good he could have won his money without risking a 4:1 coinflip for $5000.

I can imagine the pain of being 2 outted for $5000 is pretty substantial

Where's Zenbitz or some other math machine to clear my thoughts when you need them?

-'rilla

Well this is simpler then you might think, for what you are asking.

First of all you need to know the chance of him flopping better then you (2 pair or better) which I believe is 3.8%? Then find out the chance that you also flop 2pair or better and subtract it. This will be the % of time he has you beat.

For simplicity, if we just say every time he flops 2pair or better you are beaten (which isn't the case) then you will be beaten about 4% of the time (if my memory serves me correctly)

So 1 out of 25 times you are beaten on the flop. So you just need to get in 5BB of his stack to make it EV+, which is significantly less then you might think. I'm sure some of my numbers are wrong, but the logic is there.

i think that looking at just the flop, a lower pocket pair is the worst case scenario. they're going to outflop you 12% of the time. so, after the flop, you're 88% at worst to be ahead.

so, i'm pretty sure you barely need to get anything into the pot preflop to make the flop call worth it. you're ahead 88% of the time. Say he raised to 4BB, you reraised to 12, and he calls. on the flop, you would be betting 88BB to try to win 112BB. not sure the right way to say it, but this % is 78%, and you're 88% to win. if you reraised to 8BB, then you'd be betting 92BB on the flop to try to win 108, which gives you 85%, which is still below 88%. so basically, if you minraise preflop, you are pot committed. is my thinking right?

I don't mean to re-direct this thread, but is this the usual play for AA and KK: Raise 1/5 your stack and push on any flop (except Ace flop with KK).

I play NL$25, and I've been re-raising 'a callable amount' and then betting the pot to try to eliminate draws, but keep in TPTK.

I think this thread is ONLY if someone has raised ahead of you. If you're the first raiser, you just go 4xbb (or whatever amount you think it takes to get heads up). Are you still going all in on the flop here?

It would hard to make a +EV call every time, because if they make trips you are drawing very thin and must be making a -EV play by calling post flop.

My answer is re-raise as much as I think he will cal PF. Razz

I don't think anyone mentioned the money that is already in the pot when it comes back to the original raiser. This changes the math a little.

If he raises 4xBB and you reraise to 20xBB, his choice is whether to call 16xBB to win 104xBB (assuming full stack implied odds). So he is getting 6.5-to-1 before the flop.

As another example, if he raises 8xBB and you reraise to 20xBB, his choice is whether to call 12xBB to win 108xBB. So he is getting 9-to-1 before the flop.

So you need to increase the amount you reraise based on the size of his original raise.

this is what i always do. (let's not talk about the position right now)

I re-raise with premium hands, AA,KK,AK,QQ.

I raise/call with strong hands, AKo, AQ, KQ, etc.

I call with any pockets below 8s. u get the point

Anyway, if someone has been raising all day long with decent hands then I would most likely reraise his bet by a little...make him come over the top then push him all in. If someone who has been playing tight...eh, you get the point. In a low limit game, the AA loses their value so quick because people will fish til the end, however in a NL game. Make them pay for it. I mean you have the best hand before the flop. You were lucky enough to get it (1:36) and dont let some other punk be luckier.

From a guy who plays aggressive with good cards...I wouldnt try to trap someone with AAs by slowing playing em because you never know if the other guy is trapping YOU by hitting a set or even a flush/straight draw...or maybe even 2 pairs.

The only time I would be scared to have the rockets is when some newb guy calls me. Newbies that call with 2,8 os shit like that and hit their runner runner flush or get 2 pairs...to crack my rockets...it sucks.

J10 is the BEST rocket crackers!

I think either option is acceptable. Pushing over the top isn't wrong, but I would probably call here. I think if you are BRed, calling is definately a more +EV move in the long run than pushing.

(someone correct me if I'm wrong....) You want worse hands to get in the pot with you pf, so then when you push the flop it puts them to a difficult decision with what will most likely be inferior cards. Yes, the potential for suckout is larger if you let more hands see the flop, but poker is about the long run. If you run this situation over and over, the sum of the all stacks you will lose when they hit their set is much, much less than the sum of the profit you will make when each time no one improves on the flop and KK or QQ goes all in or calls your push on a garbage board (Or when your AA improves to top set, crushing whatever hand they have)

EDIT: wouldnt this even be true if you had the same preflop action, but went into the flop 6 or 7 handed? The variance on this play would be rediculous, but its still very +EV right? If you go to a flop say 6 handed, and 6x your buyin or more will eventually compose the pot, then you only have to win 1/6 times to make it a correct play, and doesnt AA get better odds than that, even with 6 hands drawing against it? (Not that I would reccomend doing this, but hypothetically)

Ok, maybe I'm stupid, or stupid enough to not think it through, but I just always figured if someone raised me preflop and I had AA, that I go all in over the top. Of all the topics and questions I read on this site, This seemed the most simple and obvious to me. But then again, I'm not a Real Genius, it's just the title of a movie. I really think this got over analyzed.

Well I guess when I have pocket rockets, I'm not thinking about value, I'm thinking about getting out of that hand without having them cracked. If you win $8, because you pushed all in, and he folded is alot better than trying to drag him into the pot and him catching something, and then you lose a nice chunk of change. But again, my logic is probably flawed.

So basically what you guys are saying is that if opponents commit anything better than 20%ish of there stack when you have AA then you are +EV
Sounds good to me and 20% surely wont be a lot if they are raising infront of you.

You always have +EV with AA. Any bet is ALWAYS the right move with them no matter how many opponents.

Heads-up you range from about an 8-1 favourite (vs 72o) down to about a 3-1 fav (vs suited connectors - the best cards to crack aces with). As more ops are added your chances of winning go down but the amount of money goes up to compensate and always give us +EV.

So l think the real question is - how much money do we need to average on our wins to compensate for our loss. We need a certain average amount from the wins to make up the time when we lose our entire stack.

Looking back at heads-up, AA vs. a random hand is about a 5.5-1 fav. If that 1 loss will cost us our 100bb then the 6 wins must avg. 19+bb to make playing AA profitable in the long run if we never fold them.

A lot of players are also on the "no set, no bet" policy, any PP is ~13% to flop set, or 1 in 7. For 100xBB stack you would need to get about 14xBB especially since you want to become pot commited as you stated earlier. In the higher levels people might fold with small PP because of a lack of implied pot odds but in low levels this is not the case you wanna avoid suckout and overbet.

A couple thoughts. The average is like 3-4bb/hand with AA right? I remember seeing a large chart once and this was about average. So if someone raises to 4xbb and you make a large raise to 20xbb or more (AI) you are esentally making more bb off the hand then you might. PT tells me over 30 hands AA wins me 7bb/hand.

And, For the love of god whoever is disaggreeing with us. Rilla is looking for how much % of his stack he needs to put in pf to make it a MATH-CORRECT call. Right, if the flop is QJT he will probably reconsider....

Trying to attack this from a math POV, but given these assumptions:

so, does anyone disagree that if you are in the worst case scenario (AA vs. any lower pocket pair), that even 4bb preflop is enough to make pushing the rest of your stack on the flop +EV? (technically of course)

Well, the question is how big chance does a hand calling a pfr have to out flop you.

To simplify lets say low pp's are calling. They will have about 11% chance of outflopping you. So your pre flop raise should be at least 11% of their stack if you are going to make this play every time.

Of course that is not the optimum way to play a high PP. (11%+ pfr then push)

Also its hard to estimate how often a worse hand will call your fop push(like KK unimproved), so the real number is probably less than a 11% pre flop raise required for it to show profit. I'm afraid this might not have the easy answer you are looking for at all.

Perhaps even limping followed by a push will show profit with AA!

The assumptions:
You will push post-flop
Opp will only call post-flop if they can beat AA
You will not hit any outs to beat them

If so, it would seem the post-flop push is irrelevant - either you will be called and beaten or opp folds...size does not matter. So in this case, size of the pre-flop action is irrelevant to the EV of the post-flop move...unless you want to assign a % to the chance they hit a hand that can beat you, then we could figure something out:
X = chance they out flopped you
Y = size of pre-flop raise (ignoring his 4 - doesn't matter, assuming no reraise)
Post-flop EV = (pre flop pot) * (1-X) - (remaining stack) * X
= (2 * Y) * (1 - X) - (100 - Y) * X
= 2Y - 2XY - 100X + XY
= -XY + 2Y - 100X

So going with the idea of them having a pocket pair and needing a set to outflop, giving .11 chance
EV = -.11Y + 2Y - 11
EV = 1.89Y - 11
Finding the break-even point means finding the 0 EV...
0 = 1.89Y - 11
1.89Y = 11
Y = 5.82
So in this instance, the minimum raise would be 6bb (reraise of 2), which would give EV of:
12 * .89 - 94 * .11 = 10.68 - 10.34 = .34

This is an interesting problem for a math test, but I'm not sure that it has any relevance at the poker table. There are too many probabilities involved which could only be meaningfully approximately with tons of data on your opponent, and even if that information was available, no human would be capable of using it properly anyways.

I believe we were looking at making the move +EV for the hero, not -EV for the opponent. These are different problems when there's dead money (the pre-flop pot).

Did that answer your initial question, 'rilla, or have we all missed the mark again?

well, let's do this for a small pair

they outflop you 11% of the time
BUT
1% BOTH are going to get trips

in that one percent of the time you're going to double up
so a raise of 4xBB and then reading the texture of the flop is OK

i agree with rilla, you dont want to push people out of the pot with an all in reraise unless you think you can get calls.. at the lower stakes, you will get called often by queens and AK.

if its raised 4x BB in front of me, im going to kick it up between 3x to 4x the original raisers raise.

and at that point if i'm reraised again, i'm pushing.

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Reraise with AA.

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Reraise with AA.