Flat calling preflop raises

Had several situations today where I would find myself wanting to raise preflop in late position with what I would consider a marginal hand (example 99, 88, 77, AQo, AJs) but getting raised before me. I was flat calling, not hitting anything on the flop and then throwing my hand away.

Flat calling to me means "I might have a hand but I'm going to see a flop to check things out." Reraising means "I have a hand I'm going to try to isolate you with" and then c-betting can land a pot.

In these sorts of situations since I was planning on raising anyway do you flat call the raise, fold to the previous raise or reraise? I know it depends on the read whether or not you would reraise, but what I'm wondering is if flat calling in these situations is -EV.

The theory is you need a better hand to call a raise than to make one yourself. Reason being, when you make a raise you have added equity to your hand in the form of fold equity. Not only do you have the chance of showing down the best hand, but you have the chance of scooping the pot when everyone folds. That's the theory. However, there will be players that are incredibly timid when re-raised (aka 3bet). So once you identify those players a 3bet isn't a bad decision, however it might not be the best decision. I made a thread about this in NLHE Strategy forum. It didn't spark as much discussion as I hoped, but still some advice I guess (by advice more of my rambling of my questions, but whatever it might spark some questions of your own that will help).

Keep in mind I rarely know what I'm talking about so take what I just said with a grain of salt. Also remember that in my thread, I am asking questions, not giving advice.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...tc-t74214.html

Alright well first of all a lot depends on the initial raiser. If his range is weakish then we can 3bet preflop more often. We can adjust a monster:air ratio depending on how often he calls after we 3bet him. We 3bet him more often with air when he folds often and more with a monster when he calls often. A monster can mean different things depending on how light he calls us. KK+ could be our only monsters but if he's calling with like KTs we can profitable 3bet ATs or AJs in your case. If you think he'll only call with hands that beat us and we have a hand like 99 or TT then in most cases just calling preflop is correct because we are playing vs. a wider range (we have better equity). There's much more to it though which includes postflop decisions that I won't really get into. But 3betting like small PP can sometimes be better than just calling preflop because if their range is wide enough we don't have "set odds" for example. Not really sure if a lot of this applies to your games but I mean it should in general but for now with those hands I'd mainly call depending on how often they raise preflop and TRY to find good spots to bluff at postflop. It's a lot tougher to be profitable with a hand if you can't bluff with it at times postflop but try to find hands where we can semibluff more so PP having 2 outs can be bad.

warning: take that as a rambling post about my views on 3betting/calling preflop. There's a ton more about it and if it's not useful that's fine I just wanted to type out my thoughts. Any questions or whatever please ask.

Alright, First things first. If someone who's been here longer see's anything wrong about this reply, say something please.

I've noticed, at least at .o2/.05 stakes, something interesting. If Im in a late position, and UTG, or UTG+1 or so, raises 3xBB then all folds, I will tend to call w/ a lot of hands(assuming the raiser is fairly tight), the reason is this, the original raiser probably has an overpair, and at these stakes, it seems so easy to exploit that. If I catch my trips or even two pair (sometimes) or anything of that nature, you can sometimes get as much as an AI from that person with just their overpair... I do this w/ caution though!

it's def a tactic if your opponents can't fold big pairs.

Some things to consider:

How often do you flop 2 pair or better?
How often do you flop 2pob and they out flop you?
How deep does their stack have to be to make this move profitable?

That's just bleeding money since that means calling with like 100% of your range if you are looking for two pair or trips or a set. If stack sizes are huge and he'll go broke every time then yeah I guess.

It would probably serve you best to be flatting raises with hands such as small-mid pocket pairs and suited connectors if the effective stack is deep enough giving you correct implied odds to do so.

As stated, many guidelines for this. I should've made that a little more clear. Only when I think the raiser has and would give me a decent chip stack. I do pairs suited connectors and Ax suited. Axsuited because sometimes the A is enough to beat their K's or Q's etc(I use extreme caution here.) Anyway, so far it's been profitable for me overall, but I may being results oriented since it's only a few thou. hands.
Again- I want to be corrected where I'm wrong, so tell me pls. So I can quit doing now and save some money.

wellrounded: have you read "Renton's Theorem" (found in the FR forums)yet? If not, I suggest you give it a read. Not because you don't understand what you are talking about, but because I think you might be able to understand the concept after a read or two. Just a thought.

Originally Posted by renton

Example 1:

Thinking opposition opens a wide range (we'll say 30% of holdings) and we are on the button. We have 3 ways of exploiting this player:

1. 3-bet for value
2. 3-bet as a bluff
3. call and exploit postflop

We don't have many reads on this player but we can safely assume that like most players, he is going to fold his open to 3-bets an exploitably large amount.

So as an example within the example, lets say our hand is 98s. What is the optimal play in a vaccum?

Hard to say. Since we think our friend is going to fold a ton to 3-bets, it is highly likely that 3-betting is optimal, due to a high amount of preflop fold equity. However, 98s is a great hand postflop, and can continue on a very high %age of flops, so we are also certain that its profitable to coldcall with. So do we 3-bet or call? Probably 3-bet if we feel that given gameflow he's gonna fold 85% of time.

However, even if he folds a massive amount of the time, the best play for our entire range is to call.

In this situation our ranges are subdivided as follows:

A = {QQ+ AK}. These are hands we'd be glad to stack off with, and should 3-bet for value and get it in.

B = {55-JJ, AJ-AQ, KQ, suited broadways, suited connectors, some 22-44}. These hands aren't comfortable stacking off and are certainly profitable to coldcall.

C = {22-44, gappers, offsuit aces/broadways}. These are hands that are slightly too weak/unplayable to call, and we elect to 3-bet these as bluffs/semibluffs.

D = {the rest}. Have almost no value and we fold.

I have infact read it once Stax, but it was certainly worth a reread, I got more from it, thanks. I resuggest it to anyone who hasn't yet read it.
So does his statment apply to micro stakes? I would have to assume it does. He says all that I said pretty much, except about the Ax Suited, unless he used a term i'm not familiar with.(That's right, I'm comfortable admiting that!)(Right?)