Kicker trouble?

[Micro2Macro]

First hand at the table. No reads obv. Call? Shove? Fold?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($10)
UTG ($8.45)
MP1 ($5.90)
MP2 ($6)
CO ($5.70)
Button ($1.95)
SB ($4.45)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 10, K
UTG calls $0.10, 2 folds, CO calls $0.10, 1 fold, SB calls $0.05, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.40) 5, K, K (4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.30, 1 fold, CO raises to $1 ...

I felt like he essentially turned his hand face up. 4 way pot and I don't see how he's limping anything worse than KT.

What's my plan for the hand?

[mieczkowusc]

Tough situation. I feel like calling, raising, and folding all suck here.

It kinda seems like a reverse implied odds hand since you have absolutely no reads on the opponent. I think folding is a mistake, but I don't think its that big of a mistake.

If CO is a decent player, he probably would be raising AK, KQ and KJ, maybe KT instead of limping behind. This increases the likelyhood that the CO is a bad player and is limping worse kings.

I think check-calling allows your opponent to play the widest range here, and hopefully will try and bluff you with a mid pocket pair that thinks you are just taking a stab at the pot. You probably aren't getting max value, but I think it allows you to control the size of the pot to a good degree.

[OneEyeLefty]

I am not sure I can muck this. Hopefully he has clubs. I call in an attempt to keep the pot small and see another card. I agree he may have me outkicked but I do want to see another card and then re-evaluate. I don't feel I have enough information to know that I am beat currently.

Lefty

[oskar]

Any kind of stats, reads on CO?
If he has a PFR over 10%, it's really hard for him to have the best hand here.
In pretty much every case I would flat and re-evaluate turn.
imo the turn is the more interesting spot, but it's kind of hard to say in a vacuum.

[Micro2Macro]

No stats/reads, first hand played I just posted the big blind. It's a pretty shitty spot for first hand against a complete unknown.

Do you guys just like c/c'ing down? Or maybe raising a later street? (obviously if we hit boat)

[JKDS]

i dont think we can discount worse kings here. players love limping k7s, k4s, k9o especially from late position. ill be c/calling the turn to try and get value from his worse kings and depending on bet size and stack size i may c/r river. I just think its more likely that an unknown limps k7s than he does kq+, so really i think the only hands we're worried about are KJ and K5s and i think that he can have as bad as k4s here.

also, by c/cing flop, we create a "im on a flush draw" image, so his much weaker kings should bet, but it is also a reason for any of his rare bluffs to double barrel (to be fair, i think hes bluffing here only like 5% of the time). tough choice.

[bjsaust]

He can have a lot of things here including pure bluffs.

[Airles™]

I call his flop raise and see what develops on the turn. Without a read, I'd probably just check to him but I lead the turn again here quite often. If he folds, great. If he calls, that's even better because you should have the best hand. If he raises the turn, it might be time to let it go since he could show up here with KJ or 55. With that being said, getting played back at with no read sucks.

[oskar]

I think it's probably better to lead the turn. If he raises again, I guess you can fold.
By c/c you're letting him decide what part of his range he wants you to put money in. He can check behind all pp's and maybe even weaker Kings, and he can bet all better hands and you have to pay him off.
By betting you might be able to avoid an extra bet on the river if he raises the turn, and you get value out of worse hands.

[Erpel]

I'd be tempted to shove tbh.

First off, I don't agree with the title at all. I don't think we have kicker trouble. He might, theoretically, be overlimping with AK, KQ or KJ but most people who play those hands will be raising them pre-flop in that position after a limper. So I'd call them possible - but unlikely. It's a total of 24 hand combinations that are most often raised preflop.

The pre-flop overlimp can indicate the good old 'any hand with potential' - any pair, any suited, any ace, any king, any connector or gapper - with no reads we have to consider his overlimp a pretty wide range with serious discounts only really for premium hands.

The flop raise - can mean many things. Mainly, it means one of two things: 1) I have a strong hand or 2) I know a paired flop doesn't hit people that often so I raise because I think you have nothing.

To me, he might easily have called the bigger kings on the flop. I am more tempted to consider this either a bluff or a semi-bluff. The sheer amount of hand combinations in those two options makes it imo more likely.

At some point in the hand we will need to decide whether we are willing to stack off with trips. I think the time to make that decision is here on the flop. If we call the flop bet is there any way we are folding before the showdown?

If a club comes? Well, about that. If he's on a flush draw and the 9 clubs are outs for him he has maybe 36% chance of winning the hand - so we call to let him draw to his flush draw cheaply when we have the equity advantage? Let's not forget that we can also see him hit the flush and then have us improve to a full house or quads.

Let's consider what our actions say about our hand. If we call here and lead the turn or check/call the turn are we saying anything other than beware we have a strong hand? He may be a good player or a bad player, but I'm worried here about making it easy for the opponent to play optimally against me (folding). I think we're strong enough to stack off, and I think our actions in this hand should try to maximise our chance of getting all the money in the middle. We need to take a line that looks likely to be a bluff or a weaker/wider range. I don't want to take a line that scares my opponent. And that's why I want to push.

?? Push? Well, yeah. Ok, so he may be playing short because he's nursing his buyin and people who do that are often reluctant to put their last chips in. They will sometimes call bet after bet and then fold to the one bet that will put them all-in not because they think they are beat but because they don't want to risk their 'tournament life' - or an early end to their session. People who do that will admit that it's stupid, but.... Whatever their reason, they're aware that they are bluffable. This is something we can take advantage of as well. If we shove it may look like a blatant bluff and he may look to call us with a bluff catcher - or any flush draw. The more actions we take in the hand the more clearly defined our hand is.

Also people are more inclined to call on early streets even when behind because they at least have outs.

We're an unknown - I like making small bluffs or 3bets with air when I'm an unknown because my bluffs tend to get more credit and that's fine when we want to take down a pot noone has shown an interest in. In this case our opponent has shown an interest - he's already raised after seeing the flop. For whatever reason he has indicated he wants to build a pot and I think the flop is the time to let him help us do so, while he can still think that we might just be making an overbet bluff as an unknown - our unknown image might help us appear as more bluffy. When he raises the flop I think he's more likely feeling good about the value of his hand either through outs or straight showdown - and we should exploit his mental/emotional state rather than slow down the action and give him pause to reassess where he's at.

Ask yourself this: When you play a hand how quickly do you reassess the relative and absolute hand strength of your holdings depending on the action in the hand?

I know I often end up feeling good about my hand and then calling one street too many before I realise that the bet I called was the one that told me that I was no longer good and then having to fold to the next bet after having paid the earlier one.

As long as emotions are part of me when I play I will get that "feeling good" state which takes a couple of seconds to dissipate - when the overbet appears that tells me that "feeling good" is wrong, the "feeling good" might make me call before I process the information. Especially if it appears suddenly and the small voice in the back of my head says "quick bets are often bluffs - continue feeling good".

Ok, so.. I didn't go into hand ranges that much. But I honestly think the psychology of playing against unknowns and being an unknown is a more interesting discussion.

[Vinland]

Yeah....having no reads sucks...
Why do you think he wouldn't limp with less than KT?
I call and probably lead out on turn b/c of the flush draw....I don't want him getting the free card.
I dont play at 10nl (play 2nl), so I don't know if opp would limp behind with KQ, they certainly do at 2nl...but I still think you have to go ahead in the hand.
It's hard to imagine he has better than KJ. I proceed like I have the best hand...I wouldn't shove in case he has a FD and I dont want to scare him off on the flop...

[Erpel]

Actually, let's talk about ranges. But let's take the villain's perspective.

He's playing $5.7. Flop pot is $0.40 and he has $5.6 behind. You lead into 3 other players and he raises to $1. What does he think you have when you lead since pre-flop you can have literally ATC.

First, he's discounting the premium pocket pairs and kings. Of course you might have a lesser king but presumably you'd have raised to isolate with AK and KQ. You could bet there with any two clubs any 5 and any pocket pair 66-QQ (though TT+ will be discounted also) - and of course any king. In your range there is 50 or so hand combinations of flush draws, 3 combinations of 55, 24 combinations of 66-99, 80 or so combinations of Kx and 144 or so combinations of 5x. Maybe 18 combinations of 22-44. Almost certainly he'll underestimate the number of Kx hands in your range. The board is paired and that must necessarily mean fewer Kx hands in your range - what he's most likely forgetting is that even K2o is completely in your range with the pre-flop check from the BB.

What is he trying to accomplish with his bet? If he's holding the hands you're scared of - 55, AK, KQ, KJ - and he bets... what exactly does he think he's accomplishing? He'll have to assume a lot of folds. Maybe he thinks you would call on a flush draw, but the maths for a flush draw aren't good for you. You'd be calling $0.7 that needs $2.8 or so to breakeven and there would be about $1.4 in the pot already - so you'd need to win on average an additional $1.4 and the villain only has $4.6 behind. If you were on a flush draw calling his raise isn't such a hot prospect because his short stack hurts your implied odds. I think it's somewhat likely that the hands we are most worried about are most likely to actually call the flop rather than raise it. I think the hands most likely to raise are the flush draws and maybe the weaker kings.

I'm not saying he'd be wrong to raise 55, AK, KQ, KJ and price out flush draws etc, but we know little about him and the only thing we generally try to get out of someone being short is that he's probably not that good. And not that good can mean many things including an aversion to betting hard with big hands (like AA preflop) because you just get folds and don't get paid off.

The most interesting part of this post is that it made me realize that when there are two cards to a flush on the board and I don't have one there are exactly 55 possible hand combinations of flush draws if the opponent can be playing ATC. It's always tempting to be paranoid about flush draws, but if one of the flush cards is a blocker to the more likely part of the opponent hand range and the hand range is not impossibly wide, flush draws can actually be quite unlikely.

Edited section - ! factorial notation uses multiplication and I wanted to say something using summation and got the wrong symbol. Since the summation symbol isn't exactly what I'm looking for I'm just editing to remove any ! symbols.
The 55 is basically 10+9+8+...+1. The logic goes - in the absence of known cards the total number of flushy starting hands is 12+11+...+1 (78) because it's Axs (12 combos) + Kxs (excluding AKs - 11 combos) .... + 4xs ( 2 combos 43s and 42s) + 32s (1 combo). Given that two of the cards are "known" or "dead" (visible on the board) we can see in the example where an ace is not on board that Axs is now 10 hand combos as AKs and A5s (given the hand example in this thread) are no longer possible - from this it's easy to deduce that the number of hand combos must be 10+9+...+1.
End edit

It's both interesting with wide and narrow ranges. In this example I said that hero would lead with 5x and came up with 144 combos of that. (By the way 12 card values other than 5, 4 suits, 3 fives: 12*4*3=144) When I compare 144 hand combinations for a simple bottom pair hand with the 55 hand combinations of flush draws it just dawned on me how small a proportion of a hand range a flush draw can be - and this is as wide as it gets. It's impossible to have more hand combinations of flush draws than 55 (on the flop - with back door draws becoming flush draws on the turn there can be 110 obviously).

While 55 hand combinations may seem a non-trivial amount any range narrowing hits flush combinations hard. Let's say it's not a BB check but someone who plays all suited connectors (32-KQ 11 combos), suited aces (12 combos) and suited broadways (3 combos KJ, KT, QT). That's 26 hand combinations. No small amount you say - let's put K and 6 on the board and we're down to 19. And if we put both A and K on board we are down to 11. A range of QQ-JJ alone is 12 combos (with no Q or J on board).

[JKDS]

great posts erpel, but if "12!" and "10!" is a factorial sign then your tilting me.

[Erpel]

great posts erpel, but if "12!" and "10!" is a factorial sign then your tilting me.

Oops, wrong notation. What is that notation again. Let me try to look it up. The one with the plusses not the multiplication.

[Monty3038]

I don't care for these spots at 10NL. Without any reason or stats to prove it, I think you're 50/50 here. Reason... 55 is well in his limping range being an unknown, so is practically any broadway combo... also suited aces...

Being an unknown, you just can't say what he has. BUT... my play here is to call, then let him lead, I'm calling it down. I don't think you can let this go.

I'd like to say I can do the math accurately to defend my 'feel' here, but let me give you some of my thoughts, the pros around here can tear me up about them...

CO has less than buy in max, likely not reloading, can be a sign of a less than average player.

CO limps behind UTG... UTG limpers are usually pretty strong if they have any skill, but we don't know about him, so could be anything. CO limping may be IMO: Axs, AT+, KT+, 22+, KQ, KJ, QJ. Ok, so that is a pretty wide range yet still pretty isolated. Ok, so you check behind and hit trips. SB is non-existant. UTG bails and he raises you. Hmm... that polarizes him pretty well to indicate he thinks he's in good shape. The kings didn't scare him... so now let's narrom him to Axc, 55, Kx, AA.

Of that you aren't ahead of the 55, and the club flush draw is pretty apparent...

But maybe I'm way off... gotta get back to work...

[JKDS]

great posts erpel, but if "12!" and "10!" is a factorial sign then your tilting me.

Oops, wrong notation. What is that notation again. Let me try to look it up. The one with the plusses not the multiplication.

sigma notation!
edit: o wait...there might be another...shoot...i know factorial is product notation of x starting at 1...sigma should have a similar one..grrrrrrrr
edit2: although, the sum of x from 1 to 12 is just the integral of x with limits of 1 to 12 so we could simplify it that way i guess.../hijack.

and ty, that post about flush draws being only a small part is actually really neat and i now have something to do/think about during my stupid 10am class.

[JKDS]

if your having kicker trouble theres a simple solution to this, quit playing whole cards with low kickers. i bet thatll settle this problem your having

I agree. There is simply no reason to fall for the clever jokerstars trick that tries to make you check your blinds by saying "checking is free, are you sure you want to fold". We must look past this ruse and rise above this kind of zero level donk thinking. Obv poker sites want us to play, then we pay rake!!!

[Micro2Macro]

Ok so new preflop strategy out of the big blind:

Folding > checking