Defending against repeated plays with weaker hands

[FirePhil]

In the forum game last night I found myself in the same spot twice where I ended up getting my money in with the worst hand, both times with a weaker hand than usual as a result of what had happened in previous hands.

The first was where the player on my immediate right had raised almost every time it was folded to him in the SB and I'd folded every time. With the blinds at 75/150 they made it 450 and I pushed to set them all-in for 1330 more with A9s, leaving me with ~450 if I was called and lost.

The second was as a result of most of my opening raises from the CO or button being met with a push from the player on my left and after this happening 3 or 4 times at 150/300 I made it 900 with AJo in the CO and the button pushed for 3k more. I called leaving myself with 2100. I should also mention that this player was pretty pissed off about the football at this point, so could possibly be tilting as a result (they were pushing quite frequently).

Basically at what point do you make a stand against plays like this? The first hand I got called by AQs and I caught a flush, the second I was against QQ and got no help. Unlucky to run into hands both times or am I loosening up too much in these situations?

[PokerWoody]

Haha “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle”

I dunno, this is very player and table specific but it does sound like you might be a little paranoid. Often, for me at least, it seems like people are picking on me but it nearly always turns out to be just the way the cards are flying and playing big pots with marginal hands preflop ends up getting costly. My case is slightly different though I guess as I’m thinking of cash games and my cash game strategy kind of relies on people playing back at me so I can generate big pots when I want to.

The more someone finds them self raising a particular player or situation, then theoretically at least, the tighter that players raising range should become after each raise. More specifically, their raising range should only include hands where they have a clear decision when faced with a reraise (whether to call/push or fold). Stack sizes and blind sizes are of course a major factor here too, where stacks are right for open pushing, the pushing range will be HUGE despite any previous action as the opponents calling range is so small. All I mean is, that when someone keeps raising you it doesn’t necessarily follow that they don’t have a hand, they will often expect you to call/push with a bigger range than normal. Of course this is not always the case, they might be raising with the intention of folding to a reraise, but they should be opening hands which can stand heat with a higher frequency than those which have to fold.

I think the A9s hand is okay, you probably have some FE giving your opponent 1.7-1 on his call for all his chips. Plus that fact that it’s SB v BB gives him a pretty big opening range.

I’m not so keen on the AJ call but this is probably close. With two players left to act we should perhaps give him a little more credit than the situation in the first hand, I also don’t know what your CO opening frequencies have been so far. Not only do we have no FE when we call but given the recent action I think we dominate him rarely to never so we are dominated or flipping the vast majority of the time. You are getting about 1.7-1 though and if we give him a range of 22+,ATs+,KQs,AJo+,KQo the call is marginally +EV. This range might be a little loose though which can swing it to a fold pretty quickly.

[PokerWoody]

I didn't really answer your question did I?

Erm, okay then...play back at them when you can offer them odds of evens to 1.4-1 when you push. If your push offers them better than this just put the gimp mask back on and hit the fold button.

Disclaimer: I totally just made this up, I haven't really put any thought into it, as per my other posts, so eat my random numbers!!

[CitrusSR]

In the forum game last night I found myself in the same spot twice where I ended up getting my money in with the worst hand, both times with a weaker hand than usual as a result of what had happened in previous hands.

The first was where the player on my immediate right had raised almost every time it was folded to him in the SB and I'd folded every time. With the blinds at 75/150 they made it 450 and I pushed to set them all-in for 1330 more with A9s, leaving me with ~450 if I was called and lost.

^^That was me

And I was raising a lot of hands against you, but I was picking up some fairly decent hands too - J-J, A-Qs, A-K. In between that there were some raises with things like J-10s, 8-9s, etc so I would have had to fold some of the hands to any significant re-raise.

With the A-Q hand though I was already shortest stack I think so couldn't really afford to lay that down. If I had more chips then it's a possible lay down, although I did think you were just defending your chips as I'd been raising a lot.

Obviously I'm not always going to keep getting premium hands though and would have to fold to your bet a lot of the time.

Saying that, I think the all in re-raise is better to get me off the hand when I've got more chips.

[Thor2007]

I was re-raising or pushing with strongish hands knowing that I was probably ahead giving the fact that you were raising on the button almost every orb.

The more I done it the stronger my hands were getting because I knew you were due to call me at some point. I think Woody documented this point in his post.

If I remember correctly, after the first break I was fairly short stacked so I was playing loose and aggressively to get a stack together, and this lasted for a few rounds. Once I had over 5k I was playing tight and to be honest I was a bit of a card rack during that tourney.