Poker Quiz Question #35

Q#35: You're in a $10/$20 NL cash game. Everyone has approximately $2200 stacks. The UTG player limps. You are in late/middle position with Ad-Qs. You raise to $80. The button calls and the big blind calls. The UTG player also calls. The flop is Ah-Th-Qd. The UTG leads outs for $200 into the $330 pot. You raise to $600. The other players fold. The UTG player moves all-in for $1900 in total. The all-in UTG player limps too much preflop, raises his strong hands pre-flop, is generally passive post-flop, and seems to be an inexperienced player. What should you do?

1. Call
2. Fold

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A#35: My gut reaction to this hand is that this is a fold. Top two is strong, but KJ feels like it is solidly in the opp's range, so this seems like a disciplined fold. We're also far from pot committed, so hold your nose and fold. To be certain, however, let's work through REDi.

Read PF: UTG "limps too much preflop, raises his strong hands pre-flop, is generally passive post-flop, and seems to be an inexperience player." He limps and then cold-calls a raise OOP in a MW pot. I think we can rule out hands like QQ+ and AK, as he would raise these strong hands preflop. Therefore, hands like 22-JJ are in his range. Also, he's "inexperienced" so all of the broadways are in his EP range, plus some bigger suited gappers. Call it 22-JJ, AT+, K9s+, Q8s+, and J8s+.

Read Flop: the Ah-Th-Qd board is pretty damn scary, with big cards, straights, and a flush draw possible. He donks into us, and then 3bets all-in for a total of $1900. We know that he "is generally passive post-flop" so this smells like a really big hand. I think we can narrow his range to two pair or better and perhaps some monster combo draws (flush plus gutshot or better). I think we can narrow his range here to TT, AT, AQ, QT, KJ, and J9.

Estimate: As stated earlier, we're not pot committed by any means, so we simply need to look at our hand strength equity and compare it to the expressed pot odds. Per pokerstove, our equity is 38% against his range on this board, which means we need to get 1.63:1 or better pot odds to call. The preflop pot size was ($80x4)+$10 = $330. On the flop, we put in $600 with the reraise, and he ends up shoving over top of us for a total of $1900. This means the pot size is $330+$600+$1900 = $2830.

It will cost us $1300 to call this shove, which means we're getting $2830/$1300 = 2.18:1.

Decide: Wow. We're getting more than enough pot odds to call the jam.

Once again, I'm surprised at a quiz result. Cool.

Answer: Call

All-in for now...
-Bug
*Pro live player Bart Hanson said in a recent podcast that online poker is significantly harder to beat than live poker played for the same stakes. Said another way, per his observations, a $5/$10 game played live is equivalent in average player skill level to a $0.50/$1 online game; i.e., there's roughly a 10:1 difference. If you can regularly beat $1/$2 online, you probably belong in $10/$20 live games (ignoring bankroll abilities, obviously).