“What’s Your Play? 2012 WSOP Main Event” Pre-Flop Results

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post.

I can understand the desire to check here, but I do think it’s a mistake. WPS22 puts it well:

I don’t see how you can check. It’s obviously profitable to make marginal hands put more money in against your AK pre flop. A few people will pay to see a flop w/ worse hands than you, and a few others will fold, leaving dead money on the table.

It’s much better to play a 3 way pot oop, charging the limpers to play w/ your better hand, than a free 6 way pot oop. Off the top of my head, I would probably size it about 1500 total, but it depends on the flow of the table.

I don’t think you are going to get re raised on pre enough for that to even be a big concern. It’s impossible to believe the last 3 limpers have a big hand, its possible for the first 2 but still extremely unlikely and if the 2nd limper does it, she has a stack we want to get it in with anyway.

The central point is that, pre-flop, Hero almost certainly has the best hand. There are legitimate concerns about playing that hand after the flop, but not so much so as to outweigh the value to be found in raising.

Think of it this way: it’s so unlikely for someone to have a premium hand, given all the limping, that you could theoretically make some massive raise to like 3K that would virtually never be called. This would eliminate the need to play post-flop while still giving you the chance to win the pot right away. I’m not saying that’s what you should do, just that we can rule out checking because the “absurd raise” strategy is clearly superior.

People almost never overlimp big pairs, so the only Villain who could plausibly have one is the first limper. If he re-raises, then I’m fine with folding, but I don’t think that will happen nearly often enough to make raising unprofitable.

NotCIA worries that, “if Hero builds the pot up with a raise and misses the flop, he then has to consider posting a substantial C-bet with his Ace high into 2+ players who may have caught a piece of the flop.” I want to address this because it’s a common misunderstanding. Continuation betting should be +EV. There’s no law that says I have to do it, so if it’s a bad flop or I get a ton of callers or something I can always just give up. But having the opportunity to continuation bet is a good thing, not an additional cost to be factored into the pre-flop raise.

Remember that our opponents don’t know that we have AK, so it’s not like they can just call and play perfectly post-flop. If Hero’s raising range looks something like {AJs+,AQo+,JJ+,T9s,JTs,QJ,KQs}, that’s not so easy for opponents to combat. If they just set mine and fold any flop unimproved, there will be plenty of times that they fold the best hand and plenty more times that they make a set but don’t win nearly enough to warrant a substantial pre-flop investment because Hero had nothing.

If they try to peel flops with unimproved pocket pairs, they will sometimes call from way behind when Hero has an overpair or a flopped pair, other times get drawn out on, and still other times double barreled. Likewise if they try to float the flop with draws or whatever. Granted AKo is not the easiest hand to play deep and out of position in a vacuum, but it absolutely belongs in a balanced raising range.

I like raising roughly the size of the pot. This should thin the field and make opponents pay for the privilege of playing in position against you later, while still giving them room to make bad calls with dominated hands.

Thanks for all the comments! Pre-flop action and flop situation will follow shortly in a separate post.