Mailbag: Big Pair, Everyone Calls

Q: I am an active live player who plays in local games in NYC. This hand was from a $1/$3 NLHE game 9 player table with mostly fairly loose players but they are quite competent for this level. Most hands are played with 3+ players although hands are rarely limped – mostly raised with about 10% 3-raises

In this hand I had just joined the game. Nearly all the the stacks were $300-$500+. The HJ was the short stack with $169. My first hand was UTG and I had KcKd. I opened $15 which was typical for this game with most open raises from 4X to 5X. Smaller open raises are treated as limps. There were six callers MP1, MP2 , MP4 ($650), HJ ($169), CO, & B.

FLOP JcTc6c

I bet $70. MP4 called; CO reraised all in to $169. I called $99. The MP4 called. All others folded.

TURN 5d

MP4 bet $200. I folded.

RIVER 2d

MP4 won $590 (approx.) with Ac3c.

Thanks for your opinion of this. To me the key problem with this hand or whenever I have AA,KK,QQ in UTG or UTG+1 is that often I will open and then have 5-6 callers which makes the hand difficult to play. The option is to limp and then reraise if possible which makes my hand open faced but does reduce the risk.

A: I hear some variation on this question quite often. People who play in exceedingly loose games often wonder about how to play big pairs against a field of callers. Their concern is similar to what’s expressed here: on the one hand, they believe that because the game is so loose they should raise very large and only with very strong hands. The result, however, is that people tend to play well against them post-flop because it’s usually pretty obvious that they have a big pair, and with so many people seeing the flop there’s a decent chance that an overpair will not be the best hand.

There are a lot of things you can do to make the best of this situation, and I’ll make some suggestions here in just a moment. There’s a big point I want to make up front, though: playing out of position is hard, and you aren’t supposed to be able to win big pots – or win at all – just because you have a big pair. Often the best possible outcome is to play a lot of medium pots that end (for you, anyway) pre-flop or on the flop, and to win more of them than you lose. But expect to sometimes stack off to better hands after the flop and sometimes fold the best hand. That’s part and parcel of playing out of position.

Anyway, on to the advice:

1. Raise bigger. Just because 4x or 5x is “typical for the game” doesn’t mean you have to do it too. The usual counterargument to this is “if I raise bigger, people will be suspicious and fold.” If you really believe that, then put your money where your mouth is and start 8x’ing it from  early position with 83o. The truth is that even if they’re suspicious, loose opponents aren’t going to fold TT or AJs even to a large raise. If they do, they’ll probably show you, which means that you’ll get a heads up that they are adapting and can change up your play accordingly.

Don’t misunderstand me here: you want to get called, even by six people, when you have KK in early position. You just want those six people to pay as much as possible for the privilege of seeing a flop against you. If a bigger raise results in getting called less often by suited connectors but playing bigger pots against broadway cards and pairs smaller than yours, that’s not such a bad result for you either.

2. Raise more hands. Your opponent’s looseness doesn’t mean that you have to tighten up. Just the opposite in fact. If people are going to call 30% of hands to an early position raise, then ATs is well ahead of their calling ranges and is well worth a raise. Putting money into the pot with the best hand is rarely a mistake, although raising with 87s in this same spot wouldn’t be such a good idea. This goes along with…

3. Balance. It’s a common misconception that balance doesn’t matter in loose or small stakes games. Although that can be true, the fact that our correspondent fears his hand will be obvious to his opponents suggests otherwise. The question to ask yourself is “What are they going to do about it?” If your opponents simply can’t let go of top pair or an overpair no matter how obvious it is that you have KK, then you don’t have to worry so much about balance. But if you find that after the flop, they are only putting more money in when they can beat an overpair, then you need to be at least a little more balanced.

That doesn’t mean you have to have an extremely wide range. Even raising (or limp-raising, as suggested here) with AK in addition to big pairs will make your range much more difficult to play against. Now people who call you with AJ or AQ trying to hit their Ace will be in for a nasty surprise, and people who see the flop and then fold if they don’t flop two-pair or a set will sometimes be folding the best hand when you have an unimproved AK.

4. Play Poker. It’s hard to outflop an overpair. Even with six people seeing the flop against you, KK will be the best hand on something like two-thirds of flops that don’t contain an Ace.  Of course you can’t generally tell which flops, which is where poker comes in. If you bet and get called or raised, you have to use what you know about your opponent, his position, and the board texture to decide whether you have the best hand. What I can promise you is that if you aren’t taking the pot down with the majority of your flop bets, then your opponents are continuing with hands worse than KK. So either you win a lot of pots with flop bets (in which case you shouldn’t always have an overpair when you bet) or you suck up the occasional loss and play big pots against hands worse than yours. Those are the only two options; you simply can’t be behind on the majority of flops, even when a lot of people call you.