What’s Your Play? KJo in the BB Results

Thanks for all the comments on What’s Your Play? KJo in the BB. I think my favorite was Carlos’ remark that, “The goal in this hand is not to go after the fish. It is to go after the shark who is going after the fish. He has made himself vulnerable by opening up his range in an unbalanced way to attack UTG. This is the biggest rationale for the 3-bet. Ed Miller would say that the base of his pyramid is too wide. Let’s see how he plans to get rid of the extra hands.”

I’m actually a bit dismayed by how many people are hurrying to label this player a fish and assume he’s going to be some huge mark after the flop. In fact, the way I described him was a splashy, “with lots of limping and calling pre-flop followed by lots of checking and folding post-flop.” There’s not tremendous value in dragging him into the pot. In fact, I’d probably rather he folded to the raise, as he’ll be getting 3:1 and closing the action with presumably a very playable hand. Short stacked or no, I’m not going to be looking to my stack in against him whenever I flop top pair.

Reverse Implied Odds?

Pretty much every commenter expressed some discomfort with playing KJo from out of position, and rightfully so. This is a hand I’d usually fold from the BB against a player in this position. My strong suspicion, however, is that he is raising more hands than his position warrants, and this presents an opportunity to exploit him by playing some additional hands myself.

The mere fact that KJ could be behind when it flops top pair does not make it a “reverse implied odds hand,” as Notam calls it. It’s true that it will rarely be more than a bluff-catcher, but top pair with a good kicker is generally a very good bluff-catcher. Calling bets is not generally going to be a money-losing proposition when we flop top pair, despite the presence of dominating hands in Villain’s range, because we know (or are comfotable assuming, anyway) that he will see the flop with an overly wide range. Thus, he will have only two options: rarely bet when a K or J flops, enabling us to get loads of cheap showdowns and only rarely pay off value bets, or bluff a lot at these boards, which means we’ll actually have positive implied odds on such boards. In the event that the board runs out in a way that calling is no longer profitable, we can always fold. There is never a point when we’ll be compelled to make a -EV call.

Let’s not forget that KJ probably dominates some hands in Villain’s range as well. He surely raises QJs, JTs, and KTs in this spot, and possibly some of their offsuit cousins as well.

Three-Betting vs Calling

Cromi007 says, “I like an absurd raise here, something like 200-240+.” There’s a reason why that size is absurd. Although a huge raise will indeed win the pot quite frequently, it needs to win the pot quite frequently, because it risks several times what is in the pot. Even if we take it down 75% of the time, we’ll be in such bad shape when we don’t get folds that it will likely overwhelm that fold equity. Three wins of $60 accompanied by a loss of $200 is not an appealing proposition.

Stuart says, “I don’t mind 3betting small ($90) to take control of the hand and maybe even set up a big 5-bet to win the hand pre.” This raise has the opposite problem. Instead of offering our opponent a lot of trivial folds, it offers him a lot of trivial calls. Three-betting does not magically put you in control of the hand. You’ll still be out of position, there will still be lots of money behind, and unless you have some reason to think Villain will fold excessively much either to the 3-bet or the c-bet (my description of him suggests neither), then there’s no reason to expect this to be a profitable play.

All of the information we’re responding to here is public. In other words, Villain probably realizes that UTG is going to give up too much, and will expect us to realize that as well, and will recognize that we don’t have to have a monster to 3-bet him (or 5-bet him, for that matter). It’s not enough to say, “He’s got a wide range, let’s raise in a really unbalanced way!” There’s plenty of room for him to punish that sort of imbalance, and everything we know about him suggests he’s capable of it.

What’s lacking from all of the comments advocating a three-bet is a justification for why this hand in particular is good for a three-bet. The fact that these arguments could just as well apply to 72o are a strong hint that what they’re proposing is an unbalanced play.

The fact is that KJo will not play well in a 3-bet pot. We don’t want to flop a marginal hand in a 3-bet pot, because in a 3-bet pot we want to be bluffing and value betting. KJo will not often make a good bluffing hand, and it will even more rarely make a good value betting hand. It’s going to flop mostly bluff-catchers, and that means that we want to keep Villain’s range as wide as possible and the pot as small as possible.

All of that said, I don’t think folding is terrible here by any means, especially if you aren’t confident in your post-flop ability. I think, however, that simply calling now and then playing a balanced post-flop strategy will show a profit, which should be a lesson to all those who say, “I don’t need game theory in the games I play.” Playing a bluff-catcher out of position against a wide range is one of the times that I find it most handy to be able to fall back on what I’ve learned about unexploitable play.

Results

I called, and UTG called. As you might have guessed, there’s another decision in this hand, which I’ll present momentarily in a separate post.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!