4 thoughts on “Episode 218: Dara in the House!”

  1. I am not sure I understand the ranging of the BB in this spot. Cold calling with an original raiser still active is a tough spot, since you can easily be 4 bet off your hand. You mention that 99-JJ, AQ+ is his likely range, with some slow played AA. I am not sure why the smaller pairs would be that much worse than a pair like 99, especially versus Dara’s range. Is it because your frequency of calling would be too high? Isn’t 99 basically a set mine here too? If so, why not 66 or lower?

    • 99 flops top pair or second pair much more often. It isn’t that you aren’t also set mining with 99 but on a T72 flop you have more options to continue than with 55.

  2. I think even if what you say is a good point, and 99 is similar to 66- (though not exactly the same, it has more flops where it’s an overpair), there’s another reason why we can’t just flat any pair here, which is that if we do our range contains too many pairs that can’t continue to further aggression preflop. So in my experience most regs just stick to the strongest pairs that are too weak to 4 bet. It’s a similar concept to the idea that while we want to have suited connectors in our utg open range for balance and board coverage, and they’re all very similar, we can’t just open every suited connector. Or when we are light 4 betting we choose a hand like A5s, but A4s-A2s have similar value so why not just light 4b them too? Because we then have too many light 4 bets.

    • Thanks for the response. It seems that it is mostly just keeping your frequencies right. One other thought is that the BB might have chosen to widen his range here against a perceived weaker player, the original raiser. If your ranging of the BB is correct, isn’t that super easy to play against such a tight condensed range?

      BTW, nice value bet on the first hand of the tournament.

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