Playing Premium Hands

dvdfan

Hello,

Ive been looking trough my stats and noticing lately that my high pocket pairs are costing me alot of tourneys. This applys to STT's mostly at the $5-$10 level with 2000 starting chips on PPP.

How should i be playing these hands, what should i be raising preflop, what should i be doing when i raise with JJ,QQ or KK and see an overcard. It could be just bad luck or variance but the amount of times lately ive had KK and even AA turned over is unreal, a quick look at my stats tells me KK,QQ,JJ are not in profit over the last few hundred hands and AA is barely making a profit, surely this is wrong and these should be my best earners??

Heres an example of what ill do with aces when the big blinds are 100 or less. Ill raise to around 200-240 enough to filter out the drawing hands but enough to maybe get heads up. If there is someone very aggressive ill normally just do a small re-raise knowing they are likely to re-raise but thats rarely a play ill make. On the flop if im first to act ill put in a small raise to look like a continuation bet as long as the flop was favourable. If there is a flush draw or a pair on the board ill make a good size raise to find out where i am, maybe 500-600. The problem is if someone calls this raise should i be folding (i know it depends on the situation but in the early stage of STT's its hard to get a proper read on someone).

In the case of QQ for instance, the flop comes Jack high, no pairs and no flush draws. I raise 500 and someone calls. Maybe they had a jack and now have a pair or are they showing great strenght here with KK or AA after all theyve called my preflop raise and now another big raise.

btw with JJ,QQ & KK id put in a heftier raise probably more in the 300-400 raise but sometimes with KK ill take the chance and put in a smaller raise of 200 to get some action, not become to easy to read and hopefully hit a good flop.

Im in the situation now where i hate to see JJ,KK,QQ coming which i know is wrong and so i must be playing them wrong.

Any ideas or help here would be great

ianmc38

Raise more preflop raising to 200 with blinds at 50/100 prices everybody into calling. Make a raise between 3 and 5 big blinds. Vary the bet size. Some people like to raise 4xBB and add an extra BB for every limper.

In terms of postflop, you need to improve your hand reading skills. You seem to be asking people how to know when you're ahead postflop. This is a skill you must develop yourself.

Watch what hands they call preflop raises with. Is it only pocket pairs or broadway cards or will they do it with suited aces, suited connectors?

Pick up on betting patterns. How do they play postflop. Do they bet out with strong hands? Do they check call, check-raise etc etc?

PS: Dont raise to find out where you are. Raise for value because you think you're ahead and want more money in the pot. As is said on a weekly basis, raising for information = bad.

TacT

raise much more preflop with the idea that you would rather win the blinds than lose your entire stack because you let someone in too cheaply. If blinds are at 50/100 you need to be raising 300 at a very bare minimum, people call with anything at those stakes so you need to punish them for it, dearly.

I wouldn't contemplate a raise of anything less than 400 personally with blinds at that size at those levels. When other hands are being played out, pay very close attention to each and every single detail. Get an idea of what your opponents are up to and take notes. Later on, you use this information to your advantage in deciding to extract more value or deciding to fold the 2nd best hand. If the whole table limps and you're looking at KK on the button or big blind, shove that stack in there and pick up those chips. Don't let them catch a whiff of a flop with their 25s.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

sikes

LuckyLloyd wrote:

This is a very good and solid approach to playing big pairs. You should also be consistent - i.e. you raise the same amount with the same amount of limpers in the pot with any of AA, KK, QQ, JJ.

This is not a good idea at all. Playing "consistent" as above will allow the other playsers to play perfectly against you.

IMO, AA/KK should be played completely differently to QQ which in turn should be played completely differently to JJ/TT etc you get the picture.

DVDfan, if you posted some hand histories where you have questions on how to play, people here will give you pointers. There are really no hard and fast rules, every situation is different. Blinds, position, reads, stacks etc.

fuzzbox

sikes wrote:

This is not a good idea at all. Playing "consistent" as above will allow the other playsers to play perfectly against you.

IMO, AA/KK should be played completely differently to QQ which in turn should be played completely differently to JJ/TT etc you get the picture.

You have this backwards.
You should not bet an amount that leaks information about the quality of your hand.
Sure, these hands need different play, but most of that comes postflop. Open raisising to a consistant number all the time is good play and keeps the quality of your hand hidden.

I dont, however, agree with the folks who suggest open raising like 5x BBs + 1 BB per limper with all of these hands, as I find that your steals get more expensive and so on and so forth.

Find a good number that you like - 2.5BBs or 3BBs seems good, and add one per limper.

This, of course, releates to tourney play. I go a bit heavier preflop in cash games, due to stack depth.

PS - to the OP, you may well be paying off way too much postflop when you are outdrawn with these hands.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

ianmc38

Then add suited connectors, one gappers and any other bag of bollíx to your range and you'll keep everyone guessing.

sikes

Fuzzbox wrote:

You have this backwards.
You should not bet an amount that leaks information about the quality of your hand.
Sure, these hands need different play, but most of that comes postflop. Open raisising to a consistant number all the time is good play and keeps the quality of your hand hidden.

LuckyLloyd wrote:

As Fuzz has pointed out, a consistent pre - flop betting pattern over a wider range of hands will make it harder for good players to know what you are holding. If you add AK and TT to a pre - flop range that you bet simililiarly, it will make it very difficult for players to put you on a specific hand. Sure, you will be projecting strength - but how strong???

granted if we add more hands to this algorithm for rasinig it will be harder to read. However, only raising in this style for AA-JJ is not a good idea which was originally encouraged in this thread.

Fuzzy i agree with betting consistently at stages in a tourney. But this only really applies when i am being very aggressive and am in a lot of pots, so my range is far greater than AA-JJ.

LuckyLloyd wrote:

If you were to significantly deviate in the way between which you play AA or JJ pre - flop, alert players will be able to pick up on this and adjust their play accordingly.

but i deviate the way i play all my raising hands. 72 can be played in the same way i play AA at any point of a tourney

TacT

we are talking about calling stations on tribeca at the $5/$10 STT's. Not raising anything less than 3 times the BB is suicide. Whatever else you decide to do is down to your own personal taste.

Atlas_IRL

raise more preflop if the blinds are low

ive seen this happen a lot of times

everyone limps for 50 someone raises to 200 with a premier hand a few ppl call and give a lot of value to the players who play their connecters and you will get outdrawn a lot of the time...

if you raise to say 350/375 you may get 1 caller which you can extract money from, i'd raise more with JJ than i would with AA as jacks dont want a caller as much as aces for obvious reasons

dvdfan

And once again im caught, early doors in a $5 STT, i get pocket queens and raise 360, blinds are 20/40, i get a re-raise ALL-IN from villain whos already raised aggressively twice out of the the first 3 hands, once going all in aswell.

I called he showed KK and won the hand, did i play this correctly. Ill try to post future pocket card hands if i get any as this might be the best way to see where im going wrong.

If he hadnt been raising so aggressively i would have dropped the hand. Should i be folding these hands early in tournaments until i have a reasonable read??

sikes

its very difficult to comment on the hand without knowing positions and the sequence of betting etc. On the face of it, it seems you raised too much and are discouraging action from hands you are beating. i know that it sounds you are getting conflicting advice. If you could copy and paste the hand history from the program people can look at it more closely.

but these things happen, you go on a run of running your top pairs into bigger pairs.

NickyOD

The fact that you exit tourneys a lot with these hands isn't really relevent. It's only natural you will go out more often with these hands since those are the hands you're most likely to commit all your chips with so don't worry about it so much. Your'e hardly getting knocked out with J-7o more often than with aces will you? If you did then you would have a real problem. What's important is that overall these are the hands you accumulate more chips with.

As for the advice in the thread I think you should listen to fuzz.

TacT

dvdfan wrote:

And once again im caught, early doors in a $5 STT, i get pocket queens and raise 360, blinds are 20/40, i get a re-raise ALL-IN from villain whos already raised aggressively twice out of the the first 3 hands, once going all in aswell.

I called he showed KK and won the hand, did i play this correctly. Ill try to post future pocket card hands if i get any as this might be the best way to see where im going wrong.

If he hadnt been raising so aggressively i would have dropped the hand. Should i be folding these hands early in tournaments until i have a reasonable read??

1) blinds are at 20/40, what in the name of god are you raising to 360 for? Raising to 160 is already loads at this stage of the game. 4 times the big blind and if anyone reraises you, then start asking yourself questions, not shoving your entire stack into the middle to bust out first in the STT.

2) the all-in reraise tells you your opponent has at least AK and more than likely KK/AA so why are you calling hoping for a race or just paying KK/AA when the only hand you are certain to beat is JJ or a smaller pair, when you're a long way from the money? Especially when you have made such a big raise preflop.

This is part of the advantage of making a bigger raise preflop, it makes it easier to get away from when you get reraised further down the line and you have something like JJ/QQ. What would you reraise someone with preflop if they raised to 360 from early position, early on in the game, making it 9 big blinds to see a flop?

3) yes, you should be willing to lay down JJ/QQ to an all-in preflop reraise very early on unless you have a good read on the villain and have seen him moving in with 22 preflop in another game with the blinds at 20/40. The fact you raised so heftily means less people are likely to get involved unless they do have a big hand! I wouldn't even consider calling this with JJ if I knew my opponent had QK. We need to get in the money first, don't we?

dvdfan

TacT wrote:

1) blinds are at 20/40, what in the name of god are you raising to 360 for? Raising to 160 is already loads at this stage of the game. 4 times the big blind and if anyone reraises you, then start asking yourself questions, not shoving your entire stack into the middle to bust out first in the STT.

This is $5 STT, not that im not glad of the advice i recieve and im not runninb down your advice but raising 160 when everyone has 2,000 stacks wont put off half the fish on PPP and ill end up with 3-4 players at the flop. Its not at all unusual to see 6-7 people call 120-160 raises at this level

TacT wrote:

2) the all-in reraise tells you your opponent has at least AK and more than likely KK/AA so why are you calling hoping for a race or just paying KK/AA when the only hand you are certain to beat is JJ or a smaller pair, when you're a long way from the money? Especially when you have made such a big raise preflop.

This is part of the advantage of making a bigger raise preflop, it makes it easier to get away from when you get reraised further down the line and you have something like JJ/QQ. What would you reraise someone with preflop if they raised to 360 from early position, early on in the game, making it 9 big blinds to see a flop?

3) yes, you should be willing to lay down JJ/QQ to an all-in preflop reraise very early on unless you have a good read on the villain and have seen him moving in with 22 preflop in another game with the blinds at 20/40. The fact you raised so heftily means less people are likely to get involved unless they do have a big hand! I wouldn't even consider calling this with JJ if I knew my opponent had QK. We need to get in the money first, don't we?

But he was agressively raising pre-flop and after the flop for 2 of the last 3 hands and this was hes 2nd time to go all in after the first 4 hands, this led me think maybe hes just agressive and trying to take down pots and considering this was a nice size pot it was worth the bluff for him. Also a player that goes all in twice in the first 4 hands is a good indication hes not a very good poker player and so he could just as well have been on on the top board pair, TT,99 AK or even Ace Rag.

But its a fair point that i shouldnt be going all in this early in the tournament and wait till i had a better read on the player. Id be interested in hearing more opinions on the size of the raise??

TacT

My reply was a bit rude/cocky, sorry about that, I had a few drinks on me when I got in last night

A 360 raise this early on facing a reraise all-in is 80-90% of the time going to mean you're walking into AK/KK/AA if you have raised from an early position with JJ/QQ.

You don't want a race with someone this early because if you take too many coin flips, you won't be getting into the money often enough for things to be profitable. I know people are willing to push with all sorts at this level but what you need to do is remain disciplined and keep a firm grip on your chips to get busy with later on, allowing your opponents to cut each other up while you slowly cruise into the money.

I think the villain may have trapped you rather nicely by being very aggressive early on, allowing you to stumble into one of his unfortunately bigger hands. What aggressive players will do is they will raise, raise and then raise some more, until finally someone gets pee'd off and walks their JJ into their KK/AA or equivalent situation. The trick is not to get sucked in and stay out of the way. Be the man with KK/AA cleaning JJ/QQ and not vice versa.

What you have to do is stay out of the way at this stage in the game until we're closer to the money, agreed? Hence, you don't want to be getting it all-in with marginal holdings like JJ/QQ, much as we need to accumulate chips to win the thing (and they're not really marginal holdings but I will refer to them as that because we need to get ITM first from an STT pov).

If you fold and he shows Ax or 99 or TT or 88 or 22, so be it, take note and use the information to your advantage later but be careful with it! We still have chips to play with and the game is far from over. The main thing to bear in mind with STT's is you need to be getting in the money as often as possible, then you start taking those coinflips, stealing the blinds when they go up etc.

The raise amount is a tricky one and it's up to you to gauge that given how loose/crazy/tight the opponents you are playing are, at a given table. So, perhaps aim to play a set number of stt's and varying your raise amounts and draw your own conclusions as to what is good and what is bad.

Good luck and as NickyOd said, it's normal that you will be busting out of these with big hands but they are also the hands that you will accumulate chips with when you play them right and make the correct decisions for all of your chips.

dvdfan

Thanks Tact, seems like good advice:D