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!

3 thoughts on “What’s Your Play? KJo in the BB Results”

  1. Because there is a part 2 to this, I assume you cant give your thoughts on how you would proceed post flop given his range and initiative advantages when we just flat. I have an idea, but I’ll wait for this in the next results post.

    “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.

    This sounds like we’re not supposed to attack unbalanced play with unbalanced play. I thought this was the definition of exploitative play, which is more profitable than GTO play against someone who we believe is exploitable.

    This of course opens us up to being re-exploited, but I dont think we’ve seen anything to suggest he is capable of this. All we know is that he can 2-bet limpers and make some 3-bet moves against you. This is like a 2nd tier thing that even I can do. What we dont know yet is if he can 4-bet you light in this spot or respond well to a 5-bet from you. This is some 3rd tier shit that I know I cant do yet. Flatting here may give a player like me too much credit in this spot, because I’d fold a ton of hands better than KJo pre that I think I would be ok at barreling well with post flop.

    That said, I agree with the reasons you give for the flat. This seems like a spot where we have to play a more balanced strategy since we dont know enough about the guy. All that extra x-bet Selbts stuff I mentioned may be more profitable unless this guy doesnt back down or unless he is actually balanced, but it may be too expensive to find that out given that a call is clearly profitable.

    Also, this is a completely different issue but I thought of a side question.

    I overlooked how the 3-betting line would strength villain’s continuing range. Now that you mention it, it’s obvious that a good player would fold most of his air hands, probably 4-bet the top, and only continue with a condensed range consisting of pairs and suited broadways that may be able to rebluff us postflop.

    I can see the merits of 3-betting a polarized range here because the player is good, but if instead he calls 3-bets too much (never 4-betting light) and doesn’t bluff well post flop (I’m thinking average online small stakes recreational players), would it make more sense to 3-bet a depolarized range and could this hand have a place in such a 3-betting range?

    • Last paragraph should read

      but if instead he *is the type who* calls 3-bets too much

      Also the in the previous paragraph, I meant to say that the good player would 4-bet the top and any air hands he didn’t fold. A good player probably wouldn’t 4-bet only the top this deep.

  2. Andrew,

    I really like your reasoning for calling. I agree with your arguments against 3-betting, and I think this part articulates very well the objection some of us had to 3-betting this hand:

    “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.”

    There are a lot of good reasons to 3-bet in this situation, but there are a lot of better hands to put into a 3-betting range.

    Your argument for calling was eye opening for me. The idea that villain will have to either allow us a lot of cheap showdowns or bluff a lot is obvious in retrospect, but wasn’t something I had considered.
    I do have a couple of remaining concerns about calling here:

    1. Your argument for calling focused on what happens when we hit the flop, but most of the time we will miss it, and in those cases we come back to the argument that KJo off won’t often flop strong draws or other hands we would often want to bluff with. I’m assuming that we aren’t calling solely for the implied odds we get when we flop a bluff catcher.

    My thinking is that we can still bluff effectively because we have kept villain’s range wide, increasing our fold equity and our equity when called. Does this sound right, or am I off track here?

    2. It seems likely given your description of utg that we will be 3 – handed on the flop if we call the raise. We not only have poor absolute position, but poor relative position as well. Doesn’t the presence of utg in the pot cut down the EV of bluff catching quite a bit?

    Thanks,
    Mike

Comments are closed.