Hello-

The following situation came up in at 2/4 hold em cash game at Resorts about a month ago. Playing 11 handed, I was in the cutoff seat and was dealt pocket 9's. Two players in middle position limped in and I raised. The button called as did the limpers. The flop came J-9-7 rainbow. I led out and was raised by the button. The limpers folded, I reraised and the button capped the pot. The turn and river were blanks of different suits so there was no possible flush to worry about. On the turn and river, the button and I exchanges raises to the cap and showed down. Before proceeding to the solution, I should mention that the button was a typical tight agressive player and I had observed her play for about three hours. The solution hopefully appears below in white. Please let me know how you think I played this hand.

Best Regards,

Sonesta



After the exchange of raises post flop, I figured that the button could only have four possible hands. Pocket Jacks, pocket severs, an over pocket pair, or ten 8. I ruled out 10 8 because the button would not have cold called a raise with an intermediate one gap hand . I also ruled out an over pocket pair or pocket J's because she would have reraised preflop with one of these hands. I was left with bottom set which I figured out was almost surely her hand. She turned over the pocket 7's and I scooped a decent pot.

I think it is good aggressive poker. I like the play at every street. I not sure I would every time cap the river as in my experience the chance if her having pocket jacks is not that far off from pocket sevens. At live low limit, I've found people often don't three-bet preflop with pocket jacks. I don't think you can throw that out as a holding completely. Just depends how much you are willing to lose in one hand whether you get nervous enough to slow down on the river.

I think once she raises your river bet the ONLY hands are JJ or 77 so one could argue that as long as 77 is >= 51% you should cap mathmatically, but again just depends how much you are willing to lose in one hand.

nh thats what i figured bfore reading the results too

Hi Chaser-

Thanks for my your reply. My thinking on this hand was that the likelihood of the button having JJ was less than 10%. Therefore, I was willing to lose a lot of checks on a hand like this. If my opponent had Jacks, I would have to tip my hat to her for outthinking me.

Best Regards,

Sonesta

Thanks bboy-

I forgot to mention that if one or both limpers had stayed in the pot, the whole thing would have played differently. These guys were playing all sorts of crazy hands so I would have had a tougher time ruling out JJ or 10-8 for one of these guys.

Best Regards,

Sonesta

Seems you did everything well, but I am not sure that I would have raised before the flop with pocket 9s in an 11 handed limit game. To much likelyhood of someone having a higher hand, and really all your looking for with nines is a set (which luckily you got).

Thanks for your message. The reason that I raised was that I wanted to see where was at in the hand. When the button called the raise, I figured that I was up against AK,AQ, or a middle pair. ( After the flop, I had a much better idea of where I was) I also thought that there was a fair chance since the two limpers were very poor players and the button could have had anything. At worse, I could have picked up some information at the cost of two checks.