AJs Facing Massive Raise Preflop from a Degen
1/2.
V (138) is a regular who once said, “back when I was a degen, I used to…” He straddles often and calls wide. He was willing to call with worse, he said, “because I had to just see what he had.” He’s intelligent, self-aware, and observant. Even when he folds preflop, he watches every hand and asks players about them. In his day job, he earns enough to play ten hours per week. He recently competed with several other regulars to win the cardroom’s most-hours-played-in-a-month promotion. He’s constantly betting on sports.
Hero (336, other Vs cover) is TAG. V is truly interested in all the actions hero takes.
OTTH
Button straddle. Four callers, all loose-passives. Degen in LJ raises all in to 138. Hj folds. Hero in CO with Ajcc. Hero?
5 Replies
Gotta love degens.
This guy isn't playing poker. He's just gambling.
This is almost certainly a worse hand more often than not. Calling is probably +EV. Really just a matter of how willing we are to accept the variance if this guy gets lucky and makes a better hand.
My decision might come down to whether or not I've seen this guy stack off and re-buy recently. If it looked like he had 4-5 buy-ins with him, I'd be more likely to call. If I thought he was looking to go home, I'd be more likely to call. If he was losing recently, and might be tilted, I'd be more likely to call.
If we've ever seen him do this with big PP before, obviously we can just fold and look for a better spot.
Results:
Hero folded. Everyone folded. Degen showed KTo.
I get it in. You're going to be dominating a lot of Ax and some stuff like JTs, QJs, KJs.
Flipping with some pairs and sometimes he'll have some suited garbage.
You have two cards to a royal and an Ace which is pretty good vs degen.
If the degen makes this bet with the top 10 percent of his hands, hero is a 46 to 54 dog, and hero is flipping the degen for the 25 dollars in the pot...but only if everyone folds. I'm happy to flip with the degen for 25 dollars and ride the variance. But if one of the other five players yet to act calls with a limp-calling range of 99-77,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,ATo+,KQo, hero is a 29 percent dog with just 20 dollars of dead money. And as I wrote in an earlier post, Vs in this game were calling straddles with hands as good as AK.
If you're not willing to re-raise, and if you're concerned about other players coming into the pot behind you with better hands, folding is fine.
Whenever I've seen degens or guys who are stuck and tilted make this play, it's rarely a top 10% hand.
It's usually something pretty raggedy, but with some chance to flop well, or just total garbage. They're doing it for the sole purpose of getting everyone to fold, so they can show the bluff. It's advertising for future value's sake.
AJs is a little cuspy as a hand to call with. It's usually going to be better than whatever they have, but obviously we'd prefer 99 or AQs. If you called, and the board is K-high, it's going to be hard to NOT be results-oriented.
