Big raise pre mw oop.
Tag UTG opens to 15 in a 1/3 8 handed game. Three players call. I’m in the BB.
They say we should play tighter to a big raise. They say playing OOP mw isn’t good. We have better odds with several callers. Let’s say the effective stack is 300. We have 400.
Should I still be calling fairly wide here? I don’t want to be a nit. Am I still calling a lot of suited hands? Should I be folding off suit broadways like KJo or QTo? Am I playing flop big or fold?
2 Replies
You should never be "calling wide" from the BB. In fact, there are good arguments for never calling at all. Maybe set mining is ok, but that's it.
You're out of position the whole hand. You'll under-realize your equity. And you'll almost never "flop big".
Yes KJo and QTo are almost always folds against a TAG raise from UTG.
If you have reads, an image, confidence, and really good hand reading skills, you can start raising some of the hands you should otherwise be folding. All the cool kids are raising A5s these days. 87s and T9s are eminently playable when you have initiative and an uncapped range.
You should not call wide here, I believe theoretically, like in solver land, you shouldn't call at all. Reasons against calling:
1. OOP.
2. Large raise size.
3. Lots of dead money to attack, incentivising a squeeze.
The main reason (other than position) that overcalling in SB is 'bad' and overcalling in BB is 'better' is simply that the big blind is a larger ante, so you get a better price. Where the raise is large, then the % of the total call price that's made of an ante that's already paid is comparatively smaller making the BB more like the SB in terms of offering good odds to call.
All that said I'm bad at poker and believe most live players are worse than me, so I do call here with pockets, suited aces and some suited broadways up to wherever I squeeze (around TT, AQs, KQs). I'm going to squeeze tight because UTG range is tight and I want decent raw equity. I'm not calling with any unsuited cards whatsoever in this scenario, obviously raising AK, folding AJo/KQo, AQo I either raise or fold. I tend to fold SCs here because I believe they play better HU in position where we can maximise draws rather than OOP multiway where we can't, also unlike suited aces they don't make the nut flush and we want the nuts when two+ opponents start shovelling money into the middle.