Questions Thread #5

This is a situation that I come across frequently, and I’m not sure if I’m approaching the problem in the proper manner.

I’m in the cut-off with 99. It’s folded to a loose and agressive player to my right who raises from middle position. This player has played approximately 50% of all hands dealt and raised 50% of those he’s played. I decide to 3 bet my nines because of the wide raising range of my opponent and my position. The button folds as do the blinds and the villian smooth calls the raise. I’ve sucessfully isolated my target.

The flop is A 8 5 rainbow and the villian bets into us.

I estimate my equity to be around ~45% due to the A on the flop. My target would certainly have raised any A. The pot is 8 small bets (we’ll say the small blind was raked away) so I estimate my pot equity to be 3.5 small bets. It will likely cost me big bets on both the turn and river to call down so my effective odds are 12:5.

Is the best move to raise the flop to protect my equity which will certainly be 3 bet by any A, or call it down allowing our villian to continue bluffing with his unpaired over cards? Is raising the flop, calling the 3 bet and folding the turn unimproved a bad move here? How does the lack of a cap preflop change my equity on the flop?

What changes if the lone overcard is K or Q? My target’s range includes all A’s but indicates he’ll fold the weakest of K’s and a wider range of Q’s.

Hi Ed. What a great site.

I’ve got a hand here that a friend of mine played online the other night and we had a bit of a disagreement about it. I was fairly confident about what the best play was, but it differed from how he played it, and Lord knows I’ve been wrong before. Sometimes I tend to screw things up when it comes to big pots and hand protection, and situational things, etc.. I’d love to hear your input, so here goes:

The player in the cutoff seat is our main villain. He’s tight by micro-limit standards and seems more aggressive than average after the flop, tending to bet/raise if he’s in there. The limpers are typical, loose/poor players.

Online, microlimit, 8-handed.

Our hero is dealt AsKs in the the little blind.

Player 1 limps, Player 2 raises, fold, fold, Villian calls, fold, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, everyone calls.

4 players to the flop for 13 small bets.

Flop: Kh 7d 8h

Hero bets out, Player 1 calls, Player 2 (the pre flop raiser) calls, Villian raises…

At this point there are 19 small bets in the pot.

How would you play the hand from this point forward?

If I get the chance I can pick up the action from this point, but I would really like to hear your thought process for the flop play and subsequent turn play.