Many times when you flop a set or two pair into a dangerous board that has been raised preflop with several players involved and you are first to act go ahead and lead into the raiser, particularly if he or she is a very solid player that may very well have an overpair. More often than not the preflop raiser if he indeed has an overpair will raise you and allow you to three bet three bet the field if any in between have called, thus you can make them pay the maximum price to draw at your hand. This is a much better option in my opinion than checking to the raiser and then raising when it gets back to you as players in between will have nothing invested on the flop and can get away from their hands with no additional money lost but who will call your initial bet many times with alot of hands because of the size of the pot. The following is a hand I played last night that illustrates this point.

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (10 handed) ]

Preflop: Hero is BB with , .
UTG folds, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 calls, MP1 folds, MP2 raises, MP3 folds, CO folds, Button folds, SB calls, Hero calls, UTG+2 calls.

Flop: (8 SB) , , (4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, UTG+2 calls FISH, MP2 raises, SB folds, Hero 3-bets, UTG+2 caps, MP2 calls, Hero calls.

I wasn't looking for a cap here by the FISH but I wasn't too worried at this point either.

Turn: (10 BB) (3 players) Not a bad card for me I think and I lead out again.
Hero bets, UTG+2 raises, MP2 3-bets, Hero calls, UTG+2 calls.

Well things have definately gotten sticky now but with the two players I am in against I think I may very well still have the best hand.

.

River: (19 BB) (3 players) A really shitty card as the FISH may well have connected here.

Hero checks, UTG+2 checks, MP2 checks.

Final Pot: 19 BB

FISH shows down K10o and raiser has 1010. Thanks for coming out boys.

I will call one bet with holding such as this nearly 100% of the time but give me A10, KJ or other cards higher in the range and I will fold nearly all of the time unless the raise is coming from a late position, weak player. I don't want to be calling raises with cards that will likely get me in trouble if I hit but calling a raise with lower somewhat connected cards is a +EV move in my opinion if you play well after the flop.

Yes I would have called if the small blind folded and I would have called heads up as well. This hand had the extra bonus of having a BIG FISH involved as well that could be exploited. When you are calling heads up from the Big Blind you are getting 3.5- 3.33 to 1 on your call so you don't have to hit alot of the time to make this call correct. That being said you WILL BE a lifetime loser out of the blinds, you just have to learn to play as best as you can to limit the losses you will take and that includes fighting back from this position when possible.

Another very strong move is the checkraise flop with two others involved when the flop comes rags and the late position player (particularly if he is a decent player) just can't help but to bet. I use this play as I said moreso against the decent aware player than a FISH because the fish may very well have hit something on a rag flop. Checkraise him with nothing and hopefully the other player folds. Most players will go ahead and call your CR with nothing just in an attempt to try and hit something on the turn which most of the time they don't so go ahead and fire another bet at the turn and they will fold up like a dead cockroach most of the time.

Appreciate the reply piers. Thanks!!!!

If I may pick your brain again please.

Same exact situation, same cards, but this time you are in the sb. Do you make the call?

I am VERY selective about the hands I will play in the small blind, particularly when I a play 36 limit and the SB is only 1.00. Generally if I play a hand from the SB I will almost certainly be raising or reraising if only one or two people have entered unless I have a small pair and multiple people are in the pot then I will just call and hope to hit the set. Ask yourself this question, would I have played this hand UTG without any money invested. That is how I look at it. I don't worry about defending that 1.00 unless I have a VERY good starting hand, just let it go.

Here is another example of defending the blind against a Button raiser. I probably shouldn't post this hand because I have been a proponent of things like mucking KQo in EP and now I am calling a raise with 82s but when you play well after the flop you can sometimes take some liberties against a questionable raiser.

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (7 handed)

Preflop: Hero is BB with , .
UTG folds, MP1 folds, MP2 folds, CO folds, Button raises, SB folds, Hero calls.

Flop: (4.33 SB) , , (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero raises, Button calls.

The patented flop Check Raise

Turn: (4.16 BB) (2 players)
Hero bets, Button calls.

River: (6.16 BB) (2 players)
Hero bets, Button calls.

Well I decide to value bet my two pair here and if raised I can fold with certainty. Ends up he had a decent hand to raise but he went too far with it given all the resistance I was showing in my opinion.

Final Pot: 8.16 BB Not bad for 82s

I'm sure this was a mouse buster for him.

LOL

Great Post

He didn't have the Ace for the straight? what did he have?

Well that was a pretty interesting exercise and although there are only 56 representative hands I think you can see some good stuff here. I filtered from 40K hands which of course is only about 10% or so are from the Big Blind of all times I called a raise heads up with 109s on down to 23s. From these 56 times I am showing a profit of over 200.00 and a + BB/hand. On the second set of data there are also 56 hands which I played with the same criteria of calling a raise heads up from the blind with "bigger cards". I didn't include such hands as AA or KK etc. that would be automatic calls or raises. I selected hands from A9s down to J2o. In this dataset I am showing a small loss although a much lesser loss than would be had for folding every time with these hands. When calling a raise with these "higher cards" ALOT depends on who and where the raise is coming from with the lower cards I will usually call regardless. I hope that this data is of some use to all and it would be nice to perhaps have others with a larger data set chime in on how their hands stack up compared to mine in this regard. But for now I will hold with my philosophy that defense of the BB with smaller cards is a very viable option and more selective mucking of the higher range cards is probably called for but as always I am willing to hear other sides of the story.

starting times_dealt win_pct amt_won bb_hand
T7o 1 100 43 2.15
T6o 1 100 33 1.65
T5s 1 100 6 1
T5o 1 100 23.5 5.875
98s 1 0 -7 -3.5
98o 3 66.6667 26.25 1.2639
97s 1 0 -6 -1
97o 2 50 -6 -0.75
96s 2 0 -32 -3
96o 1 0 -18 -3
95o 1 0 -20 -1
93o 1 100 128 4.2667
92s 1 0 -20 -1
87o 2 50 14 1.1667
86o 1 0 -12 -2
85s 1 0 -5 -2.5
85o 1 0 -2 -1
84s 1 0 -20 -1
83s 2 100 44 4.1667
82s 1 100 23 3.8333
76o 2 50 1 0.0833
75o 1 100 14 1.4
74s 1 100 2.25 2.25
73o 1 0 -6 -1
65o 4 0 -32 -1
64o 1 100 10 1.6667
63s 1 0 -27 -4.5
63o 1 0 -2 -1
62o 1 100 19 4.75
55 1 100 3 1.5
54s 1 100 4 2
54o 4 0 -29 -2.125
53o 4 50 94 0.4417
43s 1 0 -5 -2.5
42s 1 100 19 4.75
33 2 0 -27 -2.25
32s 1 0 -6 -1
32o 2 0 -6.38 -0.595
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
56 39.29 +218.62 +0.03 BB/hand



starting times_dealt amt_won avg_per_hand co_bb_hand
A8o 2 34.5 17.25 2.875
A7o 1 17.5 17.5 2.9167
A6s 1 3.25 3.25 1.625
A6o 4 -74.5 -18.625 -2.1063
A5s 2 14 7 2.3125
A5o 1 16.5 16.5 2.75
A4s 2 -31 -15.5 -3.75
A4o 2 10 5 0.5
A2s 1 -11 -11 -5.5
A2o 1 9 9 1.5
KQo 1 -6 -6 -1
KTs 1 -2 -2 -1
KTo 1 -24 -24 -4
K6o 2 -26 -13 -4.75
K5o 1 14.5 14.5 3.625
K4o 2 13.75 6.875 2.7083
K3o 1 23 23 3.8333
K2o 2 -17 -8.5 -1.75
QJo 1 -2 -2 -1
QTs 2 -10 -5 -2.5
Q9o 1 -4.5 -4.5 -4.5
Q8o 3 -6.5 -2.1667 -0.0833
Q7s 2 83 41.5 1.725
Q6o 2 62 31 -0.925
Q5o 2 -16.5 -8.25 0.375
Q4s 1 13.5 13.5 2.25
Q4o 1 -20 -20 -1
Q3s 2 -15 -7.5 -2.75
Q3o 1 -6 -6 -1
JTo 2 -1 -0.5 -1.125
J9s 1 10 10 1.6667
J9o 2 -29 -14.5 -2.75
J8s 1 12 12 2
J7s 2 -12 -6 -1
J6o 2 -32 -16 -1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
56 -9.50 -0.17 -0.52 BB/hand

Briachek,

He had 77 in the hand I had 82s. Many players would have checked the river in my position but that is simply not the correct play in my opinion because I am going to call with my 2 pair if I check and he bets so I might as well go ahead and bet into him and if raised I will fold. Still cost me the same 1 Big Bet but the positive side is when he calls you with a hand that you have beat as he did here. With a check you are either going to lose one big bet or win 0 in most cases, by betting you are either going to lose OR win 1 big bet if he calls which is much better. So the bet is clearly a positive move IF you are willing to lay your hand down to a raise.