SpicySalmon;342804 wroteYeah I'm just trying to be a bit sarcastic and by no means to disrespect the vets here. I didn't say I'd shove with AK, was trying to point out that only donkeys are calling 18BB shove with J2o. Still, it's certainly better than min raise with AKo. Why not 2.5x then? It's a reasonable size without pot committing urself. When it comes to shoving with all the hands I raise I'd reserve it to around 10BB. BTW I don't mind to listen to other ways of approaching in this situation. Why not tell me what u would've done here ?
ok, my opinion would be to 2,2x it here, it's more or less my standard raise size at the limits I play ( when I play :< ). I really believe that if you're good enough postflop villain can never profitably defend his BB for 1,2 BB's more with these shallow stacks, if you have even more info he can for sure not defend even 1 extra BB profitably.
The reason for this is that when we have 18 BB's our range is pretty set. Were either going to be opening what we consider a bluff (I'm doing this very rarely with this short a stack). A bluff could be a pure bluff like A6o for the blocker, 25s because people dont play much, or KJ something something darkside because you think that people flat much with worse hands but broadway type opens can be risky (all of the bluffs can be) since if someone reshoves you pre you have to give up your hand almost always so at an aggro table KJ is pretty much the same as 25. Anyway, I dont do that much
The other part of our 18 BB open range is going to be strong. It'll be hands we want to call people's all in pre with maybe something like Aj+ 77+ something, depends a lot on your position and villain tendencies. Anyway, if someone takes his J2 up against that strong range of mine ( people talk about the 1:10 rule where you flop two pair or better about 10% of the time) so he has about a 10% chance to feel comfortable with the flop he gets, lets break it up into scenarios
- 1. villain hits his bottom pair: This one beats some hands, impossible to know which, some of the times our bluffs will even have hit better, most villains will put the rest of the 18 bigs in and pray
- 2. Villain his top pair: This gets a bit tricky, this beats most of our bluffs, and a couple of our pairs, top pair is something villain absolutely has to go on with if he called garbage pre
- 3. Villain hits two pair or better: This beats most of our hands unless we hit a sick cooler flop, however, just because villain wants to get all the money in the middle, doesnt mean we have to (unless we hit a decent piece that is)
- 3. Villain hits nothing: Villain now has the choice to either fold to our cbet or try to make a play at the pot. Again, except for when we bluff our range is going to be strong here, he can try to make a play for the pot, and he can feel like a champ when it works but, against a strong range in a spot where it's obviously tempting to bluff the check raise is probably not going to net him cash in the long run.
With a read we can even 3 bet some ace high hands to his check raise on flops, if we can get a feel for when to do that and be right (even if only exactly 50% of the times) we will severely cripple his 1-3 scenarios and his chances of winning money in the long run from this spot.
This is all pretty messily written but if you take it with a grain of salt I think you'll get the point I'm trying to make. Also, the 1-10 rule is pretty sweet to remember for in game math purpouses