Introduction
I was playing in a pot limit £50 rebuy tournament in Luton on Saturday when the following hand came up.
We each started with 1000 TC and the rebuys were over. Under the gun was WT with about 2300 TC and he limped with the blinds at 100,200. (nb. He was low stack at our table).
There were no raises and I in the BB with about 2700 TC and a Q7 rapped the felt.
The flop came down Q7x and I bet. WT immediately moved all in and after a pause I called.
He turned over KK and my two pair held up.
After WT departed a well known player, DW commented how he didn't like limping with big pairs for just this reason, but it was common practice.
Lets take a look at the issue :-
Slow Playing a Big Pair
This is a very standard way of playing the big pairs from an early position, but roughly 1/3rd of the time in a 9 seater, the Kings will NOT be rewarded by a raise.
Nb. This is based on my opinion that the following hands generally are raising in this type of situation.
Table 1 - Raising Hands
| QQ |
| KK |
| AA |
| JJ |
| TT |
| AKs |
| AKo |
| AQ |
| 88-99 |
| AJs |
You may get raised by an aggressive button too, but let's keep it simple for the moment.
Now in this instance you (as the limper) are encouraging callers and indeed are probably facing at least 3 opponents on the flop (the blinds and the button). Clearly this was NOT your intention. You want someone to raise you so that get your chips in.
Roughly 1/3rd of the time you don't get the required result. 1/3rd of the time you end up in a multi-way pot staring down a flop.
But is this bad?
My next question is, how often does the flop look bad, for this unraised pot.
I am guessing, but let's assume the kings were black and we have the following categories of bad flop :-
- 2.1 Paired (No King)
e.g. QQ2
- 2.2 One Ace (No King), No Flush or Pair
e.g. A
7
4
- 2.3 Unfriendly 3 Flush
e.g. Q 8 7
- 2.4 Straight Flop
e.g. 78T, 89T…..
The reason I consider this to be a particularly bad category is that not only could someone have flopped a straight but also someone could have flopped two pair.
Nb. We only allow the low card to be 2-8, as when it is a 9 or higher our King has some interest.
The table of probabilities are :-
Table 2 - Bad Flops
So we see that about half the time, we get a scary flop. The real flop in our example (Q72) was NOT scary and WT had to move all-in. He got unlucky. It was much more likely that I was leading with just top pair and his move was fine by me!
This is confusing! Let's look at something else.
The fear you have of raising before the flop is that a player with a weak raising hand folds because of your raise. Consider the following table.
Table 3 - Reaction table
As an example if the KK raises, I am saying that an AQ should fold whereas if he had limped, the AQ will generally raise.
From this table you will 'lose' a raiser about 49.23% of the time. Half again!
EVERYTHING IS A 50:50!!!
I can quite tally the maths with a conclusion, but here's what I would say: When in doubt, represent your hand honestly. Thus when you are dishonest - it's a rarity and less suspect.
My feeling still is that to raise is the best policy, although limping may reap rewards provided that you don't get married to the hand.
Send me your thoughts; I might tie the whole thing down in a later article.
A Bit of Maths:
