a look at some tougher pre-flop spots

A Look at Some Tougher Pre-Flop Spots

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In this post, we will look at some of the lesser talked about pre-flop spots we will run into whilst playing both tournament and cash game poker, we will want to review some hands like this so we know what we are going to do when we come up against these types of spots on the tables.

Suited connectors out of position to a 3-bet

$1/$2, $200 Deep

Hero in SB: Raises to $7 with 7♠ 8♠

BB: 3-Bets to $22

Hero: ?

We can easily call with this holding in a blind vs blind situation…

For a few reasons:

  • We will have good equity even against the top part of our opponent’s range…87s equity vs top 38% range
    As we can see here we have 39% equity against our opponent even if they are only raising around 35% of hands against us.
  • Ranges are even wider in blind versus blind situations, so playing suited connectors here is going to be fine.
  • Our hand is going to be very playable, we will either flop a decent board for our hand and be able to comfortably continue on boards that hit us, or we will completely miss and be able to get away from the hand.

Suited Ace facing a 3-Bet out of Position

$1/$2, $200 Deep

Hero in CO: Raises to $5 with A♣ 4♣

BTN: 3-Bets to $13.50

Hero: ?

This is a good spot to fire up the 4-Bet…

Here are a few reasons why:

  • We are going to want to continue with aggression in general when out of position to be able to win the pot more often. Typically we want either the betting lead or to be in position, so a 4-Bet will give us the betting lead again
  • We will want to have a balanced 4-Betting range so we don’t only just have hands like AA and KK, this is a perfect hand to add into this range so that it’s balanced.
  • This hand has good equity against a button 3-bet range and will have good playability when called…range vs a4s
    Even against the top 13.9% of hands like 77+ ATo+ KJo+ etc, we will have over 42% equity against our opponent, so even when they have a pretty solid 3-bet range on the button we will be in good shape.This doesn’t even count the times they are just getting out of line with suited connectors in position as many players will be doing these days.

A decent holding on the button, but against early position action

$1/$2, $200 Deep

UTG: Raises $6
MP: Calls $6
Hero on BTN: A♥ T♦

Hero: ?

This is going to be a fold…

Let’s look at some reasons why:

  • Ranges are going to be very tight here, the UTG player will be raising hands like ATs+ and pairs like 99+ which we will have poor equity against alone, let alone against the tight range of the player flat calling this UTG raise.
  • We have bad reverse implied odds with a hand like this that could be dominated, for all the times we call with this hand and hit an Ace and pay off bets and lose to better hands like AJ, AQ & AK.

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