Button JJ facing a straddle 3-bet

Call obv not folding JJ

Calling seems fine. I wonder what your 4bet range should be - KK and AKs only perhaps?

I am shipping it vs the villain as described

It's only 110bb effective against a LAG, why are people saying to flat? Ship it in.

Gotta admit, I was thinking as Aces, at first: 110 bigs, just ship it already.

As big as the bets have been, this is smaller than the 100bb 4! charts I've seen, where their solver is minclicking and shoving, and so pushing it towards a tourney-like pure shove.

The reason for my post though is to ask whether calling, and seeing if H can eke another bet from V, might be better. All depends on what range we're giving V, both initial 3!, and % they fold to a 4. A shove is profitable by the calc I did (~12% 3!, lots of Ax, folds 3/4 to H 4! rip.) I've just been rereading Ed Miller's Course though, and after it, I'm just not afraid of taking a flop in this situation, IP.

If V's got QQ-AA, H is toast, but that's going to happen whether H shoves now or calls. Any non-Ace flop, H is doing pretty good v a LAG. So call, see if V shoves a "safe" flop, and bluffcatch. (Which is NOT a thing in The Course, so far, but I think Generic LAG is gonna do it with a lot of things you beat, even on K/Q containing flop.)

Why shove, and make V correctly fold? I think is the TL;DR here. Honestly, H isn't capped, considering they close the action, and everyone's folded to H's 4! before if I understand the HHs correctly.

If you shove, you need an awful lot of medium pairs to call you.

Assume that if you jam V calls all QQ+ which crush you.

V will call some percentage of AK and AQs, could be anything from 0-100% depending on player type, you are marginally ahead of these hands but they're barely a flip. Obviously if you get folds that's good but calls don't matter.

But to make a jam profitable you really need to get called either by some unpaired hands which you crush - AJ, A10, KJ etc - or by a load of TT/99 which you'd need to 3bet from the straddle and then call a jam. Seems very optimistic. I'm probably just calling AA here sometimes; your range can be strong.

I'm guessing theory would tell us the correct play, but I haven't studied 100BB push/fold vs 3B spots.

V's 3B size and description would lead me to think we're very often ahead here, but maybe not always.

This assumption may not be true, but I'd assume if we jam, he's mostly folding worse, and rarely folding better, or AK. It seems like the common flipping at best / crushed at worst scenario if we jam and he calls.

The assumed higher frequency of GII as a flip or a huge dog would make me think we should just flat call. But I'd think there's some value in simply making him surrender his equity by folding worse that may catch up, and also preventing ourselves from making an incorrect fold post.

Like, if his 3B range here is 77+/AK/AQ/AJ/A5s, I'd think there has to be some value in making lower PP's and some of those AX combos surrender their 20%-36% equity and not paying rake. If our plan is to fold if we see an over-card on the flop, we deny ourselves the opportunity to suck out.

If we just call, we'll often have a similar dilemma on the flop. Are we just going with JJ whenever the board doesn't have over-cards? How will we know when 77-TT didn't flop a set, or he just has QQ+?

I dunno, man. I think it's a close decision, and I wouldn't beat anyone up for flatting or jamming.

I got it in pre last night by 4B-jamming from OOP with QQ vs a kid who 3B me off a short stack with AK. It was for around 65 BB's. Flop was clean. Turn was a K. River was an A.

The reg on my left said something sympathetic. I said if I'd flatted the 3B pre, I could have made V fold AK on the flop. The reg (probably correctly) pointed out that of course we want him to call pre with AK, and he might not fold AK on the flop when he's starting short, and we wouldn't want him to, until after he sucks out.

If you flat here, the SPR will be less than 2 on the flop, about what it would have been in my QQ v AK hand last night if I'd flatted. You could make the "correct" decision here, and make another one on the flop, and still end up losing.

Poker can be such a stupid game.

ETA - not sure what the normal 3B size would be in this spot, but I wonder if our 3B might seem small to him, and thus induced him to put in a light 4B.

Here are some previous hand histories with this V.

1) This was a new $5/$5 table on a Friday morning, and about 10 minutes into it, I find AKo in the SB.

Unknown 30's WM opens to $20 utg.
V from above hand history in utg+1 3-bets to $75. Effective stacks are $800.
H tanks with AKo in SB. With the long pause the table probably expects me to 4-bet or call. I think how if I 4-bet with usual sizing, I am going to potentially build a big pot oop against two uncapped ranges. And V seems like a solid player. So I fold my AK, and can't remember the last time I did that. The utg player folds, no flop is seen.

After a while of observing of more hands, I see that V is actually quite aggressive and playing wide ranges (opening raising 45o on the B and double barreling vs a SB nit on an A-7-9 flop to river a gutshot straight), and we have this hand:

2)
V opens $20 in MP.
Rec fish calls on the B.
H has 8d8c in the SB and raises to $100.
Only V calls.
($220) Flop Th 4d 5h
H bets $85.
V tanks, and eventually folds. I say "I was worried you had 45." He says "I almost raised, I had 78."

Not to be rude, but I don't see much to take from those two prior hands.

I agree with you.

I am just up in the early morning and having nothing better to do.

Still thinking about my AKo fold, and feeling happy about it.

I checked with my son who is pretty knowledgeable, and he said the AKo is a straightforward fold.

I think to those that want to jam, calling looks weak, but villain made a pretty big bet and to him, a call has to look strong. I just don’t think TT will call a jam, so you’re looking at only being called by better hands.

Nobody knows how to play jacks.
Obviously, we don’t want to invest $200 just to fold later, but we have a reasonable chance to get all the money, so let’s see a flop.

Flatting is fine. We retain positional advantage and better SPR.

H has position, let's use it. Versus this V, I'd be getting it in on most runouts. I think he's pretty Ace-heavy, with a lot of Ax crap that a LAG would 3! vs call or fold, so those would be the only ones I'd be leery of. Not that worried about K/Q-high boards, though obv V can have those too. All depends on V's range.

On a pf shove, sure, H is hating life if V calls off with the 18 combos of higher PP, but V's 3! range is way broader than that and loaded with things they're folding to a 4! V folds way more often, and is where H's profit would come from. Though other combos might be called off & H is OK vs those. I gave V all AK,AQs on the idea that this isn't H's first big raise and shove, and V therefore isn't going to treat H like an OMC.

This seems like a coinflip. Others have covered the situation and theory well.

I would just add that this is a "levelling" situation wherein V can 3B wide from the voluntary straddle and H can be raising wide from the BTN. So H and V can now level themselves into all manner of exploitative play.

That said, in general, I'm not folding JJ in this situation to a young V who has voluntarily straddled. I assume he has come to gamble and will be aggro. So it's raise or call. I prefer to jam it in now because I think he has enough marginal Ax that I want to fold now.

You would like calls from dominated hands but the major factor in whether of a shove is ev+ is how many coinflip hands and QQs will fold.

I like the jam.
I think people are underestimating how good shoving JJ is here. Just because you're "not always ahead" when he calls doesn't mean it isn't the right play. I also think flatting is a lot harder to play a lower SPR with JJ than many of you think.

Tough spot with the JJ. I think a lot depends on the limpers. If they're terrible and limping garbage you'll be isolating a lot wider than if at least one of them is the tricky/trappy type or than you would be if they're tight OMC limping types.

How wide your initial big open is will affect how wide villain is squeezing and in turn how wide you should be continuing. I think I default to a call with JJ in position, but probably all three options call, jam or even fold could have merit depending on the perceived ranges.

The other HH you mentioned where you folded AK you didn't mention stack sizes, which is key information. If it was 100 bb or less I think you would want to 4-bet/get it in vs most live players except nits. If you were much deeper I think the fold could have more merit (assuming you didn't know villain was a lag at the time).

I think it is mostly equity denial.
We want AQ, AK, KQ, QQ - hands with 2 over cards - to fold. But with AQ, AK, KQ, even if they call, it's better we charged them extra rather than flatting the V raise.
We want hands with only 1 over card - AJ, AT, and smaller pairs such as TT to call, but those don't often call.

It's interesting to think about the difference in value jamming JJ vs jamming QQ. There are more hands we're hoping to fold out when we have JJ, yet we have a lower expectation of a worse hand calling.

If we think QQ is folding, I'd think we're bluffing. If AQ/KQ/TT are folding, I'd think we were raising for value. It somewhat seems like we don't know which it is unless we get a reveal from our opponent.

I once 4B JJ, and my opponent mucked KK face up. I didn't think I was bluffing at the time. We were playing deep, I was sun-running, and I thought V was just playing back at me.

Jamming with JJ is also about equity realization. There's going to be at least one overcard on most flops and we can get bluffed off the best hand sometimes.

JJ doesn't really fit neatly into a value bet or bluff paradigm though. If our opponent is raising wide enough it is going to be + EV whether they fold a lot and we profit from picking up the dead money or whether they call with a range we're ahead of. Technically it can still be + EV even if we're slightly behind on average when they call if we pick up the dead money uncontested often enough.