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Server Time: 10/11/2008 10:26:10 AM PACIFIC |
 99 in No limit hold'em, Mark Gregorich, 22. Dec 2003 01:25 | ||
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| Two nines is a hand which you may choose to play a number of different ways in a tournament, depending on the situation. At times, it may be correct to flat call with it, fold to a raise, reraise all in, or smooth call a raise with it. The problem is to choose the right course of action necessitated by the present situation. A friend of mine related a story about a mistake he made with the hand late in a no limit tournament the other day. An extremely aggressive player had opened for a raise, and my friend had 99 in the small blind. At this stage in the tournament, calling the raise would cost about a third of his stack. He felt he should have moved all in here, and I agreed with him. A couple of reasons: smooth calling may let the big blind play; he is out of position after the flop; he probably has the best hand; 99 is a difficult hand to play postflop, as an overcard or two will generally come up - but 99 may still be the best hand. My friend decided to call, and then folded on the flop when two overcards came. He immediately regretted not moving all in preflop, as he probably would have won the pot right away. IMO, moving all in with 99 is a good play when just calling involves committing a significant portion of your stack, especially when it appears that you have the best hand. I may fold to a raise from a solid player in early position, but reraise a loose aggressive player. Early in a tournament, I'm not looking to reraise with this hand. I am happy to take a flop and hope to hit a set. At this stage, I'm looking to double up via a lucky flop, not put a bunch of chips in to take a stand. Mark | ||
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| Re: 99 in No limit hold'em, stdioh, 26. Dec 2003 20:06 | ||
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| I couldn't agree more. In that situation with 99 in the SB and one raise from a maniac, the only courses of action are pushing in or folding. If the stack sizes were bigger, I'd say that a fold would be the way to go and with those small stack sizes the all-in is the way to go ... for the simple reason that even a maniac will fold to a giant reraise over the top if he's holding a junk pair or a junk ace and you're going to be a coin flip at best, but most will call with something like A7 or 66 off of a steal when they've put in 1/3 already. And yes, if the BB comes in too, it is deep deep trouble for 99 - just such a terrible holding to play 3 handed - you have no odds to play it three handed as there's no really comfortable flop short of a set and you're way behind odds to look for that. Actually, I'm going to deviate from this for one possible, but unlikely scenario. You're playing with a maniac who will definitely not stop betting so long as you are checking to him ... unless he hits a good hand in which case he'll try so hard to be tricky that he'll play it completely backwards. In that case, and that case alone, I can see calling with 99, only if you can be really sure that you'll get a free turn if you check and checks (giving you 4 cards to set you instead of three) with a good hand and if you can also be really sure that you can check call-all-in or checkraise all-in on the flop exactly when he hits nothing. I've only known a couple of players who are massively predictable like this and who play backwards in this fashion, but in that very particular case, I would limp in the SB with the 99...and even there I would only do it if the BB was playing very tight and would likely fold to the raise. | ||
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