$100 NL HE Full Ring: Going all in preflop with J,J against a very aggressive player

[peppe94]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Stakes

$.50/$1

Table Format

Full (8-10 seats)

Currency

$

Hi there! Yesterday I was playing live poker 1 SB 1 BB. I started with max buy in that is 150 $ and I ended up with 90 $. I was UTG with pocket jacks and I raised 5 $, an aggressive poker player with 500 $ stack on the button reraise 15 $. I shove all in and he had pocket kings. Should I have just called 15 $? If yes what should I have done after a flop with cards below jacks and what should I have done after a flop with cards higher than Jacks. Knowing the player, after 3 betting me preflop in position, he would have bet a size pot bet on the flop as a continuation bet. Was such a bad play shoving preflop in this situation?
Thanks for your answer.

 

[puzzlefish]

Sounds like maybe you got tilted. IMO - and I am in no way a pro cash player - Jacks are not a very strong pair and definitely shouldn't be played for stacks all in heads up pre-flop in a cash game. Sometimes you just need to see the flop and treat it as a pair, because that's all it is. If you see higher cards on the flop, then you could fold to the cbet or try to raise if there's an ace and hope that your villain will fold. If you see lower cards, then you are probably in a hard place because you can't tell if you're up against something that beats you. You can use the same approach but probably fold when re-raised against.

 

[Aballinamion]

I was UTG with pocket jacks and I raised 5 $, an aggressive poker player with 500 $ stack on the button reraise 15 $. I shove all in and he had pocket kings. Should I have just called 15 $?

If we are shoving JJ, maybe we are shoving TT. Maybe we are shoving 99 preflop. Certainly we are shoving QQ and KK. The point is that cash is not a "shoving" game. Leave this mindset to tournaments, where it will be totally fine to shove JJ almost under any circumstance.
One important question: when we shove our range, in this case JJ, which worst hands do we expect to calling down with? Villain can simply fold all of his losing range, and call with the range that have us beat, like in the very example you mentioned with KK, or with hands that will turn our very strong value hand into a coin flip for a deep stacked pot: put in the equity calculator JJ X KQ and AK and we will see that we are either losing or flipping for deep pot. Is that profitable in the long run? For online poker it's a huge maybe, but for live poker are we playing millions of hands that can compensate or mitigate our losses in situation like this? Nope.
Another important point to note is that when we are facing an aggressive player we do not try to level against it: we try to trap it and be more sneaky, we will flat more, call more, check more to induce our very aggressive player to put chips on the table for free. And when we go to a postflop game, in this aforementioned case, if we instead of shoving we call with JJ and it comes an overcard on the flop, a queen, a king or an ace, and villain starts to inflate the pot very soon, we can easily fold and wait for another oportunity.
So the question is one only: when we do shove here, which worst hands do we expect to be calling with?

 

[fundiver199]

JJ is just a call of a 3-bet, when you open it UTG and is 150BB deep. Or lets say 75-100BB, since you opened to 5BB, where 2,5-3 is more normal in online games and solver analysis. The issue with 4-betting JJ in a tight configuration is, that you usually get worse hands to fold and better hands to call. When Villain say "call", you are really hoping to see AK, and even then you are only a slight favourite, especially if its AKs.

 

[canbora]

Your problem is you went from a relatively small bet, to all in. To quote anchor man "well that escalated quickly" There was zero call to do that. If you fold you only win a few blinds and lose value. If he calls...what is he calling with that doesn't have you beat? As stated above, your best bet is AK and even then, your odds aren't great for that stack size. Your bet was hyper aggressive.

To be fair, to your credit, you did state they were aggressive. But how aggressive, we don't know. So I get what you were trying to do, it makes sense. It was just too much, thats all.