Playing Big Slick Against a Reraise

Recently, I was playing in a fairly loose $2-$5 live no-limit hold'em game. An early-position player with about $300 limped in. I was two off the button and made it $20 to go with the A K. The button, with about $325 total, made it $75 to go. He was an unremarkable, slightly loose player. The limper thought for a while, and then called. I had both players covered.

1. How should I respond? Should I fold, call, raise a bit, or move all in?
2. What's my plan for the rest of the hand (should I need one)?

Answer those two questions for yourself before you read on.

I'll tell you what I did.

I pushed for $325 total, roughly a pot-sized $250 raise. The reraiser folded fairly quickly. The limper/cold-caller lingered, then folded pocket queens faceup.

Why did I push? It's in the fold equity: I turned my hand into a semibluff. My all-in four-bet looks very much like aces to my opponents. Indeed, if they'd read Phil Gordon's Little Green Book, they'd think it was almost a certainty that I held aces. So, I can expect many players to fold good hands, up to and including pocket queens.

Naturally, some will call with pocket queens and perhaps even weaker hands. That's where the semibluff aspect comes in, as I still have solid equity against those hands. (Indeed, I have so much equity against pocket queens and worse that I'd be willing to call if they had gone all in, instead, provided I knew they had queens or worse.)

At my turn to act, there's $177 in the pot. By pushing, I risk $280 more against the $300 stack and $305 more against the $325 stack.

I think it's quite unlikely that the limper/cold-caller has aces or kings. He's had two opportunities to raise and hasn't, and I find that the overwhelming majority of the time, a player with those hands will find either an initial raise or a limp-reraise. The way he thought about his cold-call further confirmed my suspicions, as it seemed he was genuinely concerned by the action, not putting on an act to conceal strength. I think he's most likely to have a pocket pair, queens or lower. He also may have unpaired cards such as the J 10 and simply be a loose preflop caller.

Naturally, the preflop reraiser could have aces or kings, but given even a relatively tight reraising range of pocket aces through nines and A-K, he'll have me dominated only a modest fraction of the time (15 percent of the time, in this instance). If he's a looser reraiser (and I thought he might be at the time), it's fairly unlikely that I'm in real trouble.

So, I think that most of the time, let's say at least 75 percent of the time, I'm not up against either aces or kings. In those situations, I have a very profitable semibluff, risking $280 to win $177 with roughly 50 percent equity when called. When I'm up against kings, I'm still OK, as I have about 30 percent equity and I'm getting more than 1.5-to-1 from the pot. It's not enough to break even, but it will help cushion the blow.

Calling makes little sense in this situation due to the stack sizes. If I were to call, there'd be one pot-sized bet remaining, and I'd be first to act on the flop. On an ace or king flop, I'd have good winning chances, but the flop might scare off lower pairs. On a non-ace or king flop, I'd have poorer chances, but I might risk getting bluffed by a weaker hand. In any event, my opponents stand to gain more by seeing a flop than I do.

Folding is the most natural alternative to pushing. If the reraiser were to have an exceedingly tight range, folding might be the best play. As it was, however, I thought the reraiser might be a bit loose, so I rejected folding.

The stack sizes in this hand were very well-suited for pushing. Since only one pot-sized bet remained after the preflop reraise, a final preflop semibluff push was a natural play. If the stacks were a bit deeper, however, I may have folded, as the risk of pushing might have been too great. And if the stacks were deeper still, I may have called, hoping to flop well and win a huge pot.

Also, if my opponents see me push all in with A-K, they may be more likely in the future to call my preflop all-in bets with small and medium pocket pairs, so I may make more money thereafter when I hold pocket aces and kings.

This hand is not an isolated one-off; it represents an important concept. Because it has decent equity against a number of potential calling hands, A-K often makes for a powerful preflop all-in semibluff. In general, if one or more players have cold-called a preflop raise (or reraise, as in this example), they are potentially vulnerable targets for a semibluff. So, the next time you have big slick, consider pushing against a raise and some callers as long as the stacks aren't too deep. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

For more examples of this concept, see Page 259 of my book (co-authored with David Sklansky) No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice.

Ed is a featured coach at StoxPoker.com. Also check out his online poker advice column, NotedPokerAuthority.com. He has authored four books on poker, most recently Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume 1.