Case Study 5
Category: Poker
In the big blind, you find yourself with (9,9) and the action is folded around to the small blind. You know this player to be aggressive, and true to form, they decide to put in a strong raise equating to about a quarter of your stack. This is problematic in the sense of you having a fairly strong, yet vulnerable hand, and the amount of chips it will cost you to get involved.
Personally, I feel that with your opponent being aggresive in nature and the preflop raise coming from the small blind, this does look very much like a clear cut blind steal attempt. I would be tempted to to push all in, partly to ward the opponent off from trying the same thing again. Remember that bullies prey on the weak, and aggressive blind stealers are no different. If they see a player throwing away many hands and passively capitulating often when raised preflop, they will target that players big blind if position allows them to.
Despite all this, in the situation at hand, there is another option in the shape of flat calling. I do not think I would fold at all in this position because of the circumstances surrounding the raise, but a flat call can give you the chance to get away if the flop is too dangerous. If the cards on the flop are all lower than a 9, or if a 9 hits, then this is a prime position to be in I feel. The aggressive player is very likely to be behind, and very likely to put in a raise anyway, because the board will not look overly dangerous (unless the board is a 9 and two big cards that our opponent hasn’t hit).
If we flat call and see a horrible flop of (J,K,A) or something similar, then at least we didn’t commit everything preflop, and that is regardless of whether our opponent would or would not have folded if we had. If we do make these sort of all in pushes preflop, it does often force our opponent to fold, but if they do call with two overcards, we’re 50/50 for all our chips, and that is not a favourable position to be in.