[fivebyfive]

Whoa, these are some wild shoves.

In the first example, preflop we get one player limp flatting and the other flatting. This removes most hands that have us beat preflop. It is conceivable that BTN has JJ in this spot, but some of those are three bets, so it is somewhat rare. There is almost no way LJ has any overpairs to ours. So on this flop, what are we scared of? Mostly sets.

So okay, let’s now talk postflop and this massive overshove. I’m discounting BTN from having anything stronger than top pair. In my experience, this is mostly a go away bet that functions to push equity from straight draws and protect vulnerable weak pairs. If BTN had 66 or 99 in this spot, this feels like a spot that should be a frequent call or smaller raise. Not a 7x raise. “when you’ve got a nibble on the line…” I’m calling this without the intervening LJ call. Once LJ calls this overshove, this definitely gets much more scary. They can definitely have those premium hands the way this hand played out. But they could also be a player who recognizes the weakness of BTN shove and is calling this with worse value. The decision for me in this hand comes entirely down to LJ. If I consider them a strong, thinking player, who could be taking advantage of this spot by calling down with any 9, I may be tempted to call. But against an unknown, this is a scary situation and I likely find a fold most of the time.

The second example is very different. I’m never folding this spot. The bet serves the same kind of condensed purpose, pushing value with potential draws or overvaluing/overprotecting value. Given the action, I’m not very afraid of overpairs from either player (wouldn’t they open?), So they only thing I’m now worried about are some sets, better 9s and weird two pairs. I think we’re up against a heart draw a lot. They also cannot have a pair + heart draw since we hold the 9h, so we’re in good shape. If they happen to hold some of those better hands, we have the heart draw. If they’re on the heart draw, we have the pair and we block their heart draw. It’s a massive bet, a big mistake if you ask me by villain, so I’m calling this one every time.

Math-wise for this hand, we definitely have the price to call if our ranging is correct. It’s somewhat hard to range a shove this large, and like I said, I discount some of the sets etc., but maybe the flush draw scares them. So even if we’re really generous and give them ALL the strongest value (all the sets, plus a few better 9s (like Ah9x), plus the strongest heart draws (all the Ax hearts, plus a few Kh flush draws), we’re still pushing 48% equity. We have to call 145 bb to win 305 bb. So that’s 47%. So even in the worst case scenario, this is a call. Once we start discounting things like sets or weird better nines that take this line (which I think is reasonable), it becomes a slam dunk call.