99 HU in the BB: Good fold, or am I letting myself get run over?

To answer your question fully we'll really need to know your range for 3-betting out of the BB vs a Hi-Jack open

Personally I never 3-bet in this situation which means that the hand would play out totally differently.

Given your range is probably going to be Ax and PP heavy this is probably not a bad play overall but I'd need to see your full range before I made a decision. It's actually possible your hand is the worst hand in your range and thus you should actually bluff with your 99 (which incidentally also shows one of the major problems with 3-betting from the BB and narrowing your range so hard) but again need your range

The hands I normally raise with in this situation, if I don't know my opponent, are: 88+, AJ+, ATs+.

I'd at least check/call as you already said: he might be betting with 55 66 77 or he could have peeled with some K high type of hands like KQ or KT oder QTs with backdoor flushdraw and now he takes this opportunity to semibluff. 99 seems to really be your bottom of your range and gto wise it might be one of your bluffing hands but in a vacuum i don't see any better hand folding here.

In that case then to remain balanced you have to turn 88-99 and probably some combos of TT into bluffs on the turn otherwise your opponent long-term has an easy exploitative line vs you where he simply folds anything not AJ or better on the turn.

Objectively will a 0.25/0.50 opponent fold KK here if you don't..probably not so x/f'ing is probably a decent exploitative line but in terms of balancing this is a super-standard bluff

That said if you were deep into balance you probably wouldn't have 3-bet in the first place

Originally posted by firsttsunami
I'd at least check/call as you already said: he might be betting with 55 66 77 or he could have peeled with some K high type of hands like KQ or KT oder QTs with backdoor flushdraw and now he takes this opportunity to semibluff. 99 seems to really be your bottom of your range and gto wise it might be one of your bluffing hands but in a vacuum i don't see any better hand folding here.

Pretty sure check calling here would be bad with the range Snakeman's stated.

99 is the 7th-12th weakest hand in your entire range of 72 combos, the only options with it are to bet as a bluff (admittedly usually our opponent will only fold worse but he will sometimes fold hands with equity, since he has to peel the flop fairly wide due to the size of the pot and the pot's big enough where bluffing and winning has at least some merit although this is a negligible factor) or to check/fold.

If we're going to check-call it'd probably be best to do it with a hand like QQ and KK. Our range just kills this board monstrously when an Ace flops, especailly now JJ has a set too.

However this all comes back to the preflop 3-bet

By having such a tight range (which you have to for equity reasons) you, more than likely, give your opponent the ability to overfold (in other words give you an auto-profit situation) because continuing is even worse for him on an Ace-High board so even though 3-betting preflop here is profitable it means that vs an observant player you're going to make less profit on subsequent streets becasue your range is so well definied.

Thanks a lot for the input, guys!

I'm interested in this idea of not 3-betting from the BB.

If I were to use the charts given in the "How to play short-handed (with charts)" article on this site, my 3-betting range from the BB would consist entirely of Ax hands and pocket pairs if the open-raiser is UTG, HJ, or CO. Would I do better to only 3-bet if the raise comes from the BU or SB, in which case there are some Kx hands, and QJs in my 3-betting range?

Thanks again.

I actually have 2-part Logic Knot of the Subject:

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/16551
http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/16812

Goes through Blind defense, some of the options for 3-betting and the reasons why not 3-betting in the BB HU vs a raise from outside the blinds can be good, and is my preferred line.