DECISION POINT: You’re playing in a two-day regional tournament and have noticed your tablemates are using appropriate ranges based on hands seen at showdown. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. The UTG player raises to 2,200 and MP1 reraises to 6,500. Action folds to you on the Button with J♠J♣. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a two-day regional event with a reasonable structure. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. So far, we’ve seen solid hands at showdown from every player at the table and can assume we are up against competent opponents.

We are dealt J♠J♣ on the Button and the UTG player raises to 2,200 chips. Following a fold from UTG+1, the player in the MP1 seat reraises to 6,500 chips and everyone else folds to us. This is a spot where many players make the mistake of thinking about their hand’s absolute value instead of their hand’s relative value in the specific situation. Pocket jacks is one of the top 5 starting hands in poker, and we are going to want to continue in some fashion preflop in the majority of situations.

In this scenario, however, the initial raise came from an early position player followed by a reraise from MP1 with 40 big blind effective stacks. In this spot, MP1 should be raising fewer than 5% of total hands. To give an idea of what this looks like, MP1’s reraising range should only include hands such as TT+/AKs/AQo+ along with a few bluffs for balance. A true GTO 3-betting range for MP1 versus UTG open would include 88-QQ all mixing with some frequency, where pocket pairs 88-JJ are doing more calling than raising. Combine MP1’s narrow range with the fact that any action preflop will very quickly become pot committing for us, and our hand doesn’t look near as nice.

If we had some sort of information that our opponents were on the more aggressive side with their preflop ranges, we might be able to continue exploitatively. In longer events that are well-structured, players will often be even more passive than optimal ranges would suggest, which would make continuing here with pocket jacks even more problematic.

It can be incredibly frustrating to be dealt a top 5 starting hand in No-Limit Hold’em and have to fold preflop facing multiple raises. When the action suggests that one of your opponents is likely holding something that is stronger, finding folds and preserving your stack for more favorable situations is a huge edge.

Folding is the best play.