I've been reading Lee Jones 3 Edition. In the pre-flop section, he talks about respecting raises from early position and tightening up. He doesn't talk much about raises behind you.

For example, In middle position, he says to call with 99 when there are 3 callers in front.
If there was a raise in front and fewer than 4 people in, then fold 99. But what if you call and then there is a raise from a later position? I assume a late position raise is less threatening. I would be inclined to call. I wouldn't reraise since 99 only rated a call the first time around. comments please.

This one is a real hair splitter. Jones says in middle position, with three callers in front, raise with AKo, but call with AQo. With only 1-2 callers in front, go ahead and raise with AQo also. The only sense I can make of this is that 3 callers, being more competition, makes AQo profitable for 1 bet, but a loser for 2 bets. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks and good fishing.

George

When you've already limped in an there's a raise behind you, always call the raise. However, if it's re-raised or capped behind you, then fold everything except AA-QQ and AKs (which you should have raised and re-raised with instead of limping anyway).

I'd still raise AQo after those limpers. I follow more along the lines of Miller and Sklansky's "Small Stakes Hold'Em".

Even if you screwed up and limped with a poor hand, you'll still want to call 1 bet in this situation. You will be getting great odds, and with the preflop raiser behind you, you can get a lot of value from a flop checkraise.

You would of course call with the 99 after the late position raise. In fact, if it was raised from early position and there were a fair amount of callers, youd probably want to call the raise with 99, or any pocket pair for that matter. The whole point is that you want odds to catch your set, and for this you need people in.

However, he says muck it to an LP raise if there are no players because theres too good of a chance its either not the best hand, or if it is the best hand it will lose anyway. I mean the LPer is not raising with 78o, hes at least got overcards to your 9s like AJ, so if your 9s are best at the time, theres still a pretty decent chance that youll endup losing the hand... Combine that chance with the chances that he's got better than 99 to start with, and 99 starts to look like a pretty easy fold, without odds to draw to a set.

As far as the AK/AQ thing.... it does sound a bit strange. I guess the idea is that AK is so strong that you should raise it anyways, just in case you DO hit, because then you have built yourself a big pot where everyones putting thier money in with second best, and drawing slim (hopefully) to trips/kickers. I suppose the reason you dont do the same with AQ is because the Q is too vulnerable, and thats why the hand isnt strong enough. My guess is that his reason has nothing to do with the strength of the queen as a kicker card, since a bunch of limpers are pretty unlikely to have AK, but rather the strength of the queen as a top pair card that is vulnerable to a king hitting, hence making it not strong enough to raise many limper with?

Thats my guess. And truthfully, without ever reading that particular passage, i play pretty similarly to that-- i am not sure what my threshold is exactly, but i will raise AK into more limpers than i will AQ, even though i have never thought out my reasons for doing so.