Pocket Kings, How do you play them?

[James]

Hey guys! Im writing an article about pocket kings play preflop and i need some help from you! How do you play them? Do you ship them in preflop whatever? Do you somtimes smooth call? would you ever consider folding them in a situation?
Please can you reply with a outline of the situation in which you would do any one of these actions so i can get a better idea of what we think is the right way to play them.

[SirJonnyP]

I'm going to do it - ask gary111 or whatever he was called...

[JamesDaBear]

I ship it preflop from ep with KK if i'm in a rebuy tournament with a lot of loose chronic-rebuyers at the table, most of the time that will work. Although sometimes you can limp and hope you'll get at least one donk all in and maybe a call from a tighter player so you can then isolate or smooth call depending on what you've seen him do... but I generally don't like slow-playing KK. The first time you slow play KK and get cracked by A2 from a blind or loose lp caller, is the first time you'll tell yourself it's the last time you'll slowplay cowboys... until the next time you do.

I will occasionally smooth call from position with KK against a player I know will c-bet with air or even top pair top kicker... and if an A comes on the board, then play cautiously.

Early in a tournament, with a large field full of really loose players... you don't really want to slow play anything. You don't want to show your attentive players who will be there playing with you for a while that you have slowplays in your arsenal. You want them to pay dearly for that information later. And you want to extract as much value from the loose dead money players that are at the table to start. If you know this player is one of those guys... and there's a scary board, just remember that they're not usually capable of "plays" and play it cautiously.

As far as cash games go... what the heck else are you supposed to do other than get your money in good? And you can't get it in much better than KK. If you're a good post-flop player, try to get some value out of it preflop and then extract as much as you can after the board comes out and you have a good idea where you are and where your opponent(s) are. If you're better pre-flop, then try to extract as much value then and do what you can after the flop, if there is one.

When would I fold... only when I can win as much by folding than actually winning the pot. If there are four players left and the top three all win the same amount, and there's all ins and a call from a bigger stack in front of you... and you're guaranteed a payday... then you fold. In fact... you fold AA there too. There's not many circumstances cash game or not where it's correct to fold KK preflop. When he doesn't have AA, you'll feel like an idiot for letting the fish wriggle off, and when he does, you can still come back and win anyway.

[James]

Originally Posted by JamesDaBear

I will occasionally smooth call from position with KK against a player I know will c-bet with air or even top pair top kicker... and if an A comes on the board, then play cautiously.

I completely agree with this statement. Smooth calling a aggressive player is definitely one way to play them because you get value out of them on the flop and they might even ship it with TPTK. If the ace comes you need to call the flop and give up the turn.

As for folding, i think this is a interesting one.... if you are 10 handed and you have a lot of action from three other tight players i.e three all ins before your call, do you fold?

PS: welcome to the forum

[JamesDaBear]

Originally Posted by James

I completely agree with this statement. Smooth calling a aggressive player is definitely one way to play them because you get value out of them on the flop and they might even ship it with TPTK. If the ace comes you need to call the flop and give up the turn.

As for folding, i think this is a interesting one.... if you are 10 handed and you have a lot of action from three other tight players i.e three all ins before your call, do you fold?

PS: welcome to the forum

If they're tight, you have even better reason to call... they're mostly on pairs or big aces... so they maybe even drawing to two outs instead of three.

Really, I don't think most players possess the psychological bankroll to handle folding KK and being wrong. Most players won't recover from the tilt that will send you in. Especially in cases where you were dead right and AA was out there... and you still would have won! The poker gods just handed you the perfect situation and you blew it. You could have been the hero, instead you're the over-thinking idiot who folded KK preflop. And if you lose... you're not going to regret losing to AA.

Folding KK preflop... just should not happen. I would have to be in a deep stack event such as WSOP and have two of MY raises out there and facing another re-raise from an opponent, leaving me with plenty of chips behind if I fold for me to consider it.

[JamesDaBear]

Originally Posted by James

I completely agree with this statement. Smooth calling a aggressive player is definitely one way to play them because you get value out of them on the flop and they might even ship it with TPTK. If the ace comes you need to call the flop and give up the turn.

As for folding, i think this is a interesting one.... if you are 10 handed and you have a lot of action from three other tight players i.e three all ins before your call, do you fold?

PS: welcome to the forum

I'll also do it from the blinds too... forgot to mention that... and then either check raise a board with straight or flush possibilities... or maybe bet out if you know your opponent will raise if he has JJ or QQ that are an overpair to the board, or maybe a TPTK hand.

Again... stack sizes are important here as well. You have to know what kind of value you're going to get form whatever play you make.

[ccottis]

Only time you can fold KK pre is in a satellite. I VERY rarely smooth call even in position as in the fairly low stakes games I play people will pay me off with a wide range of hands so I would rather get my chips in pre-flop than find myself in a difficult post flop situation

Edit: Live you could possibly fold if you have a tell of monster strength and are very deep

[Pates]

KK can be played in so many different ways preflop and almost any move can be justified. As DaBear was saying about rebuy tournaments, shipping it in or even limping on a LAG shove/fold table usually gets yourself a nice double up or more. I'm not going to go into tournament strategy but as a basic rule I'll try and get KK in preflop if im out of position, just so I don't have to worry about a dodgy flop.

As for cash... (6max)

KK becomes a hand that is played entirely down to situation. When I first started out playing 6 max I was told to get QQ/KK/AA/AK all in preflop. Now I've learned that hands like these are not that simple. With people playing very aggressively at 6max, people will occasionally 3-bet from their blinds with marginal hands against BTN and CO raisers.

Here's a few situations:

I've been playing aggressively from LP for a while and the players to my left are smart enough to know that.

I pick up KK on the BTN and raise 4x.

(BB has been. playing a fairly aggressive game and knows what he is doing, he has 80% c-bet statistic)

He decides to fire a 3-bet at me.

Now I can put him on a rough range and make my decision. I think the minimum I can realistically put him on here is . Sometimes he might be doing this with a suited connector but we'll take that out of the equation.

A very high proportion of the time he'll fold to a 4-bet and being oop it is likely he will c-bet a flop if I smooth call. In this situation I'd edge towards smooth calling, knowing that he probably won't get it in with anything less than JJ (more likely QQ min).


Ok so this time I've picked up KK UTG. I make a 4x BB raise and it fold to the CO who is a TAG player he 3-bets. He hasn't made much moves and has only 3-bet 4 times in 300 hands. Unlike before, the UTG raise range is never as light as BTN or CO so a 3-bet here signifies he has a good hand. We can really cut his range down to JJ/QQ/KK/AA/AK and possibly AQ but because our villain is so tight this can be removed.

At this point there's no point smooth calling. Even if he was the BB and 3-bet (so that I had position) I'd still most likely get this in as only one possible hand in his range will get folded. If you're against AA then fine, you'll probably lose but if you've got good bank roll management then this shouldn't matter at all.

As a basic summary of this. Getting KK all in preflop pretty much removes the skill from the game and loses you some equity. By playing the player you stand to earn more money from super aggro 3-betting donks.

[JustPlayPoker]

Hey James,

I wrote an article for Poker-Tomorrow a while back that reviewed the advice of several pros on playing pocket kings pre-flop. It might help you with your research.

poker-tomorrow. com /poker/strategy/texas-holdem/kings/

Hope that helps!

[James]

very very interesting read! Thank you for that mate