Easy call. At 125BB stack depth, this becomes a profitable set mine. I wouldn't 3 bet because UTG is showing strength and you don't want to bloat the pot OOP, plus if he just calls a 3 bet and one or both of the MP flatters come along, you're in a really tough spot on virtually any flop. I have to imagine you would happily call and set mine with any worse pocket pair, so folding is a huge mistake – so long as you have the discipline not to stack off bad with JJ (which I suspect is why a lot of people say they hate the hand), calling is your best option here.

WizardZur said:

IMO the only downside to raising is if someone 4bets you allin.    

That's far from the only downside… if you raise and get called in one or more spots and see an A, K or Q on the flop (which will happen more than 50% of the time), how comfortable are you going to be shovelling more money in? Bloating the pot for the purpose of building it up so you get paid more when you flop a set is probably not a +eV decision, because flopping a set is rare, and you cash in on your implied odds usually against overpairs or in the very rare set-over-set situation. When set-mining, you want to do it with as small as an up-front investment as possible.

It's true that JJ is going to be ahead of a wide range, though calling it a “super premium” may be a bit of a stretch against a UTG open. It's a hand that has decent equity against wide ranges, but if you raise and get called, you'll have folded out the bottom part of UTG's range and are left playing OOP with a hand that is medium-strength vs the narrower range. Go to Poker Stove, or the Equilab or ProPokerTools calculators, and see how JJ does against various ranges. Against a normal/loose UTG range of, say, 20%, JJ has about 65% equity. Against a narrower range that you'd expect a guy to call a 3 bet with, it does significantly worse – how much worse depends on how narrow the calling range is, but you'll be in the low 50s at best and just being slightly over 50% doesn't make up for the positional disadvantage (assuming you end up heads up…in a multi-way pot JJ is going to be even worse off). Last, if you are going to fold to a 4-bet, then you're just wasting your equity vs the top of his range by raise/folding.

Wiz, this isn't a pure set mine spot and I wouldn't advocate it playing it that way (i.e., calling and check folding all boards where you don't flop a set, which makes sense for the small/medium pocket pairs, but not hands like TT-JJ). My thinking is that bloating a pot out of position with a hand like JJ in a multi-way pot is not +eV. You don't have to assume you're playing for stacks every time you get dealt a premium pocket pair; flatting and playing small ball when you brick and looking to play for stacks when you hit is going to be a lot better for you.

JJ may be the fifth strongest starting hand in poker, but the equity distributions aren't equal. The steps down from the top hand (AA) to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. hands are not equal in size – JJ is a lot closer to TT then it is to QQ in how it performs against other hands. (If you want an eloquent explanation of this, read Chapter 19 of Andrew Seidman's “Easy Game; if you want to figure it out for yourself, play with Poker Stove or another equity calculator and compare how AA, KK, QQ, AK, JJ, TT and AQ do against various ranges.)  Raising JJ for value here is a dangerous overestimation of the hand's equity and is going to put you in some really tough spots on a majority of flops.  Are you auto c-betting any flop that has an A, K, or Q?  Because you're going to see one of those flops about 6 times as often as you are a flop with a J. And if you get called by the PF raiser and all the other callers thanks to the great odds they are getting, how about those T high flops – how many of those is your JJ an overpair to a set, or a straight?

I disagree that not reraising is scared poker. I think it's sane, non-spewy poker. And I'm a puntaholic!

Agree that this is a good discussion – all the issues you raise, and hopefully the ones I'm raising, are ones for all of us to think about in mapping out our decisions.

I don't have much experience on Bovada, but play enough live with bad players to know when it's a good time to bloat a pot and when it's not. In position 3 betting JJ makes a lot more sense than out of position. If you're playing with a bunch of loose-passives, you can expect them to never fold top pair, and their top pair is going to beat your top pair here a lot.

Also, betting for information is really not a good strategy. At the poker table, good players have the skill and incentive to give you false information, while bad players who chronically misjudge their equity will inadvertently give you false information too. You don't raise for information, you raise for value or as a bluff.

You're getting a few different opinions here Mdlchild – so yeah, good 1st post. This would be a fun one for you to come back and revisit in a year or so after you've developed your game some more and digested a lot of what TPE has to offer to see what you think then. Time capsule this biatch!

WizardZur said:

Anyway, one thing I object to is comparing JJ in pokerstove or any other calculator against 3 top 20% hands.  First off, I don't think there is any reason to assume that all three opponents have top 20% hands; for example, the 2nd caller gets great odds to call with any speculative hand.  The initial raiser may not even have a top 20% hand if his intention was to raise to steal.  So I think the only one who truly has a top 20% hand is the initial flatter, who basically has to have a hand to flat.  However, there are a lot of spewers who will just flat with a hand they don't think is good enough to 3 bet, so even that isn't certain. 

[I am going to attempt to answer this through multi-quoting and hopefully it will work – I don't have enough familiarity with the forum tools to do this like a boss, and a lot of the buttons up top aren't functioning for me.]

You don't have to assume that all three villains have top 20% hands, but I'm sure you would agree that before shoveling money in the pot, it is a good idea to assess your hand's strength against your opponents' expected ranges. At 20/40 with no antes 120BB deep it's probably safe to assume that a UTG 4x open is not a steal, even on Bovada. The original raiser's range could be wider than 20%, but you don't know because you have no reads – so why would you assume it's wider and take a high variance spot out of position when you're this deep? As for the two flatters, you can fairly assume that their ranges are somewhat capped (the 1st flatter could have AA if he's trying to be tricky but it's fair to presume he'd raise this deep), with the 2nd flatter having the wider range given the odds.

When you flat, you are playing against the full breadth of those ranges. When you raise and are called, you're folding out the hands that you crush. When you get 4-bet and you fold, you're also giving up the equity you have against that 4-betting range – which includes very substantial implied odds, since that strong range is likely to stack off to you when you flop a set.

Also, my biggest problem is that those equity calculations only have to deal when the cards are run out hot and cold.  In reality, a lot of those hands aren't seeing the river because if a favorable flop comes you can bet them off whatever equity they had.  For example, a hand as marginal as A5 has about 33% against you preflop.  However, if the flop is 1062 that opponent is just folding to a cbet, despite the fact that he still has 15% equity against you.  So I don't find those equity calculators to be the best tool unless you actually are getting it in.

I think you are selling the value of understanding your equity vs your opponents ranges a little short by saying that this information is only valuable in push/fold situations. Certainly, any cash game player would disagree with that premise, and you are over 100BB deep here where play does resemble deep-stacked cash games (put another way, ICM is a very insignificant factor at this stage so your cEV and $EV don't diverge).

Knowing these equities is important because you're not playing against an exact hand and you're not able to predict an exact flop. You are playing your exact hand against a range of hands, and the better you are at estimating your equity against that range, the better decisions you're going to make.

As an aside, keep in mind is that when someone has 15% equity against you, you'd much rather have them call (assuming you are laying them worse than 6.5:1) than fold. When they fold their crappy equity against you, they are playing perfectly (not making mistakes).

I also think we may be talking around in circles.  Let's just assume calling with JJ is +EV, which it is.  Let's also assume that if you raise the other 3 players will just call.  I think its self-evident that move is still +EV and logically it has to be more +EV than if you had just called because you are getting in more money in a +EV spot.  The actions of the players hasn't changed nor has your position.  So the only thing that has changed is the pot is larger.  When you are in +EV spots you want the pot to be larger.

The premise that you want the pot to be larger in +EV spots is true because you'll end up winning more chips – I'm not going to quibble with that. Two things to keep in mind. First, when you raise and other 3 players call, your equity (in % terms) is going to decrease because their ranges are going to be narrower. The pot will be bigger, but your share of it will be smaller. There will be a point where your villains' ranges narrow enough to make raising the -eV play. Second, positional disadvantage is always magnified the deeper you are (since people can float and bluff-raise or semi-bluff raise wider ranges without threatening their stacks). That disadvantage will become very apparent when you raise to 500, get called in three spots (since you're laying great odds) and see an overcard to your JJ – which will happen more often than it won't. That dreamy 1062 will happen a lot less frequently.

I don't think it's a good strategy to bloat pots because that way when you win them, you'll win more chips. You want to put more money in the pot because you think you're going to get called by worse hands, or get better hands to fold. When you're out of position and deep, it's a lot easier for worse hands to become better hands after the flop, and it's a lot easier for worse hands to get you to fold by bluff-raising on tricky boards, and it's a lot easier to put money in bad if you c-bet too often.

Bloating the pot increases your variance and arguably makes  for more difficult post-flop decisions.  However, if you are disciplined enough to make the proper decisions post-flop whether you came in for 160 or 500, and coming in for 160 is +EV, then coming in for 500 has to be even more +EV.

If you are calling behind then you are doing so to reduce variance and not to increase EV.  Raising is more +EV but also higher variance.  I want high variance +EV spots.

You lost me here. Why would you want higher variance as opposed to using your skill edge to maximize your EV?

OP, if you're still with us, you probably didn't expect this sort of debate when you first posted about whether you should fold jacks in this spot. If any of what we're talking about is incomprehensible, don't be shy about asking – I'm not saying that to be condescending, I'm saying it because you just joined a few days ago and a lot of this stuff might be new to you. When I first started studying poker I had no idea what any of this meant. And judging by how different my opinion is to the thread consensus, perhaps I still don't…

And Wiz, I'm not trying to be argumentative either. This is good stuff to think through.

Nice thread, lots good points. I think flatting and raising both have merit here. If there is no info at all and it's so early on I think flatting here is the best option. I think 3 betting here is good against an aggro player, even just seeing he is a losing player on scope would make me 3 bet here.