How I Misplayed Pocket Jacks

I’ve been playing a bit 6max lately and I wanted to share a hand I recently misplayed. There’s definitely some insight you can draw from this example to help you with your heads up game.

SB ($50)
BB ($50)
Hero (UTG) ($50)
MP ($50)
CO ($50)
Button ($50)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J♠, J♣
Hero bets $2, 2 folds, Button raises to $6, 2 folds, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($12) 7♣, 3♥, 7♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $9, Button raises to $24, Hero goes all-in

First of all, leading here is terrible. It allows the villain to play perfectly. He will probably fold every hand that I beat and raise with every hand that beats me. In other words, if he has AK, he’s probably gonna fold and if he has QQ+, he’s gonna raise. The only reasonable hand I can get value from is TT. Anyway, it’s much better to check call. He’s probably going to continuation bet with almost his entire range and we can comfortably call on the flop. At this point, however, we’re hoping to check it down and we’re probably going to check/fold the turn to further aggression.

As Ryan Fee put it:

If you just fold every marginal situation where you aren’t really sure where you are at in the end you won’t end up losing that much money, in fact if you consistently make incorrect decisions in those situations you will end up losing money. Therefore fold.