By request

So the other day I played this hand (cleaned up hh a bit):

PokerStars Game #29636997845: Tournament #171724786, $200+$15 Hold'em No Limit - Level XII (750/1500) - 2009/06/21 19:35:43 ET
Table '171724786 172' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: AAqueens22 (63723 in chips)
Seat 2: stevejpa (40950 in chips)
Seat 3: freerider182 (27371 in chips)
Seat 4: Intriga (36735 in chips)
Seat 5: illesbela (26831 in chips)
Seat 6: Ebro81 (87758 in chips)
Seat 7: CHI01 (83937 in chips)
Seat 8: pavlof111 (112190 in chips)
Seat 9: eskimo99 (22400 in chips)
eskimo99: posts small blind 750
AAqueens22: posts big blind 1500
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to stevejpa [Kc Js]
stevejpa: raises 2200 to 3700
freerider182: folds
Intriga: calls 3700
illesbela: folds
Ebro81: folds
CHI01: folds
pavlof111: folds
eskimo99: folds
AAqueens22: folds
*** FLOP *** [7h 8d 3h]
stevejpa: checks
Intriga: checks
*** TURN *** [7h 8d 3h] [Jc]
stevejpa: checks
Intriga: bets 11500
stevejpa: raises 25600 to 37100 and is all-in
Intriga: folds
Uncalled bet (25600) returned to stevejpa
stevejpa collected 34000 from pot
stevejpa: doesn't show hand

Basically, I raise KJo 27bb deep utg, utg+2 calls, check/check 873hh flop, I check/shove the Jo turn and he folds. Later a railer asked what I had, I told him and he wanted an explanation of why I raised KJo utg there and then checked the flop (pretty sure he said something along the lines of it being horrible :) ). I don't like to discuss strategy at the table but told him if he wanted I'd write a blog post about it, and here we are.

To start, this is going to be more about how to take a quick look at preflop spots rather than an in depth look at this particular hand. So here we go.

1. Blinds are 750/1500/150, so there's 2250+9*150=3600 in the pot preflop. My raise is to 3700, so I need to win the pot preflop just over 50% of the time to breakeven if I have no postflop equity.

2. Nobody is short enough where I have to call their shove and I'm never calling or 4betting if I get 3bet.

3. With this stack size and raising utg I wouldn't expect to get flat called much at all.

So, the most important thing is how wide people are putting money in the pot. Let's make up quick ranges and say that the first 2 are playing 88+, AQo+ (5.6%), next 2 are playing 77+, AQo+, AJs+ (6.3%), next 2 55+, AJo+, ATs+, KQs (8.7%), blinds 22+, ATo+, A8s+, KQ, QJs, JTs (11.8%). With these ranges, I win pre 50.7% of the time, so my raise is already breakeven at worst. You could argue they'll play back wider, but I don't think you can go too too much wider.

Another important consideration is whether they're 3betting or calling when they decide to not fold. For pretty obvious reasons we'd prefer they call (we have equity when they call). I'm sure some people will worry that KJo is really hard to play OOP with likely the worst hand, but note that you certainly should never be losing chips postflop (on average) since a strategy of just check/fold unless you flop the nuts will show a small postflop profit. The wider their ranges, the more often they'll be calling and the more of a profit you'll show postflop. Also, despite my raising KJo here, I have a pretty tight UTG raising range which means the wider they play back, the more I'll make with my strong hands.

So basically, depending on your assumptions raising here is somewhere between slightly bad and slightly good and has some value in terms of making your strong hands worth more. You might notice that you can use the same argument to say that raising any 2 in this spot is fine but there are a couple reasons not to do that:

1. It's not hard to realize you're playing way too many hands utg when you start raising any 2 and it won't take long for people to adjust and make that a horrible strategy.

2. KJo is a lot better than a random hand. It has significantly better equity than complete trash against the types of hands that will be calling our raise and also it has two blockers to many of the hands that people will play (AK, KQ, KK, JJ, AJ) so you'll get played back at slightly less often.

Anyways, there's some basic reasoning on why I raised KJo and more importantly how to take a quick look at the profitability of a preflop raise. Questions/comments appreciated as always.