This is another one of those common trouble spots for a lot of people. And like we have seen before, the reason why these spots cause such a stir is because they are close. There aren’t any easy answers.
Can you fold KK preflop? Of course you can. Should you? Very rarely. The odds of somebody else having AA when you have KK at a 9 handed table are only 4%. 1/25 times they will have AA. 24/25 times they won’t.
The thing that you always have to remember about cooler situations like this is that they are going to happen both for you and against you. You shouldn’t worry too much about them because if the tables were turned (and they will be), your opponent would almost certainly lose all of his money as well.
I would go so far as to say that for 100bb or less you should almost never fold KK preflop. The only time to even remotely think about it is if the world’s biggest nit cold 4bets you or something.
But as we know, NL2 and NL5 are both games where you have the option to buyin deepstacked. Against a huge nit for 200bb+ I can get away from KK preflop pretty easily.
The way I look at it is this. These situations (KK vs AA) happen very rarely but they do happen every once in awhile. I have a big edge over a player like this who is playing far too tight. While he could perhaps have AK or QQ, AA certainly makes up a decent chunk of his range here. I don’t want to ship such a large amount of big blinds to a player this bad just because he managed to cooler the crap out of me.
You have to understand that with players this tight (which are very common at the micros these days) these sorts of situations are the only spots where they can make money off of you. That or set over set. They have almost zero “plays” in their game. They are playing a ton of tables and basically playing their cards face up.
Make hero folds against them, especially when it is mega deep, and just move on. And be happy about it. Against all other player types, I pretty much just go broke with KK preflop. And by go broke I mean win a lot of money by shipping it in preflop and getting shown something worse most of the time.
Example: Blinds are 2c/5c. Stacks are 250bb effective. In LP you have,
A Nit opens in MP to 20c and you 3bet to 70c. He 4bets to $2.
You should fold.
