Typical 1/2 table with mostly bad players. I haven't been very active when I decide to straddle. Effective stacks are roughly 250.

UTG+1 (older, former dealer, easy to read) raises to 8. Haven't played with others before.
4 callers back to me in the straddle with AA (Pot is 40). I raise to 40, ALL CALL.
Pot is 200 and I have 200 behind.

Flop 678 with two diamonds (I don't have the A of diamonds). What's your play?

Since I'm not a mindreader and know nothing about your table or the villain's all I can say is: raise bigger pre

$40 is way too small. By the time it gets back to UTG+1 there is $80 in the pot and he has to call $32 more for 2.5:1 odds. Pretty trivial call for him which means everyone after him is calling. I would have made it like $70-$80 or so which sets up an easy flop shove.

As played, there's really not much to do. You can either shove the flop or CR shove. Fact of the matter is you are probably behind at this point as that is a ****ty flop for AA and smacks a cascade of callers' range.

Shove. SPR of 1 with a big overpair makes this a shove. If flop was monotone I'd check fold. Your only other option is to check fold.

Another way of looking at it is this. If one guy shoves, you need 33% equity to break even. If two shove, you need 25% equity. You will likely lose pot more often than you win but will you win often enough?

$40 pre is fine. If a bigger raise folds out everyone, I'll take my chances with a $40 raise. This is one of the worst flops for you and you just got unlucky

Thanks for the input. I shoved and was called in two spots. UTG+1 had QQ and other caller had K9 diamonds. Turn paired the board and the river is...a 5 for the straight. Damn there goes an $800 pot.

How is $40 pre fine? You already have 5 people that have put $8 into the pot and UTG+1 is probably opening a tight range meaning he's not folding for $32 more getting 2.5:1. And once he calls this pot is going 6-way to the flop.

Sorry I had a typo. There were 5 to the flop. 200 in the pot.

Hand was played almost perfectly. Sometimes you have to lose. This is why you have a bankroll.

When I am putting 1/6 of my stack in preflop, I don't care how many callers I get.

I'd take it 9 ways to the flop if it means putting in 1/5 of effective stacks with aces. We lose the pot more often but that doesn't mean we don't gain a ****ton of EV.

So a former dealer raises a $4/5 straddle to $8 from UTG? This screams strength to me and deserves a larger PF raise with so many 'limpers'. Being OOP means you make them pay for position. Raise to $50 min (raise of $42 or pot), if not slightly more.

This board really stinks 5-ways. I could try to let it check through, bet the same amount of my PF raise or shove. If this was a monotone board I'd be more apt to c/f to a large bet.

I just hate putting chips in when I am crushed ... even if they had turned their cards face up, I still hate puttin chips in here. You are actually only 38% to win here and K9d is 55%.

This is all about stuff we arent supposed to believe in ... running hot, feeling good, lets gamble, why not ... I probably try to keep this cheap/save my chips and check here.

Shoving is the best way to try and make most hands pay a premium to call, but you dont have enough chips to really make it a 'bad' call for OESD/flush draws to put chips in there. The QQ hand calling was just a bonus .. he really should be folding here, but fell into the straddle syndrome of expecting a draw from you.

A little bigger raise from you is needed, but the really bad play (and you seem to know it already) is the lack of a 3-bet from UTG to get K9 out of the hand ... then you win. GL


PS ... It always feels good to blame the other guy .. I agree sometimes you just lose, but you can control the amount you lose when things are marginal or you just dont feel good about the situation. We only had $40 into this pot at the time of the decision.

I agree

So what are you raising pre with KK? QQ? JJ? It seems counter-intuitive to raise smaller with AA as a pot sweetener just to stack off on any flop.

I understand the argument - I think I read in a Harrington or Ed Miller book that AA has the highest EV in a 9 way pot with everybody AI - but if the whole point is to isolate and have 1-2 callers on the flop max then this is like "EXCEPTION #1" on how to maximize profit.

I am raising to $40 or more (I might have gone 45 or 48) with all of my 3betting range. If I think $40 is the right sizing for AA, I'm going to play KK (for example) exactly the same way.

Nh well played, if only QQ shoved pre you could of scooped a good pot.

This is why run it twice is good? I play in a "home" game where running it twice or three times is common.

He's calling $32 to win $250 from you, that's about 8:1. you need over 15:1 to set mine against a super tight range of big PPs. Also, you're being results oriented, there's no way we know we'll get 4+ calls.

If we knew we could reraise bigger and get all folds OR raise to $40 and get 5 calls (when we are only $250 deep), then im reraising to $40 all day. you can run the math on that but $40 is clearly the higher +ev play (even though you lose pot often). someone needs to flop two pairs+ to outflop us and most of the time they'll either miss or flop one pair or flop a draw.

$40 is NOT a sweetner raise here, we're putting in 16% of our stacks!! with KK, i raise to $40 as well. only 18% chance of an ace flopping if someone holds an ace. with hands like QQ, JJ, AK, i 3bet way bigger since now there are way more flops that ruin our hand or we miss flop too often with AK, plus we don't mind to win the decent pot now when we have JJ, AK, and maybe QQ.

Exploitable? Hell yeah! But nobody is exploiting us and its optimal. Now if we know we can still get at least one caller a very high % of the time with a bigger raise, then go for it!! but i think $50 gets everything except QQ+ to stay in. Even if PFR raises only AQ+, TT+, that means he's folding a very high % of the time (like 85%)

Pre flop I'm raising to 75 hoping utg+1 comes along on his own.

As played, I c/f unless I get insane odds to see the turn. Ditto the river

A 38% chance at tripling up is good, even before accounting for the massive amount of deadmoney in the middle.

As others have said, $40 is plenty preflop. Stop trying to maximize the number of pots you win; maximize the amount of *money* you win.

Bombing it to 75 is absolutely horrendous in my book, because we loose so much value as slimshady also have mentioned in his posts in this thread.

We have an ultra premium and we WANT some callers and money in the pot: but we are settling the conditions of course. We want our opponent to make calls that they dont have good enough odds to make preflop, so we can print money.

Sometimes we will loose the pot yes because someone is lucky enough to flop 2 pair or better against us, but that doesent mean we have played the hand wrong. Too much resultoriented thinking ITT imo.

...so we should be bombing to $75 with junk then? Cuz everyone is gonna fold..

Yes, those kind of spots can be good for a squeeze with a reasonable range if we gauge our fold equity to be through the roof.

But that has nothing to do with this particular discussion because we actually have AA ,and is discussing about how to max out the value of that hand.

I would raise to 75 hoping to get just with utg+1 calling.

He should because he is almost certainly very strong here.

I would rather win a smaller pot against just him than risk losing a large pot against multiple callers.

That's what I'd do, and why.

Probably not optimal play but nevertheless it's what I'd do.

I understand what you are saying and how you are doing it. None the less i am just explaining to you how you are loosing tons of value by overplaying the aces this way. We are playing cash game, not tournament.


If we can get 20 percent of our stack in the middle with AA i take 4-5 callers anyday, as we will gain insane value when our villains put that amount of money into the pot when we got the preflop nutz.

More often than not people will only flop one pair hands or drawing hands against us, and we are of course autoshoving every single flop so our opponents are not going to see any more cards before all the money is going in the middle- wich gets us to win huge pots most of the time.

Yes, we will loose sometimes, but long term we are printing money on this play, thats why we have (should have) a bankroll.

$75 is way too much, I'm good with a raise to $40 to $50 there, we don't want everyone to fold and if they all call well that's fine too, I think you played it fine.