I was dealt AcQc in the BB

Just sat down. I have $100 and everyone has me covered.

Button ( late 30's early 40's, mountain of chips in front of him) straddle to $5.

SB calls.

At this point I am almost certain that the button after having straddled, will raise up a limped pot with a wide range when its his turn to act PF in attempt to steal all the limpers money (the regs do this a lot where I play) so I limp in waiting for my chance to re-raise him.

I call, UTG Calls, folds around back to button who raises to $20 as expected.

I raise to $60. Button asks how much I have behind ($40) and proceeds to put me all in and I call.

Flop runs out something like 8c 3d Js Kd 7c

Button shows 1 king. I get up and leave (hating myself afterwards for not having asked to see what his other card was).

Was my strategy or the way I approached this hand flawed?

1 mistake I think I made was not having gone all in instead of just raising 3x. I think going all in would have seemed much stronger and would have increased my fold equity.

There was no point in leaving $40 behind....

Raise pre, you want to 4! AIPF there. You gave away initiative why?

I wanted to get it all in pre and I felt a raise from EP would at best take down the little bit of money in the middle or make me have to play a pot OOP with AQ.

I felt the way I played the hand would give me a better chance of taking down a bigger pot pre or of getting it all in pre vs villains weaker range.

why did you buy in for only 50 big blinds? It doesn't really give you too many options besides all in or fold.

I think that was probably my biggest mistake. All I had was $100 at the time. (Bankroll management issues )

But I don't plan on playing again until I have enough to buy in for at least 100 bb.

I don't like the buy in amount, but if you are going to short stack you are going to have to make a lot of push or fold decisions. I like the read on the straddler, and and the plan of limping a strong hand to target his expected raise. But after he raises to 20, I'm just moving in. I wxpect him to call with worse often, but you still have to survive at showdown.

I think your biggest mistake is your bankroll mistake. For 1/2, you really shouldn't have any less than 10 or 20 buy ins and even that can be too skinny to weather some bad variance.

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Sounds like degen issues. When your entire bankroll is equal to 50 BBs, don't play poker.

Lol might be. Everytime I've stacked up a decent Bankroll playing poker I end up dipping into it to buy/pay for unecessary things.

I've only been playing seriously for a year or so so hopefully this time around I'll be more carefull with my bankroll now that I have experienced how much it sucks to not be able to play when I want or how I want.

If the K on the flop was a Q would you be asking this question? In other words, is this question results based? We need to be careful to not let results skew our thought process. If you wanted to get AI heads up against the button then well done, you did it - chances are you were ahead of his Kx hand when you got it in. If you would have preferred to take the pot down pre then I agree you should have shoved.

Story Time: I play in a local weekly raked game where I see a lot of the same people over and over. John is a great guy - I like him a lot - but he is a TERRIBLE poker player. Has no concept of anything; just bad. Last time I played with John I saw him get all in for like 60BB on a like a 782 rainbow flop or something. He had one caller board runs out 8x and caller flips over 98 for the turned trips. John was CLEARLY crushed by this hand just sitting there not buying back in. After a few min he starts with the" Maybe if I raised more pre you would have folded.. blah blah blah..." Normally I would let a fish keep thinking this way but I felt bad so I interrupted him and said "John, you got all your money in as a huge favorite - you can't play your hand any better than that. He got lucky, that's it. You did good." He nodded but I could tell he was still thinking he could have done things differently. Don't be results based.

I am not crazy about you making it $60 pre-flop. If you call the 20$ and it goes 3 handed you are obviously getting it in if you did hit the ace or queen. By you missing in this particular moment you could have folded the flop and just had $80 behind you to possibly play another few hands. if you had QQ then I don't mind the raise pre

Your right. The question was indeed results based. Feels like I have been losing every coin flip lately and I was doubting my play in this spot.

I probably didn't mention in my OP but the SB folded to villains raise so it was already going to be Heads Up.

You bring up a good point but I'm pretty sure that villain will be calling my raise with worse hands a large % of time and folding some % of time to my raise. Which is why I like the reraise better than flatting AQ OOP and playing fit or fold post flop.

Your play would have kept me in the game but I think the re-raise is a more profitable play in the long run against this type of player.

What's the problem here? You conceived of a plan and executed it just like you wanted to, and got your money in as a 60/40 favorite or so which is a pretty good result for AQs.

As you said, you should have shoved pf. No problem with that line of attack.

As long as you can pay your bills, go ahead and spend your $100 playing poker. Actually, it would be massively worse if you ran to the ATM and withdrew money to keep playing. Good job getting up and leaving. I found poker when I was older and had a little bit saved, but if I had found poker when I was younger and had to stretch my dollars, maybe I would have played $100 at a time too....

I'd say, if you have just $100, just sit and watch for a while. Play for an hour and fold everything except AA or KK. You'll spend about $9 on the blinds in a one-hour span.

Stretch out your dollar ... the best way to learn isn't to play, it's to watch and observe and think.

... ...
Um, I actually believe this is the WRONG WAY of looking at it. You don't want to GII, you want to GIIGood. If he's unpaired AJ- and the flop misses both of you, you are BETTER OFF getting the 80 in on the flop.