Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrucci
Just a couple of spots from my last 12 hour marathon session, long time since i had the energy/desire to post some of my own hands- so here we go. Brushing up on some spots that may seem "standard" to some people,but i find that valuable from time to time.
1) I raise AA from UTG, get called by MP, button and both blinds. All players are fairly sticky with pretty wide ranges. 9-3-2 rainbow flop. 200 blinds effective stacks,everyone covers. Are we checking here or betting here as a default? Since we have so many unpaired overcards that have to give up here multiway and not c-bet, are we looking to throw in some big pocket pairs in our checking range for some balance? (I play in a small playerpool and log tons of hours with the same 15-20 players, so yes balance matters to me- at least some degree).
2) I raise KJ suited diamonds from early pos, same scenario as hand number one- get 3 callers with around 200 BB stacks. HJ, Button and the BB calls. Flop comes pretty nicely 9-10-4 two diamonds. BB checks, hero?
Depending on raise size and resulting SPRs I'm not pumped on either preflop result, although if raises were small with these big stacks then SPRs will be large enough to have lots of postflop poker, so whatever (I know we disagree on this).
AA is definitely robust enough to be able to check while underrepping our hand, so I'd lean towards that (I'd much more bet TT than AA here). Course I have a super nitty image, so if you're more aggro you might have to actually bet your better hands. Having someone hit an overcard ain't a bad thing. Either/or, imo, but checking allows us a much better chance at getting to showdown while not getting in gross spots in a big SPR pot OOP, which should be our overall goal at this point.
I actually think KJs is either/or too on the flop. Obviously with all our outs we should mostly have decent equity so a bet can almost be for value with a disguised hand with probably some small FE mixed in. But I think checking is also fine (especially without the non-nut draw we're not as excited to build a pot) and also disguises our flush if it gets there (as no one raises preflop to flop a flush draw and check).
There's always two ways to get value in poker; betting to get called by worse, and checking to induce worse to put money in the pot (either now or later). Obviously image dependent, but checking for value is fine.
GimoG