The hand in question happened in a 1/2 game against a villain capable of making moves and putting pressure on opponents. However, I have never seen him get out of line or donk away his stack, probably the best player at the table.

Hero has a tight/aggresive image, one of probably 3 players at this ten handed table that will open pre with something other than JJ-AA or AK. Has respect of the other players and isn't known to get out of line.

I feel like the image break down in this hand is important, because of the action that transpires.

Villain ($1200) is on the button and has a $10 straddle on.

Action folds to hero ($650) in MP who opens to $25 with AsKc

Villain defends straddle and flop comes ($53) - Ks4s3d

Hero puts out a continuation bet of $30, Villain Raises to $105, hero calls.

Turn ($263) brings the Ac - Hero checks and villain grabs a stack of green chips and bets $500 , essentially a double pot size bet and basically putting me all in.

My thoughts at the moment were the obvious sets of 44 and 33. I could also see this player defending his straddle with a hand like 52s and trying to take it down on the flop with the raise then getting there on the turn. The fact that I had the Ace of spades really ruled out the flush draw for me, and there were almost no other two pair combos that would have taken this line and I would suspect he would 3bet AK nearly 100% of the time. The fact that the Ace hitting the turn didn't slow him down really got me as well.

Would love to hear some feedback on this one.

Sorry if the format is bad.

I think it's a slam dunk call, V can have all the FD/SD semi-bluffs from his line, along with wonky ass 2pairs. There are 8 combos that you are annihilated against, 6 of them do fit this line and 2 don't (AA/KK probably would have been 3! pre). I don't think V is flatting any combo of 2x5x pre.

Because the villain is inclined to flat the straddle and has position on the button, I would make a no limp open to 4.5-5.5x with your as played tightened range. As played, good call on the flop, and feels like this is the only 1 combo of 65ss, where "good players" as you describe tend to bet for value with their sets of 33 and 44, not shove ~2x pot on the turn, therefore I'd call here. Also, seems more like a LAG player than a capable good player just from his 2x pot shove alone.

You have 65 BB to start the hand and make a monster

Not sure why you think your table image is relevant because it doesnt align with the action you're up against, nor should you care if people "respect" you. You dont want their respect, you want them to pay you off with inferior hands. A 2x pot bet certainly doesnt scream respect anyway. You mentioned how he could have five deuce and "get there". Thats an awfully specific hand so my spidey senses are tingling that this is just a bad beat story. Regardless, what I see here is a spastic BTN player with perhaps some kind of combo draw looking for a fold BADLY. I'm jamming here.

Size is really bad pre. Btn straddle is incentived to call this. We’d much rather leave his $10 dead in the middle. Make it like $50. Something where he’s getting a bad price.

Call. We are near the top of our range and he has plenty of reason to use this as a bluff card against Kx/sticky pairs like JJ. He might not even use this sizing with a set, fearing AA/KK in your range.

But once again, back to preflop. If you actually charge them pre, they don’t have random 52 in their range. It’s bad for us when their range is an unknown entity while our range is defined.


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Seems like a pretty standard call. Villain line is rather strange but we are just too high in our range and overall spr too low for us to need to figure out what he has. He could certainly have semi-bluffs and worse made hands.


Like others have pointed-out pre-flop sizing is atrocious - $40 minimum, often 50.

Straddles often defend too wide so we want to err towards larger sizing. Also ar our stack size, larger sizing also improves our post-flop playability.

Yea, with the small open pre, and turn X, this action was induced. Call for <PSB with outs vs 44/33, and ahead of 65s/A2s/As3s.

As others have said, pre-flop raise sizing is awful...villain will call extra $15 with virtually any two cards...

I'd consider jamming flop sometimes...even though it feels a little spewy.

Turn is probably a call since you didn't re-raise flop...if you choose to underrepresent your holdings, you have to follow through.

We get a ton of AK posts on this forum...fact is, the vast majority of the time you whiff completely (984, J22) or make TPTK. Both are really difficult to play OOP...which is one reason I make huge preflop raises in my home game with them.