Hey all;

I've been wondering if I left value on the table with this hand so I thought I'd run it past the forum. I'm primarily wondering about the size of the flop bet.

Hero: $250 stack. TAG image, has been running pretty poorly in the three hours he's been at the table (flopped top two vs. flopped flush, runner runner top two vs. flush, TPGK vs. rivered straight, etc.). Has mostly lost small pots thanks to position play and pot control but is still stuck for the session.

Villain: LAGgy but not a very good LAG. Calls OOP too much and is willing to chase draws for sizeable bets. Has Hero well covered.

Villain2: Uber Nitty lady who has only shown down the nuts or near nuts all night. Also has Hero covered.

Hero: SB with AA

Villain limps UTG+1, two other limpers. Villain2 (Button) limps. Hero raises to $11. BB folds. Villains both call, rest of table folds.

3 way to flop, there is $35 in the pot.

Flop: 8 4 3

Hero bets $15. Villain calls. Villain2 calls. There is now $80 in the pot.

Turn: 2

Hero checks. Villain bets $45. Villain2 folds. Hero check-raises to $120. Villain calls. There is now $320 in the pot and Hero has $110 behind.

River: J

Hero goes allin and Villain mucks. He later said he had a pocket pair.

Thoughts: Villain is known to me and will often bet when he senses weakness, hence the turn check from me. Had another heart come I'm not sure I'd have taken the same line, as I was pretty sure Villain2 was on a draw (most likely hearts). I would likely have check-folded if Villain2 got active since her style was so tight - she's never calling this flop without something decent IMHO.

I'm wondering if something closer to pot-size on the flop would have been better as it lets me ship almost all non-heart turns or let me check-raise a little bigger and then hope for a crying call of my remaining stack OTR? I was actually surprised that Villain folded the river, but he did tell me he put me on a set at that point and was happy to call the extra $75 in hopes of catching up (which tells me he had a hand like 99 or TT).

Thanks for your time! Sorry if this is tl:dr.

Booming silence means one of two things:

a) Nobody has anything to add, or
b) Nobody wants to be the guy to tell me how badly I pooched the hand.

I'm hoping it's a).

Bet more PF. My standard with big hands is 4xBB+1BB per limper. Also, bet more on the flop, at least 2/3rds of the pot to charge draws correctly. I guess the check raise OTT is fine if you're sure your villain is gonna bet but i think youre more likely to simply blow everyone off there hands except for sets, this obviously didn't happen in this hand but in general I think this true. Even fish know a check raise is extremely strong.

Line looks fine if you bet flop weakish+checked turn with the intent you stated

If anything, I would have bet flop more..$25, which would have made your turn ch/r larger and a less trivial river shove

Thanks for the insight.

My concern with betting 20-25 OTF as suggested is that bloating a pot with 1 pair out of position makes playing later streets tricky. If I were to start raising more than my typical 1/2 pot give or take (it's dependent on number of villains, position, flop texture, etc.), how do you suggest responding to significant action on the turn?

I very rarely make moves preflop out of the blinds because I hate being out of position, which means that any big raises or bets from me are pretty transparent and allows villains to play perfectly against me...

I"ll be the one...I won't say you played it badly, but I doubt you played it optimally for the following reasons:

1) raise more pre... $11 in the pot when it gets to you, raise $15-18. You have to start building the pot and take the flop heads up or 3 ways.

2) Bet more on the flop (pot it)

3) Checking the turn is not good if you think one of the V's is on a draw even if you thought V would bet. Giving a free card on this board is not the best idea. And as you indicated in your post, V will chase draws even when facing a sizeable bet (Not the same as "chasing w/ the wrong odds", but I think that is what you meant)
4) If you intended to check raise, check raise AI, and get V to commit if he is on a draw. You put yourself in a very difficult position when a or 4 card to a straight hits the river and now you are facing a decision for c/f or c/c or whatever.
From your description, V was on a draw, and he missed.

raise more pre fa shooo. larry lido got it right in post 3. AA are no fun to play multi way oop. we want to thin the field as much as possible as well as start building a big pot.

i like betting more on the flop, but if villain1 is LAG and bets when he senses weakness then the small bet is fine as long as your intention was to look like you were making a fishy cbet with AT+ and have him float/bluff with air.

as played, i like the check raise on the turn. your hand is pretty face up after doing this, but you still dont want to give a cheap river card on such a draw heavy board. i expect to get value from any FD and any pair+SD. with the awkward stack sizes i would have check shoved the turn...

river is a safe enough brick to ship on and hope to get hero called by a fish

note- i still like raising more pre, betting more on the flop, and keeping the lead on the turn and river

raise more preflop. yes we have the aces. yes we are happy. yes we want people to call. but we don't want people to call correctly. by raising to $11, they only need to call $9 to win an extra $240. that's getting them 26 to 1 implied odds. hell, i'm not sure what hands I limp/fold for $9 more but I can't imagine that there are any hands bad laggy players are limp/folding for $9. I'd probably bump it to $16 or $21 (depending on how big the raise that these ppl would call with.. of course we can make it more, just saying the standard) and throw out 3 or 4 red chips (we already have $1 for the sb, throw the raise size on top)

flop bet size needs to be way bigger. there are a ton of gutshots/fd/oesd there. we need to charge them.

turn, i hate the check. more draws. an unbelieving 55 picks up oesd. an unbelieving 66 has a gutshot. (not to mention 54/53). honestly, pairs should check through but.. yeah you see how that went =/


poorly played hand on all streets.

You can always pot control with an overpair on later streets depending on your reads on villain(s) and the range you put them on

But,in this hand part of the problem is the pfr amount and the SPR on the flop, which is close to 7, and not very manageable with an overpair type hand

anybody like checking the river here?! I feel like most one pair type hands are folding and a ton of draws missed, i feel like there isn't a whole lot of value in betting it. And i think the c/r check on next street looks really weak or at least confusing. Thoughts?

Meh....All one pair hands are going to check back this river based on the check raise on the turn. We would lose value by not betting the river.
The only merit to checking w/ intention of c/c this river would be to know for sure that V will try to bluff his missed draws/ or is on a suicide mission and will try to extract thin value from 1 pair hands.

I like a check on the river. What value are you betting for anyway? No draws will call, but might bluff. What hand worse than AA is going to call a substantial bet? I think none.

I just can't see anything but like TT or maybe 99 looking you up on the river here, our line looks pretty strong to me. But i guess we probably would need some sort of read that would tell us that he plays his draws aggressively (which most live players don't) and bluffs when he whiffs.

Problem here is that your small bet does exactly the opposite of what you want it to do. You're getting more money in the pot vs a LAG OOP, and you're basically giving him correct odds to call with any draw. You also massively underrep your hand vs a LAG who may try to take it away. So not only do you give him great odds to call, but you basically make your hand look like it's FOS, which encourages him to take a shot.

If you feel happy enough about your hand that you're going to bet/CR, bet more on the flop then CRAI.

I guess my point is that on one hand you're worried about the LAG sucking out and taking it away, but you're fine with a bet/CR that commits you to the hand.

If you're committed, bet more, then CR or just bet/bet. If you're not, a 1/3 pot cbet just encourages him to call and steal later.

I am sure you are familiar with terms "spite call, "hero call", and these are the calls we are trying to get from villian by betting the river.
The hand was played in a very strange way for a big pair/set. It was played like a big draw (AK, AQ, AJ and A10 of ) that improved on the turn and was trying to buy the pot.
And the shove on the river may seem very strong, but based on how the hand played out (small pre flop raise, small flop bet, c/r turn, shove river) it looks so much like a bluff.

BTW, Villain limped on BUT. A LAG never limps behind with 99-1010 on BUT after limpers and probably commits on the turn based on the action with 99-1010, but 55, 8x, Ax, 56, 45, etc. are in his limp/calling range from button that might call us on the river.

Possibly. I would have played it pretty much the same if holding the A. That way, I know where the nuts are, and might bet the flop lighter since no one else is drawing to the nuts. Given the two black aces, bet them a bit stronger on the flop, as anyone holding Ax can play that easily on a flop like that. You'll get the action anyway, and add a bit more to the pot.

If holding AK on a flop like that, I sometimes consider shoving on the flop and taking my chances. I can either win it right there, get calls from smaller overpairs that can be beat with either an ace or king, and of course, the flush card.

This is the A Number One problem you need to work on. Given this revelation, I'm surprised you got as much action as you did. If you don't give a little action OOP every now and then, then the best thing to do would have been to call from the small blind holding those aces. The other players must not be very observant. If these are regulars and play that obliviously, then don't worry about giving anything away by playing nothing but big hands OOP. (Had I been there, I would have noticed and quietly folded pretty much anything. I've seen other players doing the same as you.)

It's not a huge thing but Villain actually limped UTG+1. The other Villain (who folded to V's turn bet) was on the button.

The early position call tended to make me narrow his range towards pocket pair type hands, maybe AT or AJ. AQ+ would have been raised, junkier holdings would likely have been mucked unless they were suited connector type hands (the room has a massive BBJ at present and that tends to skew preflop calling ranges a ton).

I think I'm not raising enough preflop in general, though, which is something I hadn't even considered as part of the problem. I'll work on that and see if things change.

Raise more pre, bet more on flop. I don't get your turn check/raise at all. Do people really bet/call you here with single pairs that often?

I'm shocked a $11 raise after 4 limpers actually got this down to 3way. I raise more preflop, but maybe you know your table pretty good.

I bet more on the flop, probably $25 to $30. Board is a little drawy and we're up against two opponents.

After two opponents call the flop, I kinda like pot control checking. When laggy villain takes the lead (which he often will) I simply go into calldown mode which will let him bluff off chips. If he's on a draw, I guess check/raising costs him the most, but otherwise he's typically only going to call with better hands (he probably would raised bigger medium pairs preflop) and fold all his junk that he's going to bluff the river with.

Our turn play committed ourselves, so I also shove the river. But I think we're typically making a mistake if we're getting ourselves into a situation where we're committing 125 BB with one pair.

ETA: I understand others reasoning that if we're check/raising the turn we might as well check/shove since we're committed. But I also think check/shoving is pretty bad, no? I mean, very few worse hands are calling a check/shove.

GcluelessNLnoobG

there was no point in checkraising to 120, going allin makes more sense here so, ust call

^based on him betting when he senses weakness

Everyone nailed the pre and flop sizing issues.

I think the turn is going to get us in against better often and fold worse a bunch.

Is c/r better than b/f here?