Location: Commerce
Blinds: 1/2

I'm wondering if I played well.
After playing horribly and losing a $40 buy in, I limp in. Action folds to the guy who's been seeing lots of hands and seems to be chip leader. His buddy to his left is a middle-aged dude with a heavy middle-european accent. The buddy must love the WPT because he's wearing a old, beat-up wind breaker and ball cap with said logo. It's hard to detect buddy's heavy accent as he never seems able to take the unlit, chewed-up cigarette from his mouth. I keep thinking,"LIGHT THE FRIGGIN' THING ALREADY!" Only reason I mention the buddy is because of what he says later.

I have A3 off-suit in the hole UTG and flop comes QAA. I check in an attempt to slow play. I don't remember a flush draw on the board as I am thunder struck by this flop. Lead bets out 10 and I raise to 20. He calls. Turn is a 3, filling up. I check again, and lead checks behind. The table rail is mumbling something about queens and a flush and better not call etc. etc.

At this point, I'm literally trembling because I hope to gawd he doesn't have AQ so I forget that it's my turn to bet, "oh is it my turn?" Not an attempt to slowroll or Hollywood or anything, just a rookie, shocked-to-**** mistake.
After realizing I need to shove, I do so with the last of my 16 chips. He tanks for a second and then calls. I flip over the boat to the chagrin of the table.

His buddy says that "was a good check" but I can't tell if his cigarette is getting in the way of sarcasm. Chip lead never turns over his cards but buddy said he had a flush.

So I ask you all if that was a good play or did I just get lucky?

-CC
ps I ended up leaving the casino up $35 after two $40 buy ins.

Got lucky. You should have folded pf with A3o that short. At $40, it doesn't matter much how you got your money in, it was going in anyway once you have trips.

Very lucky. When villain flat calls your min raise to half your stack, the most likely hand by far is a flush draw. That is getting the 1-4 odds it needs to chase and everything else should put you all in right there or fold. Good aces and QQ are raising preflop, middle aces put you in, small aces put you in or fold, nothing else sticks around after a nervous newcomer makes a mininum raise.

That short you should never be playing anything in early or middle position without raising. In late position you can sometimes limp behind with small pocket pairs and medium-small suited connectors, but only if the table is passive. With on 20BB you want to be shoving preflop or on flop most of the time.

I see you joined 2+2 in Jan but you only have 2 posts.

If you want to get better, you need to be more active and contribute.

read through the stickies at the top of the forum and respond to posts. Even if you don't know what you are doing you can respond by saying, "Hey, I'm new but this is what I would do. Could someone tell me if this is right or wrong and why, thanks..."

If you do that, you will get much more out of this site.

Judging from your post, you do not understand the fundamentals of poker, which is fine, we were all noobs once.

It takes a lot of work and study to become a winning player and this site has everything you need if you are willing to do the work.

GL

Buying in for 20BB also puts you at a significant disadvantage. If $40 is your average buy in for a 1/2 you may be extremely under rolled for the game. Save up some more money so you can buy in for AT LEAST $100 or 50BB.

The reason why 20bb puts you at a horrible disadvantage is because being that short makes a lot of profitable standard plays unprofitable.

Take set mining for instance.

In order to set mine, you need a mathematical minimum of just shy of 9:1 odds.

This means that if you have 66 and someone raises $10, you need to have a combination of $90 in the pot and in both your stack and villain's stack (i.e. both you and villain have $90 behind). Otherwise, it becomes unprofitable to set mine meaning that long term, you do not make enough money to

Here is some modeling I did for setmining a while ago.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...l#post36527147

look at posts 33 and 34

and set mining is only one aspect of poker, there are other aspects as well.
Basically, when you buy-in short, it makes a lot of standard plays mathematically incorrect. You end up calling and folding too big a percentage of your stack and then when you finally do hit your hand you don't make enough money to make up for all the times you missed. This is why short stackers almost always inevitably bleed themselves dry and bust out and why winning players rarely if ever buy-in short...

Thanks for the advice, all.

Yes as you can tell I am VERY new to live poker and this is my third or fourth trip to the local tables. Even though I have been playing poker all my life it's only recently that I thought I've developed enough experience to actually put my money where my mouth is.
I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring to have a little fun and make a little money if possible.

I will be more active in the forums and have been researching through them daily as a point of discipline before I ever thought of posting.

The points about being short stacked with the buy-in is something I was aware of but was only playing with about $100 total which I divided into two buy-ins of $40. I tried to compensate by playing super tight. The A3 was on the looser end of my range but after getting busted on a set of 8s by a straight. I was taking a chance but new I was in over my head a bit.