This hand was at .10/.25 6-max and I was relatively fresh at the table.

Hero: UTG+1 ($31.79) A2
Villain: UTG+2 ($24.65)

Hero open limps (I know..... not supposed to do this)
Villain raises to .75 , sb calls, hero calls

Flop: 985
Hero checks, v bets $2.50, sb folds, hero calls

Turn: 5
Hero checks, v bets $7.50, hero raises to $15, V shoves for $6.40 more. Obviously I call the extra $6.40

River: 4

I know slow playing can get you in a world of hurt sometimes. But where do you draw the line between trying to let your opponent catch up enough to call a bet or raise vs letting them catch up enough to come around you?

I don't like my kicker for the position I am in to open raise with, that is why I chose to limp call. Some of you will probably say this is a fold and some will say a raise (I am pretty certain v would have 3-bet had I raised though).

I feel like maybe I should have check raised the flop hoping to entice a re-raise and we could get it all in right there on the flop. Or maybe led out on the flop hoping he would raise and I could shove.

Please correct my flawed logic where needed. lol

Your reasoning on limp calling with A2 is not good. Just fold it pre.

You got lucky of course, and played fine after that. Villain is mostly gonna fold the flop to a check-raise or donk so you made the obvious move there.

Your raise to $15 on the turn should've been bigger (a shove, essentially) since he was only left with 6.40 behind. But made sense to do it since he would probably check behind on the river a lot if you had flatted.

If a hand is bad for your position, it's probably worse to limp it than to just raise it. You pretty much have to check the flop here to let villain cbet, I think donking on a monotone board like this leads to folds more than calls.

Sucks villain boated up on the turn but c'est la vie.

If you limp (and then call raises) at 25NL you're going to get destroyed. Move down if you want to save money.

I could comment on what happened postflop but it doesn't matter, you should never encounter this situation ever again and I have no idea what my ranges should be when I limpcalled pre out of position. I can say one thing and that is the minraise on the turn is a dead giveaway that you have a strong hand. When weak players do that to me I just know I ran into the nuts almost always.

You already know you shouldn't have limped so not point citing that as a mistake. Calling the raise compounds the mistake. I'm not even opening A2s utg+1 in 6max.
Flop check is fine I'm probably leading the turn as I don't want villain checking back which he's liable to do with a huge part of his range [all the Ax hands that aren't a pair now, some broadways and low pps]. Another heart otr is far more likely to slow villain down than give him a worse flush that he'll call off with. I don't really like the check raise line otf as villain gets away from all the unmade hands in his c-betting range and possibly even some made hands.
This hand doesn't really illustrate how you can mis-use slowplaying as I think the flop check and maybe even the turn check are ok. It's not like they'r massive mistakes. Those occured pre flop in this hand. In terms of the question where do you draw the line I think you should rarely be slowplaying. Ask yourself what strong hands villain can make on the next street that are still 2nd best to your hand.

At that point he’s getting 4:1 and relative position on the raiser. Hard to imagine l/c is worse than l/f here.

I don't think it is worse however calling still compounds the original mistake.

See this is why I don't like the whole "hypothetical" situations where people discuss folding aces when they registered tournaments with a 3 BI bankroll management or what they should do when they limpcalled pre with a trashy ace.

The situation should never ever occur again, it is meaningless to discuss it.

1) We don't know what to do with Arag suited from EP, suggest l/c puts us on low end of our range v V's opening range.
2) We don't c/r (or 'bluff' shove) Flop to make sure stacks get in on Turn while we know we have nuts

3) We do min-raise into a paired Board with no stack behind .. What hands are calling a Turn raise that wouldn't have called a Flop raise on this Board?
4) We suggest that you don't need a 'get out of jail' plan if you stay out of jail in the first place ...

OP, how do you think the thread comments change if you are holding AKs and ask for Flop advice?

OP knows he's supposed to fold PF ... l/c anyways ...
OP knows that slow-playing can be tilting ... does so anyways.
OP basically shoves into a Board when most calling/shoving hands beat him.

I can't say I wouldn't play the same way ... at times ... but getting greedy after I've gotten lucky usually doesn't end up very rosy. We don't know what called him as of yet .. KxKh? GL

V had pocket 9's. Obviously everyone would have recommended I raise pre-flop with AKs, and done whatever possible to get it in on the flop and get called.

After knowing his hand, we probably could have gotten it in on the flop had I put out a good bet and he re-raised. I know I played the hand incorrectly, but is A2s a fold from ep 100% of the time for you guys? I guess I just need to tighten my range up in earlier positions lol

A2s is a hand I open from any position 6max. Having said that, your preflop strategy is so out of whack (not trying to be an ass) that you need to fall back to tight ranges with hands that are easy to play and have good equity. A2s is very difficult to play in early position when you flop just one pair hands so you can easily let it go for now. Number one for now should be to go to standard tight preflop ranges and never limp again until you understand why.

Also important, move down from $25NL. This is not the place to learn for both skill and money reasons.

I don't normally play online. I put a small amount in, ran it up, cashed most of it out and was playing smaller stakes with the rest. Maybe the live games I play are insanely different than online, but I see WAY more insane calls and moves at sub 25nl online than I do in any live games I play. It is also hard for me to stay focused at micro stakes online and even harder not to get frustrated with some of the plays and hands I run into.

I for some reason have a problem with following my own advice in a lot of situations. Such as (knowing not to limp a2s, knowing not to slow play, knowing to fold when I am beaten) etc. I sometimes find myself in spots and think "you CHOSE to go down the wrong path and got where you are now".

My sample size is tiny but I am far from losing since I started playing regularly mid 2017. But I definitely see way too many "self-inflicted" hands and beats than I think I should be seeing. It is definitely my BIGGEST leak.

We all play in our own poker worlds for sure ...
1) Typically live games are looser than online games. You will find players who look at it as 'only' $0.10 x X, but there are also some very serious players who will take full advantage of that as well.

2) 'Sometimes' moving up in stakes will put you in a 'real' poker game, but more often you will win smaller pots and lose bigger ones relative to the BB when against the assumed better players the higher you move up. Yes, they will 'see' the flush and straight on the Board, but they will also know that your range doesn't connect with either and still call your King-high bluff. GL

I definitely see what you mean as far as winning smaller and losing bigger at higher stakes. But I 100% have a better win rate at 50nl/100nl online than I do at 25nl and below.

I also see a lot more players being sticky on flush draws and straight draws at smaller limits, so when you price them out twice and they hit, that was a costly pot that you have to throw away. And when you play with a table full of these people, it seems to happen a lot more than it does at higher stakes where you may only have 1-2 people at the table that chase no matter what.

Maybe I am looking at it wrong. But that has been my observation so far. I guess I need to download something to track my online play if I plan to keep on playing. So I can get some real numbers from hand to hand rather than session to session. Any recommendations? I play on ignition.

Honestly, there’s only one response to that:
The good news is that if you are a winner at NL100 online right now, you have a really good chance of making a lot of money if you add those missing fundamentals to your game. You must do a couple things absurdly well to make up for that if you are a winner at NL50+. (No sarcasm, I am serious here)

I'm not going to say "MOVE DOWN" the third time. What is it with people and their ego?

I guess it is that I am accustomed to playing .5/1 1/3 live and that is where at least 80% of my poker is played. It is not that I feel I am too good to play at the lower stakes, its that I guess I get bored as I am used to seeing a much higher profitability at the higher stakes I play live. And in being bored, I make dumb mistakes that I know I shouldn't make.

Maybe going down, and tightening back up some may do me some good.. I will take your advice and give that a try. But what to do in the meantime at the stakes I play live? Just tighten up some?

Like I said in my post above, I play a lot more live than online. Maybe the live games are so much softer that I still suck but they just suck more. lol. One of the better players that I play with says I tend to make large value bets, and I do get paid a lot on them. Maybe that is where I am able to pick up most of my profit. I will try the moving down idea and being more attentive to what is going on. I think the boredom comes from the fact that the losses at 5nl/10nl are so minimal that they don't hurt like they do at 50nl+ so I tend to make more careless plays at the lower stakes.

Again, the problem in this hand is not the fact that you play A2s, but that you decided to limp/call it.

If you think you can play that hand profitably, go ahead and raise it first in. Otherwise, just fold it. But every single hand you think you can play profitably by limp/calling preflop should be significantly more profitable by raising it preflop.

A good 1/3 live game is significantly softer than NL10 on Stars.

So the plan is to move down, can you guys recommend any hud or tracker software that will work with ignition so I can monitor what I am doing more closely?

So, I moved down to 5nl. This is my 2-3 hand to see and my first one to play at the table.

5nl .2/.5

Hero: UTG+1 ($4.95) 10h10c
V1: DEALER ($7.31)
V2: BB ($3.17)

Hero raises to 4bb, 2 callers

Flop: 3cQc10s
BB bets .3
hero raises to .8
dealer raises to 2.10
bb shoves his existing $2.97
Hero shoves existing stack
dealer calls

Turn: Jc

River: 9h

Should I have considered folding second nuts on the flop?
The only thing I could see maybe doing differently would be raising larger on the flop. I don't think that changes the situation in this hand particularly. But, that is my only guess at a better line.

Your flop raise is too small.

Not sure why you ask about folding because everybody including you knows how happy you should be to get it in here. Bad beats happen. If you have trouble handling them you might need a different hobby.

I will admit there was sarcasm in that post. I was mainly making a joke about what I was saying earlier of how some of the stupid plays and mistakes made at the smaller stakes are made because they don't cost as much.

Dealer had Qd8h
BB had KcQs

Just posted it for the laughs.... I have however made that stack back since posting that hand.

But, on your comment of the pfr sizing. Should I have a relatively generalized raise sizing? 4-6x no matter what the strength of my hand is? I know that question depends on what the table can handle, my main question is should we raise 77 the same size or at least close to the same size we would raise with kk?

Preflop is fine.

On the mother of drawy flops, BB leads half pot. If you decide to raise here, what I would certainly do at NL5, you should make it significantly bigger. A PSR would be to $1.50.