Hey I would stay I'm still rather green to the game but I have over 100 hours in so far playing live and am feeling better about my game each time I go, still a long ways to go yet.

I got into a pot recently I wanted some input on how I played the hand.

1/2NL game. My stack is 200$ish.

2 limpers, I'm in the cutoff and look down at AQo. I raise to 8$. Button folds, SB raises to 18$, the two limpers fold. I make the call.

Flop is Q-9-8 rainbow. SB bet 30$. I pause and he seems to be clearly representing an overpair from the SB. I was not too afraid of J10 as a 3bet from SB. I was also thinking he could Cbet JJ having picked up the gutshot and of course could have AA, KK, AK, or QQ. I was mainly concerned with AA or KK.

Having TPTK I did not want to fold. I decided to re-raise and i bet 75$. He snap shoves the rest of his stack, which was just another 22$ more. At this point i caught myself where I had failed to know exactly how much his stack was. I thought he had more. My plan of action was to re-raise and fold if he shoved or bet again on turn. For the 22$ more I obviously call. Turn comes Q and river a brick for him. He turned over AA. I sucked out on him. I got the pot but felt divided on how I played the hand. I got my money in bad but I am not sure my re-raise was a good move or not....

I am pretty sure he was shoving on the turn regardless even I i had just called the flop so the result would have been the same.

I could see where i could have folded preflop. I also see where I could have folded to his flop bet but I'm not really sure how much I should be valuing TPTK in this situation. Like i said, I was going to be done with the hand if villain showed more aggression on turn or river. I had just failed to realize villain was not deep stacked. Had i known he was so short should I look to be getting his stack shoved on the flop?

Hopefully the hand description makes sense. I hopefully will get to where I can whip up some nice hand historys to post.

Thanks for any help.

Any insights on how I played the hand?

Based on the range you give him, what exactly is the purpose of your raise on the flop?

Ask yourself this question whenever you're about to make a decision in poker, take the couple extra seconds. Trust me in 1/2 you taking a little extra time to ask yourself why you're doing what you're about to do will pay off.

A lot of mistakes I see in 1-2 is people pay off even though they know they're beat. Hell, you see it even in 2-5.

Pre you can go more.

When you get 3bet you need to provide reads because frankly I can lay down AQo here to some live villains. I'm also not clear on his stack size from your HH.

Flop comes, your raise is bad unless he has $52 total behind before betting the $30 in which case, nice hand. Your stated reasons for raising are horrible, raising to find out where you are was bad in 2005.

If you were raising to fold then why not see a 'free' card first?
If you thought he might have JJ then why give him a chance to fold when he only has 6 outs? (J J T T T T)

Try to read your post forgetting that you wrote the post. You should be able to 'see' where your thinking is flawed along the way. Newer 1-2 players very often raise/shove in spots where they should fold/flat because they are nervous about the spot or not confident about their reads. Use caution, not aggression. Wouldn't you just love it if this guy kept firing the Turn and River with JJ?

Not sure about your room, but when I raise for less than $9 I'm really not looking to play a big pot at 1-2 unless I have a 2 pair or better hand. Your assumptions about a 3-bettors range being small are correct IMO .. The worst hand here is typically KQ or Q9s where I play, but is usually AJs or better.

Without a decent history on an opponent you need to take them at face value. Would an opponent really fire $30 with AK here against that board? If so it's like JJ then .. or QJ ... and you want them to continue to fire away.

Very rarely is anyone here folding the Flop, but I think even less are going to go the raise route when in position. See what the Turn brings and what your opponent does next. By raising you essentially give position back to your opponent .. GL

If you didn't want to fold then why did you raise with the intention of folding after that?

I suppose I slipped into that "see where I am at" mindset. Thanks for the input. I kept thinking a call would have been the better play in that spot. There are times where I feel I understand concepts but when I'm in a pot i start to focus on one thing and totally miss something else.

1. At the beginning of every hand I play I decide what I am doing in the hand

so what is the purpose of raising 8$ over 2 limpers?
my standard open is 4x in live poker
I add 1bb for every limper
so for me in this spot I would personally iso to 12
by raising to 8$ you are pretty much encouraging the blinds as well as all limpers to come along. Granted you have position but you are going to be very very multiball and pretty much going to have to show down a winner

2. when you get 3 bet what is the the opponents range and what will the spr be after you call (your smallish iso can be read as weak)

this is going to have significant impact on how to proceed call/fold/shove

3 your raise on the flop is beyond bad for reasons already listed

I would consider folding pre. Unless I had seen prior evidence that villain would 3 bet light, at 1/2 or 1/3 live, 3 bets are overweighted with value bets.

It seems like you called without an idea of what you were doing. If you put villains three bet range pre as heavuly weighted towards AK, AA and KK, then you should be folding. You hit the flop as hard as you can reasonably expect to hit it. On the flop, either fold, check back for pot size control and try ot get to showdown cheaply, or go ballsout and play for value.

Your whole strategy seems like a bit of indecisive flailing. This is not uncommon, but it is not optimal.

When you are first starting out, it seems that people are telling you a million things you should be doing. It is extremely easy to get overwhelmed by all the information you're supposed to collect.

Squid face as usual gave great advice on how to approach the hand. I'm going to focus the next step, which is to start anticipating what the villains' actions mean.

The place to begin is to create your image of how a generic 1/2 villain plays. It doesn't matter whether you agree with me or not on what the generic player does because it is going to be your model, not mine. One is enough to start for now. As you get more experienced, you're going to create multiple types of generic villains. Begin simply.

The first place is whether they are loose or tight. At 1/2 for me, the generic villain is loose. He will play three or more hands per orbit. The second is whether they are aggressive or passive. Passive players are more likely to limp or call than to bet or raise. An aggressive player is betting or raising over twice as often as a passive player. Most 1/2 players are passive, because they like to be loose. Why put money in the pot pf when you can see if you hit the flop hard for cheap?

So once you have.this, you can start thinking about how a loose passive player's range. Pf, a LPA isn't going to raise anything other than what he thinks is a premium hand. Maybe JJ+, AK or AQ. Once someone raises, the hand is going to have to be a powerhouse to get a 3bet. That's going to mean QQ+, AK at most.

As you can see in your hand, a generic player is going to have your AQ crushed. You're short stacked, so there is no opportunity to win a big pot to compensate for all the times you'll have to fold. So if you had the mental image of the generic 1/2 player in mind, pf becomes an easy fold to the 3bet.

What I suggest is to work through a bunch of potential flops and ranges using a free equity calculator. Put ranges on your villains. See where it makes sense to call and where to fold. Once you have this done for your generic villain, you'll be able to spread out and look at other types of villains that can be found at 1/2.

My only other advice. Don't bother to work on a TAG profile for now. They are extremely rare. If you see one and he's some old guy, make sure to say hello to me.

giving country or at least continent where you play might also be useful, many ppl here play in us, hence all the talk about players being passive preflop. European games tend to play deeper and be much more aggressive preflop, I often played in games where it was extremely rare to see a hand without a 3bet.

For example, from my perspective, this hand is a slam donk preflop value ship, and I expect to then get called by hands like ATo or KJo (opponents in Europe are much more agressive, but it doesnt mean they are any better). From what I read about games in US, this is probably borderline between calling and folding vs unknown (and thus treated as avarage) opponent.