Situation: UTG is the "table bully". He is in every other pot, winning most of them, rarely showing hands down. I have tried to hold my own. I caught some of his bluffs and managed to resteal some with the occiasional bluffraise.
MTG plays a tight game overfolding most of the time, but never letting go of the nutlow, no matter what.



After this hand, I'm left with the feeling, I did something tremendously wrong, but I can't point my finger to it. I have run the hands through ProPokertools and the equities tell me, I had every right to play the way I did, but those can be misleading. What do you think?

Thanks

post flop your fine... ur aces are worse than weakish... they are either fold or 3 bet max to isolate...

What makes you want to call on the turn besides the pot being "too large" in your opinion.

If he is playing every pot, a straight is definitely in his range, because his range is any 4 cards.

Has he made this move before and been caught bluffing?

Does he keep making this move to bully people out of hands?

I thought, I was getting the right price to call. Well, I thought, I would be folding the best hand a large quantitiy of the time even.
The price isn't quite right, if I am up against the nutflushdraw or a made straight, but because he plays like this almost every hand, there had to be a lot of one pair and complete air in his range. Maybe I'm mistaken on my read though, I often have trouble dealing with these types of players.

I agree.

Yes, I have seem him call reshoves with Queen high and a gutter, albeit never against my stacksize.

Definately yes. Like I said, I caught him a couple of times bluffing before this, whenever we were playing a hand, it felt like he was desperately trying to push me out. I also noticed, that he tended to check, when he had something really good.

[edit]Meanwhile I thought quite a lot about this hand and how stuff like this keeps happening. I don't think, playing these Aces was a mistake, not against someone who plays round about 90% of hands. While the small reraise is a mistake in a nutshell, I had good reasons to believe, that small raise would do the same as a big one, so I am ok with that.
My mistake here is: Getting it in against this player with a small egde, if any edge at all. I should have patiently waited for a better opportunity. I mean, I doubled my Buy-In in about 60 hands or something, just by picking off his bluffs. Why am I risking my stack in this situation.
I think, it might be the psychological "you can't push me around" thing and as such is a leak.

Don't beat yourself up over a singular situation.

Thinking in a vacuum is thinking that will make you question every decision. From what you've stated, you made your decision based on past history and your gut feeling. It is unfortunate that he had the goods this time, but if you ran the same situation 100 times and are confident you're coming out on top more than 50% of the time, then you did alright.

When I know I'm going to be playing hands against people who can show up with anything, I don't necessarily tighten up my play, I simply try to play hands that can connect multiple ways and punish them. AA8K, although suited, really doesn't have the broad playability that I would look for against someone that can show up with anything. Short of hitting top set, I'm not really nutted for anything and my hand is vulnerable to chops and ridiculous runs outs that just leave me feeling crappy because he decided to go with it on a 23xx board.

Players like this make so many mistakes, that you don't need to change your style to try and get into more pots with them, that just ruins your game. Simply let them setup situations where they do all the betting and you get to drag the pot in.

Very good advice. I will keep that in mind, the next time, I meet someone like him.

I don't think there was anything particularly bad in your play. You made two plays that were of high variance and not necessarily better than the alternative.

1) Pre-flop. I don't think a small re-raise is bad per se, but I wouldn't play like that. I would have a flatting range and a max re-raising range, just for simplicity. Contrary to the earlier comments, I think this hand is fine to flat, simply due to hand strength and stack depth. Yes, you end up folding the "best hand" on some boards and can't realize your equity on many runouts, but you need to understand that this hand is not very strong in the first place and should not be played like a strong hand.

2) Flop. Raising here is by no means mandatory. I understand that the villain is a weak player, but by raising this hand you are creating a high variance spot. At a lower SPR raise-getin would be my preferred play. Now "the pot gets too big" and you are not going to fold turns.

Your comment raises some questions. I think you need to re-think some things here. First of all it's generally really bad to try to guess villain's hand and base your actions around this assumption. With your actual hand (overpair+2nd fd) you are dominating most draws and his bluffs have poor equity. Yes you want to get a lot of money in with a dominating hand, but you'd also like to keep weaker hands in, not force them out. Anyway, I don't think this raise is bad, but it's not really "cutting down his odds", it's a raise for value. The alternative would be to just call intending to call most turns. On the river you might have to do some tough calls (I've noticed this is something many players try to avoid like plague, maybe because they look stupid when shown the nuts), but this way you are also taking max value from his tendencies.

I think the turn is a call against described villain. You would sometimes be folding a very high equity hand and even against straights your have some equity.

Thanks Amok, awesome feedback and analysis, just like I remember from you.

Exactly the problem. Increasing the variance is not bad per se. However it is still bad with this special table dynamics, because sitting behind him with 200 bb is just so much better than sitting behind him with 100 bb.

Thanks. I haven't really thought about stacksizes in the situation, which I definately should have.

Spot on with your analysis. This is, what I couldn't point my finger at. I raised needlessly in a spot, because I knew, I most certainly had enough equity to do so and was overworried about letting him get there cheap.

But in reality there is so many bluffs, weak draws and weak made hands in his range, that I shouldn't be overworried about him outdrawing on me. By just calling, I also appear a lot weaker than I am and encourage his bluffing tendencies.

Had we played the hand differently. Me calling, instead of raising pre and on the flop, I can't see myself folding the river with the paired board. Not against this player.