Good 40/80 at Commerce. Villain in this hand is a 30-something white guy with glasses and a few tattoos, looks kinda like me except for the tattoos and the fact that his head is almost certainly smaller than mine (in the literal physical sense; he's almost certainly smarter than me). I'm sure he's a 2+2er, as I've overheard him talking to the guy next to him (Asian kid with glasses) about things like "barreling", "range", and "hot tub with Daryn". He's also mentioned that he's played the 1/2 at Bellagio, if I remember correctly.

Here's the hand:

Bad player limps UTG, Villain limps the HJ, bad regular raises in the CO, I get AcJc on the button and 3-bet. Blinds fold, everyone else calls. Villain mentions to the guy next to him something to the effect of "this is so bad".

Flop: A29r

Bad player bets and has one chip left. Villain calls, CO calls, I call.

Turn: 4 (putting out two hearts)

Bad player puts in his last chip. Villain asks if he can complete, makes it 8 chips to go. CO calls, I call.

River: 8 (no flush)

Villain bets, CO folds, I call.

Reasons for not raising the flop? As played, you have to call down. I expect some Axs in villain's range that may think his hand is best given no flop raises.

Why didn't you raise the flop?

wtf at not raising the flop or turn?

1. 2p2ers (and decent players in general) are very rarely limping the HJ (even after an EP limp), but if they are, its probably with suited connectors, small pairs, or more rarely small suited aces

2. Everybody else already said it, but raise the flop

3. I dont really see the point of this entire post, as played its not like youre ever folding the river. But heres some analysis anyway: The likely hands that villain can have that beat you are A2s, A4s, 22. Maybe theres some random A9 or A8 in there but its less likely. You beat everything else.

i think this hand would be substantially more interesting if the turn folded out the CO - i think an argument could be made for calling or raising the turn and calling or raising the river in that situation

however, based on the fact that CO is in the middle raising the turn is standard considering we didnt raise the flop (i would raise the flop as default though)

why are you not raising the flop when the bettor will have 1 chip left for the turn?

Pray this is a level. Raise the flop. If we get to the turn without raising then raise the turn. If we get to the river without raising then raise the river.

I think big or little gamble is much more likely given his comment to his friend.

Assuming he's good (and yes, the fact that he limped the HJ is not in itself suggestive of this), what is he calling with on the flop or completing on the turn that I'm crushing, especially considering that there's an A on the flop? Or is this simply one of those situations where this is a large multiway pot and I have top pair, so I need to be putting more action in? Should this play out differently if the CO had folded the flop?

All the aces, especially suited, except 2,9, maybe Q. (We can exclude K)

In a live passive game, even a decent player can be limping pf here with assorted suited aces. So on the turn, he may decide after the passive calls on the flop that his A6 is good, and raise.

But why assume he is good? He might be playing other aces too. Do we know enough from his tattoos that he's not the type that would trap with something like A7?

The flop is the place to raise, but as played, his turn raise on a brick does shout trap, so I'd just call.

Um. A pair of Aces. When you raise he'll be getting 17:2 on his call if everyone else folds (the all-in guy makes no difference I guess), which means he has better than the odds he'd need to call to hit his second pair. This is pretty crazy simple.

There was no turn raise. Completing a bet (especially a 1 chip bet) is not a raise, or anything like a raise.

villains hand range here is exactly one hand. yes i am serious.

btw, i am pretty annoyed at myself and my friends because of this hand....i am positive shawn lost the least here because of somebody wearing a dueces cracked sweatshirt coming over to our table and screaming about poker theory at the top of his lungs and me and GoT talking poker the entire time. i suck at live pokering, whatever something to work on. i am pretty good at playing mum poker when im not wit a friend, but when i am its yap yap yap about any topic.

shawn, im pretty sure one of the blinds called. and i commented to GoT later that you played your AK 'PERFECTLY' and i was mad at myself because i had ZERO doubt it was because of all the talking we were doing.
also being a live idiot, i missed that EP was nearly all in....

i should have raised the flop, i am super rusty.

just for the record, there are zero hands that villain wins with on the river that did not make a mistake preflop, and most of those mistakes are pretty bad.

considering the limper was short, you are correct. however i missed that, cuz well im a clown. *if* he had a regular stack and you still maintain the above quote...well im pretty sure you are wrong...there was exactly one competent player (sorry shawn thats all i knew of u at the time) behind me and everyone else is a terrible poker player....had GoT been on my left and yet to act, i muck this one hand...he wasnt, and i think my limp (ignoring the shortie, i hate to qualify it, but i really didnt know he was short) is +ev and the call back is +ev.

ftr, i had played probably 2 million NL hands in between the last time i played limit seriously and this time, so my thought process could be wrong, but i have GoT here to bounce ideas off and i dont think im wrong.

Possible Hands and preflop actions:

A2 - limping terrible, should fold
A4 - limping terrible, should fold
A8 - limping terrible, should fold
A9 - limping terrible, raising marginal, should fold or maybe rarely raise
22 - limping marginal to terrible, should fold
44 - limping marginal, from HJ with one bad player in if you're playing it should raise
88 - should raise
99 - should raise
53 and 53s - limping terrible, should fold

All suited Aces - in all cases when a bad player limps UTG, if you're playing it from the HJ you should absolutely be raising especially with a good player on the button.

Looking at this there is a corollary to the preflop mistake... the hands that are the smallest mistakes preflop (44, A9, 22) are those that made the biggest mistakes on the flop.

i made a mistake on the flop, yes. i also made a mistake calling preflop BECAUSE of the shortie but i admitted that. i wasnt focused all that much this night, it was more chillin with a friend.

calling preflop w 22 is correct in this spot, ignoring the shortie. if you have math to prove me wrong, im willing to see it. like really willing, because it will clash with the math we are looking at here. btw dont misread my tone, we are totally willing to admit we are wrong (me and Got) but you gotta show it(and we have math to show it is correct but you're the one calling it terrible).

limping 22 from the HJ after one bad early position limper is really bad at any level and terribad at 40/80.

This is standard enough the request for math is pretty unnecessary, but since you asked here's some basics:

You need at least a couple more limpers to set-mine (you need to make up your 7:1 odds) and you're unlikely to get them in your position. Additionally, at 40/80 even the less experienced players are more likely to raise playable hands in positions after you and double your investment in the pot, the SB in particular is motivated to raise more playable hands here to lose the BB. So even paying 1 bet preflop is too much (given you average 3-4 players here most of the time) and you're running a good chance of paying more. Paying 2 bets with pocket deuces in a 3 or 4 handed pot is pretty much the definition of spew.

Assuming you might be making an argument that you don't need a set to win here... If your pair is good on the flop without a set you will not make up your preflop deficit. There are several reasons, but they include 1.) you'll have trouble betting many flops for lack of knowledge as to which of the guaranteed overcards could have hit your opponents. That means you'll let people draw for free to beat you too often, or bet into a better hand too often, 2.) when your hand holds up fewer people will have enough to pay you off (literally no made hand can lose to you), so your implied odds when you win with a pair of deuces is poor, 3.) you will get bluffed off the best hand quite frequently when your deuces would have held up, since you realistically can't afford to call if there is any aggressive action post-flop.

Really all the post-flop stuff regarding a pair of deuces is overkill, this is a set-mining hand and pretty much nothing else, and you're way way off the odds to do so.

I checked an expected value of hands chart based (supposedly, I don't have access to the raw data) off of millions of hands from one of the large poker sites and they list 22 as having an EV of -.06bb when played from the HJ. That's on a large average obviously, and your situation is worse than the average (where we'd have more than one player in the pot). http://www.tightpoker.com/hands/ev_position.html

the shortie is not even a consideration here, this mistake is pretty big if he had a full stack.

lol

if the guy is short-stacked, shouldn't we be raising wider with showdownable hands to isolate him? i understand why 22 might not be a great candidate for this (because he's short-stacked, he gets 5 cards for the price of 3) but given position, dead money, and the fact that our hand plays itself head-up, i'm not sure why folding is much better than raising if it's better at all.

cuz it NEVER gets HU here. like maybe 10% of the time.

I might be wrong here, but it seems like standard plays are derivative of proof, not some other way around.

Anyways, I made some kitchen napkin assumptions of 30% raise behind, ignored 3bet potential, and had 9.5 sb's in the pot on average when raised and 5.1 when limped. Obviously having a tight-aggressive player on the Button is a negative for our hand and sublime knew that he was a winner in the game before the hand was dealt, so, yeah. 30% seems like a decent number given that Button won't raise quite nearly that often, but the times he doesn't there's always the CO and SB who will have hands and decide to raise a decent amount. 33% just seems way too high. So anyways, given those assumptions, a 7.5:1 chance of flopping a set, a +6.50 sb net implied postflop when you do flop a set - which seems within the reasonable range of things given we're saying an average of 4.995 players to the flop, including sublime, if not a little on the conservative side of the spectrum - I got a +1.87 sb net per 8.5 occurrences. Or 0.22 sb per hand. That seems like a pretty hot spot to play imo.

The hand is so much more fun with big or little gamble.

Show the math.

theres no way that limping 22 after a terribad limper in HJ is "bad at every level"