Underplaying AK

limp-raise pre but its kind of face up when the guy who keeps folding suddenly limp raises

Hey OP, wait 24 hours before posting results

Preflop is bad. Just open-raise AK UTG. It doesn’t matter that you have been card dead, people are paying attention less than you think.

AP, I would 3bet the btn open to 100, and looking to get it in on the flop, but I’m not really happy playing AK with a SPR around 2.

AP, check/fold flop.

It’s always nice to bink top two runner-runner

Agree with raise pre first time, and then second time I might just overbet jam. The two larger stacks are capped, and will likely fold to your jam, and Button has less than 200 behind.

Button is probably wide and you're only in deep do do against AA or KK, both of which you block.

looks like terrible play from both players. btn for being mindlessly aggressive, hero for being mindlessly passive. the keyword is mindless.

Yes, they were being mindlessly aggressive, but I chose to be passive, because they were mindlessly aggressive. If I play like you nitty, button folds & keeps his money. Thanks for your mindless reply without suggesting a better plan.

The other hand…
Crazy people playing this game
UTG raises $20
Everyone folds to me on the button with KcQc

Board runs out Qs2c6cQh5d
Villain triple barrels, calls my raise on the river, and shows As2s. Won another big pot with a passive line wondering how he shows up with that hand.

Beating a normal crowd takes position, initiative, aggression, redline. But beating the aggro crowd can be tricky. Sometimes all you have to do is give them a little rope.

Do you agree? Have you had similar experiences? How do you adjust to the nature of the game?

Better plan is to limp raise to 120 and shove ever flop vs btn.

Another better plan is open raise to 20 and check fold flop 4 ways.

Another better plan is to do what you did and check fold flop, but this plan also sucks.

The worst plan is to do what you did.

Huh

I love the overlimp in (especially at an aggro table) and that would be my standard play. Interestingly enough, I believe everyone's fave YT'er HHP suggests having a 0% raising range in the SB to a Button straddle; if that is the case, then I hardly see how having a 0% raising range in EP otherwise could be be considered horrendous. Anyhoo.

Have no idea why we don't follow thru with our limp/reraise plan? The only hands we're not loving to see are AA/KK, whose combos are reduced plus are a little unlikely (although admittedly not impossible) to be played this way. I'd go upwards of $100ish which will setup an ez PSB- jam for the flop if called (perhaps slowplaying dry A/K flops to tarp aggro opponents).

Flop seems like an ez check/fold this multiway and with a person still to react behind us. We also have massive RIO against AQ/KQ.

Turn is like a PSB+? Even this call is pretty dicey unless up against a real aggrotard (which it turns out we're up against, so fine I guess).

Gnotyourbestmoment,imoG

I have zero issues with being like water and playing aggro versus passive as conditions suggest. However, I think being aggro with a LRR is better than just limp/flatting here thanks to the rather significant dead money relative to stacks already in the middle. I'll admit I'll back out of my limp/reraise plan every so often, but it is usually when (a) raiser is on the nitty side, (b) stacks are large and I don't want to play a big pot OOP, and (c) pot is going to end up HU and there isn't any other dead money to go after / other players involved to deny equity from.

GcluelessbeinglikewaternoobG

I also don't mind the limp, and have been finding quite a bit of success with limping from EP at the right tables. But if you're going to do it, you absolutely need to raise when it gets back to you - that's kind of the point. There's $45 of other people's money in the pot already, which is more than enough to feel good about taking it down if that's what happens. I don't think I ever feel bad about realizing fold equity from OOP.

this is whats called being "results oriented," where you take the results of a single hand and use them to formulate a strategy around. not a good idea.

if you called somebody's preflop all in with 72o and sucked out on their AK for 1000 bb, would you keep doing it?

You are never going to get better if you respond with this kind of hostility even after multiple people state that you played a hand poorly. FWIW, your posting reeks of the kind of defensiveness and false bravado sometimes exhibited by new posters who feel intimidated by the presence here of better players than you, and it was apparent right at the outset. Indeed, what's the point of informing everyone that despite only playing a couple of hands you "left with cash" in your pocket?

You can either grow into becoming a valued member of this forum or you can continue being a douche. The choice is yours.

Limp is OK to limp-reraise (although be aware of your stack size, depending on action you may have little option other than limp-jam). But backing and just limp-calling because you suddenly got scared of the SB limp-call is horrendous. If you don't have the balls to limp-reraise after some absolutely standard action then just open yourself to a normal sizing.

Flop is a standard check-fold as played.

Turn you are chopping a lot and mostly beat bluffs, it's probably about break even but you shouldn't be anywhere near here in this way. Button play is obviously terrible.

If anyone else wants to stop by and tell me how bad I played, I think I‘ve got the message. I did not understand my responses to be hostile. I guess I just need to understand that there’s a level of bluntness here to put up with.

I’m never offended by being wrong. Just when you offer no explanation or better plan.

I’m here
Maybe off to a bad start, but it still comes down to some of you will help me and some of you won’t, so I’ll try to focus on the good guys here without letting the ego boys bother me.

I guess when you post something that you would never ever say to my face, I get offended. But I will work on it.

It’s not that I don’t mind criticism, but the way you word that criticism is either helpful or not. I’m disappointed that the flow of information becomes I’m right you’re wrong arena instead of a ‘maybe you should consider this’ atmosphere.

I have no ego, just a lot of enthusiasm for a game I love. I’m sorry, and hope some of you will consider me worth helping.

I will continue to be me.

Because it’s not chatGBT, it’s an old man spending a lot of thought and time with my dumbass posts. I respect everyone but I will give my opinion and they aren’t all dumb.

I will not be bullied into thinking less of myself
I’m an old coach, a ‘teamwork’ guy.

Hope to be more positive moving forward

OP - don't put the reveal in your first post. It biases the replies you'll get. We can try to be objective, but it's hard when no one wants to look stoopid.

Grunch:

PRE - I assume this is 1/3?

The BTN straddle effs up the game, IMO. The adjustment most players make, if they adjust, is to slow-play big hands from the blinds and EP, expecting LP players to do the raising for them. That adjustment is fine, assuming it's an action table.

So, I don't mind the flat with AK from UTG1, but if it's 8 or 9 handed, I do think we could open for a raise here, from what is effectively middle position pre, even with our tight-passive table image. Someone is going to defend their blind or just think they can out-play us when they're IP.

As played, when we get what we wanted, and the BTN raises, I don't care that the SB flats. I'm still 3B'ing this, because that was our plan when we flatted with AK. I think it's a very big mistake to flat call and go multi-way as monkey-in-the-middle.

FLOP - Obviously check.

Calling the c-bet with no pair, no draw, and the CO left to act behind us is likely a tad too optimistic. But if we're confident in our reads, and we think the CO is going to fold, and we think the BTN is often FOS, okay, I guess call and see what the turn brings.

TURN - I don't hate the check. I also wouldn't hate a small donk, with plans to fold to a raise.

The BTN could have AA, KK, QQ, 88, KQ, and occasionally even 22 here. If he's wild, he might show up with something insane, like K2/Q2 or K8/Q8.

I could see checking to check-call a small bet with our under-repped hand. I could also see donking small to test the waters with TPTK, to get value from QX that might check back. I'm not looking to play for stacks here, so it's either check-call a small bet, check-fold to a large bet, or donk, with plans to donk-fold to a raise.

As played, when we check and V jams, and there's no obvious high-equity draws he could be playing this way, it's a pretty easy fold, even with TPTK. I wouldn't expect him to do this with worse than AK.

Obviously, having seen the reveal, we know he did do it with worse than AK. Okay, but he's not SUPPOSED to, and if we haven't seen him do something similar, I don't see how we could feel confident he WOULD do this with worse than AK.

Even if he has AQ, he's not supposed to jam on that K turn. He's basically turning 2nd pair into a massive, punt-tastic bluff. I don't think he should do this with AA, and I'm not sure it makes sense with KQ, when we could conceivably be slow-playing 88.

This line from V mostly folds out everything that isn't at least AK, and only gets called by AK or better, which we could have, when we limp-call from EP, especially if we think our table image is tight-passive.

If we need to try to get inside V's head, maybe he assumed that QJ was no good on the K turn after you call the flop, because there aren't any obvious draws you could have on the flop, so he knew he had to turn his hand into a bluff, trying to rep KQ or better. Maybe it's just entitlement tilt from flopping TPGK, and nothing more.

His pre-flop play was meh. His flop play was fine. His turn play is terrible. Your flop play is meh at best. Your turn play is also borderline meh. Yes, you got lucky to spike TPTK and be up against a loose goose who jammed 2P2K.

Respectfully, while you may read his tone as snarky, and it may be, responding defensively tends to bring the whole forum crowd of regs down on you.

Sometimes it's better to sit back and let the game come to you, rather than push the action, or try to fight fire with fire.

In this KQ hand, with KcQc specifically, and two clubs on board, I think flatting is fine, assuming V was betting on the larger side. If he was betting small, I'd be raising the turn.

My hunch is that your river raise wasn't that large, because of your self-perceived nitty image at this table, and thus I have to wonder if you left money on the table, because of that image, which prevented you from being able to make a larger raise and still get called.

That's the yin and yang of the game. Yeah, maybe the table is playing hyper-aggro, and the adjustment is to zig when they zag, but the trade-off is that it will be hard to get max value with our nutted hands, because they'll start to over-fold when we suddenly wake up and start dumping truckloads of money into the pot.

There's adjusting to the game, which is fine, but being able to make specific adjustments to specific players in the game is next level. If you can play your normal VPIP frequency, but exploit the tendencies of each opponent in each pot, you'll likely make more than you will if you just decide to play nitty because the table is playing aggro.

Pre is awful and flop is awful. You don't have odds to call. People aren't trying to insult you they are giving you honest feedback

Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk

Thanks doc, you’re one of the most helpful people on here. They appreciate me on Reddit, but here, not so much. As you say the regs came after me. I thought we’d have a discussion, but I’m told how terrible my play is, without advice on what would be better.

I wish I’d never made this post. One hand in the game of life & there’s still people here wanting to jump in for the beat down. I have a lot of confidence in my game, so it only bothers me in realizing how vile some people are on this platform. It’s a reflection on them, not me.

Now I understand and I’m actually kinda glad some of the regs created this noise. If they’re not going to help me, I’m happy if they ignore me. I reckon there will be periodic posts bashing this play for yrs to come.

In the meantime, I will continue to express my opinion and interact with those that enjoy discussion & want to improve at poker. I am improving rapidly and that’s all that matters to me. When I have been consistently beating the game, it’s hard for people to discourage me.

I apologize to those that I lashed out at and I hope in the future some will forgive me.

Yeah, you have to have a bit of a thick skin to survive here (which is a little sad)... but you also have to help yourself out a bit too (no offence, but from what I've seen so far you're not really doing yourself any favours).

Ggoodluckandwelcometotheforum!G

I’m confused. If there is a lot of 3-betting, why does that discourage us from raising AK? Why are we worried that someone might 3-bet us?

I think it’s encouraging in this spot when SB doesn’t raise. He probably has a pretty decent hand, but nothing too strong. He would be afraid and annoyed if you put in a big raise.

Make him decide between putting in $18 and not even seeing a flop (which would really suck for him), or having to call a giant raise with a hand worse than yours.

Actually I think the worst result is posting a hand and getting very few (or even zero) responses. That’s always disappointing.

If I play a hand well and get mostly “Good job, well played” type comments, I don’t get much out of that either (not saying people should be rude to me if I played it well).

Some of the rude, snarky comments can be annoying, but they do bump the thread so there’s that. Also, I don’t think the first hand was played well but so what? I’ve played my share of hands that were much worse than this. Just try to learn from it and realize you’re human and you’re going to botch some hands.