10-20: AK with flush appearing on turn

Nightime 10-20, it is just starting to loosen up after being very tight the first hour we got it going.


Solid player raises UTG. Weak local calls in the cutoff, I call with Ad Ks on the button. SB folds, BB, a loose fish calls. 4 to the flop, 4.5BB's in the pot.


Flop: As Th 8s Checked to UTG who bets, cutoff folds, I call, BB calls. 3 to the turn, 6BB's in the pot.


Turn: 7s. Checked to UTG who bets, I raise, BB folds. UTG flips his AhKh face up and says "you win" and mucks.


Thoughts appreciated, especially on not 3betting preflop, calling the flop vs raising the flop, and the turn raise. Thanks.

I don't like the way you played this hand. You should reraise preflop to get out the blinds. Sure the solid player may have you beat every now and again. But you must reraise to protect your hand for the times your hand is good. And for the times you hit the A or K. You just called. Now the preflop raiser bets into you again giving you another chance to protect your hand and you just call. What if the bb has one of the other pairs on the flop or a gutshot. You want to get him out of there and play it against the raiser. Given that you didn't raise preflop or flop at least you raised the turn. The way you played this hand won you the pot instead of splitting. But imo is negative reinforcement as this will prove costly in the long run. Jmo.

Looks like you flopped a set or perhaps called with ATs and have two pair, or that you just made the flush. I was in the game but don't remember the exact opponent you were up against so it's a bit hard to say, but I think you sold it like you had it and he was buying so why not sell. I don't think not 3-betting pre-flop was a bad play at all, the deception gained could very well be worth more than the reraise would have been, especially in that game at that stage. Not raising the flop also probably helped with your sales pitch, as your opponent would probably expect that you would of course raise the flop with top pair top kicker, as that's the way it's done in the mirage 10-20 game, and everybody knows that. So obviously when you raised the turn you must have had only a very narrow range of hands: a set, AT, or a flush, with a flush being highly likely as only a total moron who doesn't know how things are done here at the mirage 10-20 could possibly have the audacity to raise when there's three spades on board but doesn't have either a set, two pair, or a flush. But top pair, top kicker, and the nut flush draw is a mandatory raise if i ever saw one, and I would have been mighty disappointed if you hadn't raised. You just had to be extra sure that your cards did not somehow catch wind and get flipped over before they reached the muck and got shuffled in....


Dave in Cali

who are these goofballs in this game clark?


i thought you had a loose aggressive image.


what's with all these laydowns?

"whats with all these laydowns?"


I'm not sure which other posts you are refering to.


As far as my image. In this particular game, I never had any hands in the proper position to really get aggressive with, so my image here was somewhat tight. But not so tight that the BB in one hand could come up with a fold of K5o when I 3bet an EP raiser from my SB with AA. On this hand the original EP raiser, a regular who knows me said "can I have half my money back and fold now?" before he called. He later told me he had KJs and knew he was skeeerewwwed.


The more I play 10-20, I am noticing one thing. People are used to more aggression in these games. In the 6-12 and 8-16, most of the players only see "that guy is raising all the time". Here they see and understand the situations much better. So they don't blindly get sucked into the illusion of action because they better understand the situations where it occurrs.


One simple example. In the 6-12 if I steal raise in the cutoff with A3s, they think I am a maniac, and will start calling my UTG raises with A8. In the 10-20, they understand the situation, and do not get sucked in as easily.

You were away from the table. I showed your Dad the cards before I mucked them. The player who mucked was the young guy in the 6 seat with the 3 high towers of chips.

Against tight blinds I would have 3-bet to get it down to a 3 way pot. But the SB was extremely loose, having called 2 cold in his BB earlier with K5o. Since his presence ensured at least a 4 way pot, I thought the combination of deception plus needing to hit something to win due to a 4 way pot dictated that I smoothcall in this spot. I think that the decption is huge against a solid, thinking EP raiser because this guy would reeeeeallly be able to pin me down on a hand. This particular guy would know that my universe of hands to 3bet his UTG raise in this game was very very small. I do think it is close, but I leaned slightly towards calling. I did 3-bet with AK later in the session in a similar, but slightly different spot.


On the flop, I wanted to keep the leverage to get the loose player out on the turn. Again, he is going to call regardless so I felt that there was no reason to slow down the UTG raiser. Yes, it could have gone bet-raise-call-reraise-call-call. This would have still let me get in the raise on the turn, but not if UTG doesn't have an ace. Note that loose player called a capped flop with Q2 on a J96 board with none of his suit. A flop raise isn't getting him out, but reserving the right to crank the turn will. I should have indicated just how loose this guy was in my original post. I don't know if it would have changed your mind, but it definitely could have been a factor.


Maybe I'm rationalizing, but that was my thought process. Let me know if it makes any sense to you.

I'm still leaning on raising to get the bb out and take control of the hand. But i wasn't doing any leaning before. Yes, the fact that he is that loose makes some difference to me. You make a pretty valid arguement for smoothcalling in this particular spot for all the reasons you mentioned.