Question: Catching a big hand after a big raise

[m2smith2]

This seems to happen all the time – I’ll catch A/K after a hand when I made a big raise and won the pot with no showdown. I tend to limp. My thought is that there is much less fold equity. Even if I made the previous raise with cause, no one knows that because I didn’t show the hand down. What’s more, someone may be steaming come over the top with a small pair where I’m a slight dog and don’t want to call a re-raise.

Should I play it as per normal and put in a normal size raise, or am I correct in thinking that the hand has less fold equity, and therefore less value?

[fatduck]

I think you still raise. A normal raise will still fold out the absolute trash that would inevitably catch bottom two on your A84 flop if you limped. I don't think your folding equity is hurt too much here. You're looking to get called by dominated hands with AK anyway.

I think your implied odds actually increase when you raise here, to be honest. Assuming your line the previous hand was something like a raise pre-flop and a bullied pot on flop or turn people might assume you always try to steal after you've raised preflop. Bad players will rarely give you credit for a good hand. If you hit a good flop you may well get action from people who just don't believe you have another strong hand.

Talk about overanalysis /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[MLG]

keep raising, they are just as likely to steam raise over you with AQ, AJ, A10, KQ as they are with little pocket pairs.

[m2smith2]

Thank you and fat duck. I had a "feeling" that slowing down was a bad play but I like for my aggressiveness to be sneaky and don't like to seem overly aggressive. But, obviously you're right about dominated hands wanting to come in on me in that spot. And, if I'm just called by a small pair I at least have a chance to outplay them post-flop (not that I will, but in theory...)

[betgo]

I think this is an advantage. I particularly like it when I am short stacked and my raises are allin.

There was one tournament where I hadn't played any of the last 30 hands. I make a raise allin with JJ from UTG+1 and pick up the pot. The next hand, I raised with AK UTG. I got 3 callers with all sorts of garbage hands. Unfortunately I lost the hand, but if I had won it I wouldn't need to make my raises allin for a while.