Baby No-Limit Play

[Beezos]

I'm relatively new to 2+2. I've been doing alot of reading, and learning. I've begun my foray into live no limit play. I can dominate small stakes home games regularly but recently I have been going to a local card club to baby no limit (1-2 blinds 500 max buy-in). it is there where i receive my trial by fire. i usually buy in for 200. the game is ususally a full ring, with average chip stacks around 300-500. alot of money changes hands. there are some really good regulars who seem like maniacs but are consistent winners. I have been playing very tight but aggressive. I only raise the best hands and play my draws for the price of the blind if I can. My results have been sporadic. i either double up or lose my stack. I am down just a little overall. Recently I have learned to slow down my game and start reading opponents which as helped whereas when I started I was playing in my own world and i busted out quite frequently. These lessons have been expensive. I am looking for some helpful and free advice...

I would also like commentary on one play last nite. Full ring. UTG (~400) raises to 30. One Caller. I am in late position with KK a short stack (120). I push all in. Raiser calls. Caller drops. Turns out he has Aces. They endup holding up.
The flop came paired with 2 clubs. Another card paired and the third club came. With my short stack could I have pplayed this differently?

I look forward to hearing back from everyone.

Z

[eyekast]

well you shouldn't call so if you raised to 75 then you would have only had 45 left so yes it was the right thing to do..

[Ghazban]

Personally, if there's a max buy-in, I'll always buy in for that much. If you pick up a monster, you want to get as much money as possible out of it, right? If you buy in for $200 and have a monster hand against a larger stack's 2nd best, you're costing yourself money. If bankroll limitation is a consideration, that's a different story but its always to your benefit to have the poorer players at the table covered so you can get their whole stack when they make a mistake.

If you want to learn for a cheaper price, play online. $.05/$.10 and $.10/$.25 blind no-limit games online play similarly to live $1/$2 blind games.

[pdubz]

Wait, what? 1/2 and UTG makes it 30? 10x The pot?

[Beezos]

yeah...

raises of 15-30 sometimes more pre-flop are quite common in this game...

[fimbulwinter]

he ain't joking. i played in a similar game at an indian casino against 1k stacks who regularly brought it in for 50 bucks over a 2 buck blind. it's a different world out there in live poker land. too bad you can't buy the table a shot and increase your EV online...

fim

[PokerSlut]

On that hand you just got unlucky unless you have watched that player and know they will only make that kind of raise UTG with pocket aces. Typically when the raise is that big I am more suspicious of a hand like TT-QQ where they like their hand but are afraid of callers behind them, so they way overbet the pot in the hopes of chasing out people with AJ-AK or similar holdings where a A or K on the flop scares the hell out of them out of position.

[runnerunner]

I have had similar experiences in B&M No-Limit. I play a lot of .50-$1 online and the standard raise is 2x or 3x the BB. In live NL games the blinds are generally larger in proportion to the max buy-in, such as $2-$5 with a $200 max. The standard raise in these games is at least 4 and sometimes 5x so you are committing a much bigger piece of your stack to see a flop in a raised pot. In these games position is especially important. You can bleed off a lot of money trying to limp with 77 from EP and then folding to a $30 raise. Generally the people that take the money in these games play Super System poker: Buy in for the max and try to run over tight players.

You did about as well as you can do to get all your money in with KK preflop. Sometimes you come out second best.