Too aggressive with 88?

[AnyGlen]

I've been trying to be more aggressive with medium pairs, since in the past I've played them very passively.

NL Hold'em $10 Buy-in + $1 Entry Fee Trny:12771614 Level:3 Blinds(25/50) - Friday, June 03, 12:06:02 EDT 2005
Table Table 35129 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 2: SingleMalt99 ( $695 )
Seat 7: wjw94 ( $1605 )
Seat 6: aferro7 ( $855 )
Seat 3: muuseknuckle ( $645 )
Seat 4: CrAzY_4_AcEs ( $1050 )
Seat 5: hampushampus ( $1005 )
Seat 8: staceyduck ( $445 )
Seat 1: anatol00 ( $775 )
Seat 9: mengwuqian ( $925 )
Trny:12771614 Level:3
Blinds(25/50)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to SingleMalt99 [ 8c 8h ]
mengwuqian folds.
anatol00 folds.
SingleMalt99 raises [150].
muuseknuckle folds.
CrAzY_4_AcEs folds.
hampushampus calls [150].
aferro7 folds.
wjw94 folds.
staceyduck folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, 9d, 7c ]
SingleMalt99...

[poboys]

You are in the toughest part of the game. You have just enough BBs (14) to get you into trouble if you aren't careful. You raise 20% of your stack, what's your plan if an 8 comes, rag flop, or A rags, lots of paint. I generally try to think through how I am going to play the hand before raising.

That being said. There's 7.5BB in the pot, and you have 11BB left. Clearly, you are not check-folding. I think you have two options here. Put 5BBs in the pot, and hopefully take it down now. Or, (option #2) push.

You raised, pre-flop, you have to show some strength here. The problem is that you don't have enough BB to show strength and let the hand go if he shows greater strength. I'd probably put out a 5BB bet and see what he does, but, as I mentioned, it's pretty tough for me to let go of this hand now.

[Always Rockets]

Personally, I limp mid pairs to try and hit my set cheaply.
If you are making a real raise preflop (by real I mean 200 chips in this situation), however, you've got yourself in a predicament, because if you get called by anyone, you don't really have enough chips to do anything but push or leave yourself very handicapped....
After your preflop play, with that flop, I think a check/fold is in order unless you have a read on the player or they make a minraise or something...

[45suited]

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I limp mid pairs to try and hit my set cheaply.
If you are making a real raise preflop (by real I mean 200 chips in this situation), however, you've got yourself in a predicament, because if you get called by anyone, you don't really have enough chips to do anything but push or leave yourself very handicapped....
After your preflop play, with that flop, I think a check/fold is in order unless you have a read on the player or they make a minraise or something

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously? What kind of flop should he have been hoping for - 88A? Hero is ahead here the vast majority of the time, IMO.

I push the flop.

[gasgod]

The problem with check/fold is that you basically are giving him the pot. But any reasonable bet on your part gets you pot committed. The preflop bet was much too large for such a modest hand, given your stack size.

Maybe the best of a bad lot is to push. If you give up on it, you'll have a poor stack, and an even poorer image.

GG