AA heads up in final 2 - slowplay preflop?

[Moose]

Guys,

PP $10+1, fairly unsophisticated opponent. How unsophisticated? Does not open raise with 99 when table is down to four players. Does, however, openraise when down to 3 with AQo.

Anyways, it's me and him. He's in the BB with 5400. I'm in the SB with 2600. Blinds are 200-400.

I see AA.

AA is worth so much more than the blinds, I have no choice but to just smooth call and play aggressive on the flop.. right?!

Anyways, flop comes 224, I check, he bets. I raise, he reraises. I'm in so deep I cannot possibly fold, right!?

Anyways, 2 comes on the river, he turns over 62o for quads.

Should I raise preflop? Against sophisticated opponents who would not be surprised shaatless by a limp, I would raise, right?

M.

[ohkanada]

Headsup you should be raising many hands, not just AA. So I would raise AA almost always. Against better opponents I might just limp but usually raise.

Ken Poklitar

[cferejohn]

I try to always make my raises the same, to make it hard to put me on a hand. So I would raise the same amount with AA as I would with K9.

Also, I would say that open-raising with AQo vs. 3 opponents is fine, since its likely to be the best hand and could steal the blinds (*calling* a raise with that hand is more questionable, but w/ 3 opponents acceptable depending on the character of the raiser). The 99 limp was pretty bad.

[Moose]

John,

I actually agree with the AQo raise, obviously. I dream of hands that good in situations like that. The reason I point it out was to show that this guy wasn't a complete rock as the 99 limp would indicate.

I keep my raises as standard as possible - 4-5x the BB when the blinds are low, 3x the BB later when my stack is >9xBB, and all-in otherwise. Around the 8-10BB size stack, I'll deviate a bit if situations arise. For instance, with a 6xBB stack in a recent tournament, I went all-in twice and heard one known whiny calling station complain that I was raising with nothing all the time.

It was her BB next and I got AA. Even though I had gotten about 11x the BB at this point, I went all-in, she "triumphantly" announced she had me know when she called quicker than a hiccup with AQo.

Thanks for the help analyzing the hand, though. I hated myself for limping with those aces. Against aggressive enough opponents, I love limping with them and snapping off their pre-flop bluff when they make a big BB raise.

M.

[cferejohn]

Yes. I've taken a vow to never limp with AA again after I did it last night in a $20 NL tourney at Pokerstars, made Aces full of 3's on the river when an ace fell (which was also the 3rd diamond), and got beaten by pocket 3's (making quads for him). Not only did I lost, I was behind the whole way and I was drawing dead on the river (I had strongly suspected I was up against a made full house on the turn and was ready to grudgingly throw it away on the river).

Of course, I had someone snap off my AQ with AA in another tournament when I went all in as a short-stack in the situation you describe (he had limped UTG).