aces cracked on flop

[brassnuts]

Ok, First of all, I realize that this was just a freeroll NL tourney on Poker Stars, but I just want some feedback on my play. I am relatively new to poker, started playing about a year ago, and most of my experience is in 4-5 handed home NL tourament style games. I have played in a casino serveral times, usually just 4/8 where I usually break even or go on tilt and lose it all. Have played pot limit 5/5 once (which I actually did quite well in considering I was probably way out of my league). ANYWAYS, very early in the tournament I found myself with AA in the hole. I believe it was around the 10th or 11th hand (best hand so far had been 10 7 ss, and by far had been the best hand up to my aces). Blinds were 10/20 and we started with 1500 chips. I had 1430. I was BB. UTG+1 (my lingo alright?) raised to 40, all folded to SB, who called, and I raised to 800. First mistake not going all in, right? Especially considering his stack was roughly 3300. Stupid. Anyways, UTG+1 folded, SB just called my raise. Flop came Q73. SB put me all in. I called. He revealed Q7 off. Someone flame me for being an idiot or just give me some feedback. Should I have gone all in PF? Considering that a mistake, should I have called his all in on the flop?

[sam h]

First of all, given the tenor of your post I would stay as far away from live 5-5 pot limit games as possible.

That said, here's some advice on the hand. You have AA, the best possible preflop holding. What you actually want is action here - calls from your opponents. Now in a freeroll people may do crazy things like call with Q7o, but I'm going to pretend its not a freeroll just for the purposes of dispensing some general advice. Your raise here before the flop was bad, but not because it was too small. You want to make it about 200 here and try to induce some calls from hands that you are crushing. They won't often be flopping two pair. Given that you played it like you did, calling his flop bet is a no brainer. You cannot lay down aces here as there are a great number of hands that somebody stupid enough to play as the SB did before the flop may bet into you with.

[brassnuts]

I realize that you should want callers with AA, but I am also just a bit jaded because 3 out of my last 4 pocket aces have been cracked with a few callers. Now, given that one or both of them had called. What would have been the proper bet for the SB with Q 7 to do with top 2 pair and how much should I have been willing to call with AA after a that flop (Q73, two clubs)? I believe no matter how I had played this hand I would have been properly screwed.

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First of all, given the tenor of your post I would stay as far away from live 5-5 pot limit games as possible.


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And that wasn't very nice. I had doubled the $200 buy in in pretty quick time with mostly well timed bluffs when I got out drawn on the river by some idiot hitting his 2 outer.

[ohkanada]

When it gets to you there is about 100 in the pot including your 20. I would make it 140 or so to go. Betting 800 is way too much. Going all-in is crazy.

Hard not to call the flop bet. The pot has about 2200 after he bets all-in and you need to only call 630. I would call everytime.

Being this is a freeroll, people play crazy. The SB obviously is either brilliant or crazy. I'd lean towards crazy.

Ken Poklitar

[sam h]

Without a doubt, the SB should check his two pair on the flop and make sure to get your money. Betting out here is not optimal, as you could have a hand like AK, JJ, or TT that you might bet with but would fold to a bet.

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And that wasn't very nice. I had doubled the $200 buy in in pretty quick time with mostly well timed bluffs when I got out drawn on the river by some idiot hitting his 2 outer.

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I didn't mean that advice to come off as harsh. But I'll stand by its content. If you are seriously considering going all-in with AA to a 20 chip raise with 1500 behind in a tournament, I can't imagine you are anything but a huge underdog in most 5-5 PL games. The fact that you are justifying playing by quoting some short term results just indicates that you don't understand the issue, which is that PL is very complex, the live players are often very good, and you probably do not have a positive expectation in the long run. I'm not trying to insult you. I and many other people have learned the hard way about stumbling into bigger and more complex games than we were prepared for at that time rather than slowly building our skills in smaller games. This is all just well-intentioned advice, which you are free to disregard if you want.