Smoothcalled 3-bet preflop with AA--good, bad, ugly?

[MrBlini]

SB had only been here for a couple of orbits, but in that time he appeared to be tightish and excessively aggressive when he did get involved in a pot. BB is a calling station.

Normally this gets capped, especially four ways. The only reason for this play was to feign weakness. Maybe this isn't worth it in this situation:

Party Poker 2/4 Hold 'Em (10 handed) converter (http://www.stompandcrush.com/cgi-bin/hhparser.cgi)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A/images/graemlins/club.gif, A/images/graemlins/heart.gif.
UTG folds, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 calls, Hero raises, MP3 folds, CO folds, Button folds, SB 3-bets, BB calls, MP1 calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (12 SB) 4/images/graemlins/spade.gif, 7/images/graemlins/club.gif, 3/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="blue">(4 players)</font>
SB bets, BB calls, MP1 calls, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, BB calls, MP1 folds, Hero caps, SB calls, BB calls.

Turn: (12.50 BB) 4/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="blue">(3 players)</font>
SB bets, BB calls, Hero raises, SB calls, BB calls.

River: (18.50 BB) 7/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="blue">(3 players)</font>
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets, SB calls, BB folds.

Final Pot: 20.50 BB
<font color="#990066">Main Pot: 20.50 BB, between Hero and SB.</font> &gt; <font color="white">Pot won by Hero (20.50 BB).</font>

Results in white below: <font color="white">
Hero shows Ac Ah (two pair, aces and sevens).
SB shows Ts Th (two pair, tens and sevens).
Outcome: Hero wins 20.50 BB. </font>

[Chris Daddy Cool]

I think your preflop play is good. If you cap preflop, thats pretty much advertising your hand, and perhaps SB would be less inclined to 3bet your flop raise or may not even want to bet into you at all. By smooth calling the 3bet, the SB could be reading overcards, hands his TT have beat at the moment.
The rest of the hand seems pretty routine. Nice hand.

[Nate tha' Great]

You missed a bet. Actually, three bets, since that's the number of callers that you have.

I understand that your intent here is to gain a postflop edge, but unless he has a very good read on you, I don't think that you're giving up much in the way of information about your hand. Players routinely cap with all kinds of stuff in multiway pots, from reasons ranging from wanting to buy a free card on the flop with a speculative hand, to simply wanting to gabmle. If the SB likes his hand, he's going to bet it very aggressively regardless of what you'd done before the flop; look how long it took him to slow down here even after you'd shown significant strength.

Now, if the hand were heads up, or even 3-handed, I think this is a better play, since your play will get noticed a little bit more, and since you have fewer opponents to make money from before the flop. But 4-handed against an overaggressive SB and a couple of calling stations ... I think it's tragic not to make the extra money before the flop.

[Homer]

The question is whether the deception caused by not capping will allow you to gain more than three additional small bets postflop. In a Party 2/4 game, I don't think there's any way this is the case.

-- Homer