$100 NL online - Decision on the turn...

[thenextguy]

Some of the details may be off slightly, but there is enough info to assess the situation.

I'm in the $2 big blind with pocket 3s. It's folded to the player three from the button who makes it $7.The next player and the button both call $7. Small blind folds and I call $5 to see the flop. 4 players. $29 pot.

The flop comes AQ3 rainbow. I check. The preflop raiser and his neighbor check. The button bets $10. I make it $30 and the next two players fold leaving only the button. The button makes it $50, so it's $20 more to me. The button and I both have $300+ stacks. I think about moving in, but I just call for now. The turn is a Jack and I check it. I wanted to see how he would play it, but I was expecting I'd be moving in. He bets $125. At this point, I think it's pretty clear he has one of three hands-- AA, QQ, or AQ, and I really don't know which hand to put him on. The flat call of the raise preflop could be someone with AQ, but it could also be someone slowplaying Aces or Queens. The same could be said for underbetting the pot on the flop.

So, you have a set of threes on the turn. It's $125 to you with a board of AQ3J. What do you do?

[crockpot]

it would really help to know this player's tendencies. the min-reraise means one of two things: he has a good but not great hand like AK, or (more likely) he has a huge hand. the bigger the hand, the less pressure he wants to put on you to fold, so even though there are nine combinations of AQ he could have and only six AA or QQ, i would suspect that he is more likely to have a set than two pair.

if you are not prepared to call here, you made a mistake calling the reraise on the flop. note that i am not saying calling here is the correct play, but when you called on the flop you should have foreseen that he would make two big bets on the turn and river, and you would not gain any more information about his hand from the betting.

against some players you may want to consider betting out on the turn. if raised there you could make an almost 100% laydown against the right opponent.

i would fold here, but like i said, learning what an opponent's min-raises mean is very useful for this sort of situation.

[Krytemaster]

As you say he almost has to have AA, QQ or AQ (or a very strongly bet A3!). There are no draws out neither.

I think its extremely important to know what kind of opponent this is and how he plays his AA and QQ preflop. The preflop call sounds very much like a AQ - definitely not like a high pocket pair. How he plays this hand preflop can also very well depend on how big the stacks in front of him are. If they are deep I think its a bigger chance he would have raised preflop with AA or QQ compared to if they were smaller stacks. If they are very small he could very well have limped with a big pocket pair.

After all, without knowing more about the opponent, I think he has AQ or maybe QQ. I would probably not have layed my hand down at this point. He bets about the pot at the turn which he probably would have done with an AQ as well. I would have pushed in and hoped for the best (I guess that means a little more than another $125...).

Against some opponents this is a laydown (not against many though, I would say) and against some its a clear all-in, it all depends. Hoped it worked out well! Im curious to see the reults...

Krytemaster

[thenextguy]

I ended up laying it down. It was probably a mistake, but I don't think it was a huge one if it was. I'm sure I could have played it better. The way I did, he would have to think AQ was good if that's what he had. Hell, I would have. Either way, I do still think there's a chance he had a set. If that were the case, I was drawing to one card, but even if he had AQ and was behind, he would have a better chance to draw out on me than I would have on him. But the biggest reason I don't think it was a huge mistake is because there are much easier opportunities to get my money in the pot in those games. I wasn't fully committed to the pot yet, and I figured I'd wait for an easier spot.

Thank for the comments. /images/graemlins/smile.gif