Pair of 10s

[The Great One]

I played in a small no limit game in a Los Angeles cardroom. The maximun buy in is $100 and re buys are the same. Blinds are $2 and $4. In one hand I was on the button with 10-10. One player in middle called and I make it $20 to go. The blinds fold and he calls my raise. The flop is 9-7-4 rags. He checks and I...with only about $45 in front of me ..move all in. He calls and shows me a set of 4s. Needless to say I didnt spike a 10. Any opinions on this play? I couldnt bet smaller since with the short stack I am pot committed anyway. I also didnt want to wait for a possible A or K to come off if he was calling with AQ or AK.

[ricdaman]

I put this hand, which happens all the time to me, in my "If I didn't have these hands, I'd never have a losing day" column. Part of poker is that you will lose hands (and just like this one, sets KILL me). But it averages out in that later, you will also get a set and somone else have over pair, make a similar play and you will win big. That's just part of the swings.

As far as playing any differently....
My brother says that he likes to find agressive players (and your play was aggressive, which lends me to believe you are aggressive; correct me if I'm wrong), get a big hand against them, and allow them to bet all-in while he just sits there and calls the whole way.
If you sit at the table, and win a lot of little hands, but lose a few big hands, then chances are you are consistently playing aggressive, but not necesarrily tight. This causes players to fold a lot, and you to win a lot of little pots, but when they finally get a big hand... you lose big.

IF this is what is happening (it may not be, I don't know your style), then I suggest mixing up your play a bit. Bluff and show a little bit more. This will cause players to call you when you really do have a big hand, and thus it will help to average out the times you get beat by sets and the like.

[fsuplayer]

I think that you played fine in this hand.
Raising with 1010 may be debated, but with only one limper and a feeling for the game, I would make the same raise.
The guy made a very bad call preflop and got very lucky. He should have only called another few more bucks to be correct. You made it a mistake for him to call, so you cant be too upset with the result.
BTW In that type of NL structure, with any sort of raise preflop, small pairs should be tossed away.
NL is all about implied odds and the stacks not nearly deep enough to get those correct implied odds.


You got a great flop and moved in-played well

[DrPublo]

What screws you here more than anything else is the stack sizes. 25BB stacks??? That's worse than Party, and we always complain about Party stacks being so short that you can't play big pairs the way you want to.

After raising to 5x the BB preflop (20% of your stack!!!) you've go no choice to push the flop. Tough one.

The Doc