Calling All In with Just Aces

[Young Gun]

Hi I'm new here and am currious what some of you guys would do in this situation.

I'm playing a heads up freezeout. Blinds are 50-$1 with a $50 buy-in. After blowing a big hand I have about $20 left. My opponent is playing pretty tight and then this hand comes up.

My opponent( Player X) raises to $3 before the flop. I call $2 on the button with As8c. The flop is AdJs6s. He bets $6. I think Flush draw so I raise $20. He never hesitates and moves in. I call.(after a lot of thought). He has Ac4d. I was glad I made the right play after dumping that big pot. Untill the Qs and the Ah came off for a split pot.
lol.


I think that I played the hand badly because the hand had was so far away from what I thought. Was my play right or wrong?

P.S.- I'm only a teen so don t be afraid to tell me i'm wrong. I've got plenty of time to learn.

[AJo Go All In]

[ QUOTE ]
... I have about $20 left...
He bets $6. I think Flush draw so I raise $20. He never hesitates and moves in. I call.(after a lot of thought).

[/ QUOTE ]

[kiddo]

You got $20 and you are raising $20 and then thinking about calling? I dont get it. Wouldnt the raise put you all in?

[Young Gun]

No kiddo
I'm sorry I didn't explain well enough. The big loss that put me to $20 was the 3rd hand. I had worked that back up to about $35 when this hand came up.

[tripdad]

you are more then pot committed, so you must call.

from the fact that you "called" preflop with $2 after player X raised to $3, i assume the raise came from one of the blinds after you called on the button. if this is so, that is a big mistake. you must raise on the button with such a hand if you play it at all. there is too great a chance to take the blinds, especially since he has been playing "tight". also, if there are upfront limpers, at least in my game, A-8 offsuit is a folding hand preflop.

alternately, you could have raised his flop bet to $12, then not be committed to call when he comes over the top of you.

cheers!

[tewall]

Heads up with the blinds this proportion of your stack, top pair is easily worth committing your stack to.

What I've done to try to get a feel for how to play heads up with different stack sizes is deal out hands and play them out (for some reason my bluffs never work when I play against myself).

I would say the ideal level of aggression is higher than most people would think it would be intuitively (of course this is player dependent). Or to put it another way, if you have a normal poker temperment (i.e. not a maniac), you will probably be more successful if you are more aggressive than you think you should be.

A simple strategy I've tried is to play agressively with really bad hands and really good hands (backing off with the crappy hands when the opponent shows strength), and playing the mediocre hands to try to see a showdown without expending too many chips.

Heads up a lot of players will fold too so you can win with a strategy based on heavy betting. HEFAP21 discusses this in the short-handed section. Even though it's written for limit, the same principles apply to a large extent. This section is certainly something you would want to understand well to play heads up successfully.