Playing Rockets

[Sam T.]

Hi All,

A situation I ran into over the weekend. Sorry, no hand history. The button is pretty loose, and I've got a few hundred chips more than him, but if I lose, I'm crippled.

Folded to me in MP, I hold Aces and make my standard 3BB raise. Button calls, and flop comes QT4, rainbow.

What are my best options here for betting?

I pushed, on the assumption that if he had a straight draw I wanted him to pay to see more cards.

[La Brujita]

Standard play here is a pot sized bet (or perhaps 90% of the pot or so). If a pot sized bet would be more than 35% of your chips or so then a push is the standard bet.

You mentioned he had less chips than you, if a pot sized bet would put him reasonably close to all in I sometimes adjust the above to just put him all in.

I am guessing you ran into a set of tens, or secondly a set of queens.

Hard to avoid getting beat by that.

Regards

[Sam T.]

Results: Worse than you thought. He called with KJo, and rivered a nine for the straight. I typed, "Grrr." and the rest of the table berated him mercilessly. "I had an open-ended draw" was his defense.

Other than driving to his house and unplugging his modem, I don't see how I can not get beat here.

[La Brujita]

His play was pretty ugly. Al Capone made a great post once about not calling off all your chips on a draw (basically because you have no implied odds without chips).

This is not the case here but if he thought his K gave him three outs depending on stack size his call is not terrible.

The reason his K is probably not a good out is KK and JJ are unlikely holdings for you since he has a KJ, AA, QQ, TT, AK and KQ and its not a good out.

Perhaps he thought you held AQ, pocket nines or eights /images/graemlins/confused.gif

Was this a low limit tournament? Many people see that they flop a good hand and can't control the urge to push.

Of course his flat call pre flop was pretty ugly.

[Gar Pike]

Sadly, there are people playing poker by "feel", not paying attention to, or even knowing that, they are not getting the right value for the price they're paying for the next card.

You did the right thing, pushing. 4 time out of 5 he loses. Focus on 'I made the right play', not on 'I just lost a big bunch of chips' You want to give yourself positive reinforcement for making a good play, so it will be easier to make that play again. Don't reinforce the negative by dwelling on how it"should" have happened, that will make it harder to make the right play, the next time.



Your opponent is probably giving himself strokes for making that play, and winning all those chips. He'll probably always make that play, now, totally disregarding the fact that he's paying, what, twice or three times what they're worth? Hopefully you'll be there when he does. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Regards,

Gar

[Sam T.]

I actually don't "mind" this kind of beat, so long as it doesn't happen too often. I realize that in the long run, this play is a winner: often I'll win his loose PF call with my flop bet, even better I'll win a ton if he flops TPTK, and with this flop half the time his draw won't come through and I'll take all his chips.

At a certain level my question was just silly, for what I was really asking was, "Is there a bet that will keep loose callers from sucking out on my pocket aces?" (If anyone has an answer to that one, please PM me. /images/graemlins/grin.gif)

[Beavis68]

[ QUOTE ]
Sadly, there are people playing poker by "feel", not paying attention to, or even knowing that, they are not getting the right value for the price they're paying for the next card.

Regards,

Gar

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not sad, this is extremely fortunate. I know it sucks to get drawn out on, but DO NOT berate the villians. You can't get even with them if they stop their bad play. The last thing you want to do it to educate your opponents, that is one of the most destructive habits we have. Those losses sting, but 2 out of 3 times we will double up. Instead of bearating the person, add them to your buddy list.