Stupid play or reasonable risk (w/ AA)

[sprmario]

Hehe, fair enough.

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I have no problem with playing this hand to double up, but there was no need to be cute on the flop. Just put your chips in.

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[ddubois]

[ QUOTE ]
I have no problem with playing this hand to double up, but there was no need to be cute on the flop. Just put your chips in.

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Would leading out with a push make his opponent more likely to fold, compared to the min bet/min raise/push line? (I would think it would.) According to the Fundamental Theorm of Poker, don't we want our opponent to incorrectly call here?

On the other hand, the bet/raise/push line gives our opponent better odds on his allin call. We do want him to call, but we want him to have the worst odds possible we he does call allin, so there are conflicting factors at play here.

[ddubois]

It seems to be it's a risk versus reward scenario. I had a situation this weeknd where it was heads up and the SB tried to steal my BB with a min raise. I had AA. Now, I could push here, but he had shown the abiltiy to fold (probably a little too frequently), so instead of pushing, I min-raised him back. He min-raised me back! Of course, I was happy to continue this all day long, and we did, until he finally went all-in with Q4o. I suppose this was a riskier line, but the reward was huge.

Going for a limp-reraise with AA is kind of the same thing. You're more likely to lose, but much more likely to get more than just the blinds.

[Dominic]

your play after the flop was ok...but I would've raised at least 3-4 times the BB pre-flop...you let him in cheap and he sucked out on you...exactly what he was hoping to do.

[NotReady]

I like the pre-flop play. I wouldn't push because I hate winning a small pot with AA. The small raise will either coax him to get it all in with you PF, which is what you want, or at least build a bigger pot.

I would push on the flop but I don't think it mattered much in this hand. Pot's big enough, if he doesn't have you beat, you're way ahead.

[sprmario]

AA is an 8 to 1 favorite over Q3 preflop and it's actually around a 9 to 1 favorite after that flop he has just enough odds to call the last raise of 200 into an 1800 chip pot. If I go all in at the flop and he calls he has totally wrong odds, but the result is that I still lose. The AA hand wins 89% of the time vs the Q3 after he hit the Q. It seems that at that point you want to do whatever you can to get him to put as much money into the pot as possible, if the best way is to make a small bets then I think you need to do that.

I guess I should add that I don't think he would have just called in any scenario. He was bullying the small stacks for quite a bit. I was fairly certain that If i had bet the pot he wouldn't have called and I thought that he'd come over the top on a small bet.

[hhboy77]

in reality, you're the only one who can really judge if it was a stupid play, but in this situation it doesn't appear to have been.

your goal with aces is to extract as much money in the hand as possible. the only way for it to be provably stupid was if your min raise gave away the strength of your hand and he folded a hand like aj that he would call the 1000 with.

i will say this though. as painful as it is to raise with aces and get no action, with your stack as short as it is winning just the blinds is still pretty good. one less obvious benefit of moving all in is that most of the hands he's going to call you with are the ones that are the biggest dogs, a-x. he's gonna throw away hands like 78 suited which is still a big dog, but as small a dog as you can get against aces.

[stripsqueez]

i think i would play this the same way

i dont think you have a big chance of folding your way into the money - you will have to take a couple more risks to get there from this spot - as you say if you double up you are a good shot at 1st or 2nd and virtually gauranteed in the money

i figure when the SB calls i am going all-in but nothing i do is likely to convince the SB to fold - if thats right i may as well bet in the manner most likely to cause the SB to match my stack whether that bet be pre-flop or on the river - i am completely fixated on the SB matching my stack - i dont care what the board looks like

if i think the SB is certain to call a pre-flop push i push - if not then i raise enough to ensure that with the tiniest part of the flop, turn, or river he will call my push given the huge odds, his fat stack, and the lure of knocking me out

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

[soxfan70]

To think that he would try to trap with top pair and the second worst possible kicker isn't reasonable. The guy played this hand poorly, from the preflop call of the raise on out. And, his play got progressively worse. Not betting top pair to see where he stood from your resposne to his bet was weak. thinking his top pair 3 kicker was the best hand was even worse. He got sh!t lucky, don't fault yourself here.