No Limit Hand-Your Thoughts?

[samking]

I'm playing in a no limit game, 400 dollar minimum buy in (average stack around 2000 however), two blinds of 10 dollars. I pick up AK offsuit in middle position. One caller in front of me. I make it 120 to go. Player immidiately after me flat calls. No other callers. Flop comes down Kc 5s 2h. With 270 dollars in the pot and another 700 in front of me, what is the appropriate sized bet here? I bet 250 or so, and got reraised my last 450. What do I do then? He ended up having pocket 2s and I went broke and I'm trying to figure out how this could have been avoided.

[CCass]

I am no expert, but here is what I think.

I think you should play with a guy that will call a 12 x blind raise in middle position with pocket 2's as much as possible. There is no way I would make this call unless you had been raising with 87s and other non-premium hands. He made a poor call and got lucky.

There is nothing you could do to avoid this, other than fold AKo, and I don't think that is the correct play.

[Zag]

I totally agree with CCass -- that player and his chips will soon be parted. However, on this hand:

I assume that the player is generally a preflop calling station. But unless he is also a maniac or a bluffing machine, you can lay it down after he raises you. What else could he really have but a set, here? About the only hand that you can put him on that you beat is KQs. Perhaps he could have 99 or TT, but I suspect that most players who would call your huge overbet preflop with 22 would have raised with TT.

Therefore, the only hand you can beat is a bluff. First, you should call or not based on your knowledge of his bluffing rate. If you don't know, we can resort to game theory to decide whether or not to call it. He is betting $700 at a pot of about $500, so you want to call a little less than half the time. Look at your watch and call if the second hand is between the 12 and the 5. Otherwise, lay it down without showing, and make a shrug like "you caught me." The last thing you want to do is to let the other players know that you might lay down TPTK.

[Jon Matthews]

If your opponent had less that $1200 in front of him he made a mistake by calling preflop, so if that's the case you can take small consolation in that fact.

If you had $2000 in front of you like most people, you might have laid down your hand to the flop raise, it's the only way I see you not losing any more on this hand. AK is fine against a pot sized raise on that flop if it puts you all in, you need a good reason not to call with your depth of money.


Jon

[Jon Matthews]

Good advice, I think using the watch second hand would also allow you to blame general randomness for losing if you call and maybe reduce your propensity to tilt if you rebuy?

I can see a watch going out the window in my future though!


Jon