Tough AA Hand
 

UB Wed 215. About 80 players left (375 or so started). 40 pay.

Blinds 200-400 ante 50. I am UTG with about 7800 chips (probably slightly below average and holding red aces.

I raise to 1000. Folded to BB who is a good player and flat calls with a stack around 9000.

Flop: J47r (pot 2650)

Checked to me and I bet 1300 (a bit less than usual, for reasons I will explain). He calls.

Turn: J47(J) (pot 5250)

He checks, I check behind.

River J47J(4) (pot 5250).

He bets 1500. At this point I have about 5500 in my stack. Ouch, thoughts?

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

call, your ahead more then enough here.

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

Seems like a pretty easy call on the river. I don't see how you can lay this one down. I like the way you played it up to this point. If you have reasons for the underbet on the flop, I'll take your word for it.

Looks to me like he has something like 88 or 99 and is hoping for a curiosity call from an ace.

Peace

Goodie

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

flat call for the remote chance he may have had something like 89 A7 A8 ,67 or something like that.pushing here is just out of the question i think as there is just too much chance he will call and if he does your deffo beat.

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

i agree with the other posters, you have to call this. shame the donkey played KJ (AJ?) this way. quads?

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

If he is really good, he is betting this river with almost anything he called the flop with. I know it looks sort of like a milking bet, but even good players are capable of messing up and underbetting 65s or something once in a while.

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

Are you actually pondering a fold here? That would be really wierd.

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

Bet the turn. He had a pre-flop call with almost any hand. If the flop J hit him he is probably going to try and take the lead and see if you can play back vs top pair. Now a J hits on the turn, which doesnt fill the possible straight draw or lucky bottom 2 pair flop.

Leading the turn has good value against 2 overcards and also elicits a reraise if the read of no J in his hand is wrong. Better to see that now then give him a free card and still be wondering what to do on the river.

I also dont like the small raise UTG. It invites multiple callers and you could easily have wound up OOP vs 2 or 3 hands.

Re: Tough AA Hand
 

Thanks for the responses.

I made a small raise preflop because I thought the texture of the table made it much more likely to face a reraise than have a number of callers. I also thought an added benefit would be, if the hand were showndown, that I could start stealing with a smaller raise. I often/usually use the standard bet with aces and sometimes steal with the smaller amount so hopefully it wasn't a tell.

I decided to bet half the pot on the flop because the texture didn't look very threatening, and I wanted to show some meat behind my continuation bets. Perhaps not a good enough reason but I didn't want to get into a situation where 2/3 of a pot meant a hand I am protecting and 1/2 pot means whiffed ak.

I didn't think he would call with a super wide range of hands and so the call on the flop was troubling. I thought some Jack, or a pair 66-TT were the hands I could probably beat. I didn't think he would get to frisky on the flop with too many other hands.

Against that range, maybe I should have bet the turn not sure. I wanted to keep the pot small and reevaluate.

The river bet really worried me. I knew I probably couldn't get away, but for some reason it really smelled like a teaser bet. Very strongly so.

Anyways, I called and he had quad fours, probably lucky he had them because I might not have been able to get away from a bigger bet, and he wanted to make sure to get some value. I really didn't see him doing this with a middle pair, I know its hard to have such a read on the internet, it was just what was going through my head.

I thought this hand was interesting for a number of reasons, not just the river.

1. The flop weak lead by him would have stacked me.

2. I had a few decisions on various streets.

3. The luck factor in tourneys is often something like this or the hand I went out on rather than traditional bad beats. In some sense I was lucky to keep half my stack with aces vs a floped set given that flop.


The hand I went out on, its happened a few times recently: I get short in BB and pick up middle pair like 88. EP raises, I push (about pot size) on flop of rags, he has overpair.

You look like a genius when he has overcards and feel like a donkey when he doesn't. The "luck" here is him happening to have overcards or not or you happening to be able to get away because an ace or king flopped.