[Ian J]

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I think if you had AA/KK you wouldn't raise that much PF (maybe w/ KK), because you don't want to drive me away.


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This is something I've been thinking alot about as I've moved up in the ranks and been playing against most of the best tournament players you'll find on the internet. When playing against someone like Carl or Bugstud I think the idea is to represent weakness when very strong and vice versa. This is why I suggested Carl reraise to 5500ish because Bugstud will see that as major strength and play accordingly.

Another instance of this was from last Sunday's $109R on Stars. 800/1600, HoldEM_NL (T55k), who is just a monster and is probably one of the best tournament players you'll find, opens in MP to 4800. I'm right behind w/ QQ and 28k in my stack. If I make a reraise to 13-16k here I'm showing major strength and might let him off the hook with a hand like 99-JJ. However, I decided to move all in to give the appearance of a hand like 77-99 or AK/AQ that didn't really want any action. He called w/ JJ after a long think and I now had a huge stack.

I guess the point is that when you play against people who play very well, you have to do things in a manner that is not completely readable. I think if Bugstud has AA/KK here, he picked a great raise size. In fact, I think he picked a good raise size pretty much regardless of his holding.