please rip this hand apart

Hi all - here is a hand i know i played bad ... i also know i do this sort of panic-play frequently. i would appreciate comments on what exactly i did wrong.

thanks!

I just sat down a couple hands ago so had no read ... i couldn't get bison's converter to work on this hand from absolute (.5/1).

I am SB dealt 8s8h.

UTG Folds, villian Calls, +2 folds, raise, 3 folds, Hero calls, BB folds, Villian reraises, call, call.

*** FLOP *** [8d Jc Ah]
Hero bets, villian raises, fold, hero reraises, villian caps, hero calls.

*** TURN *** [8d Jc Ah] [9c]
Hero checks, villian bets, hero calls

*** RIVER *** [8d Jc Ah 9c] [2s]
Hero checks, villian bets, hero raises, villian reraises, hero calls.

Personally i think my river play was particularly bad.

thoughts?

[Homer315]

People like to limp-reraise aces in NL much more than limit I think. That being said, I know that people still do it in limit. I think maybe you're better off betting out the river to make sure he doesn't check through. Then if he raises, I would just call, hoping he overplayed Anna.

[numeri]

So... let me get this straight. You check/called the turn because you were panicked, and then you check/raised the river when it changed absolutely nothing? I don't get it. Also, I think preflop might be a bit loose.

Bet the turn. 3-bet the turn. If it's capped on the turn, I might fear AA. The LRR is AA sometimes. And sometimes it's not. I need more than a flop cap to tell me it is.

[shant]

I would've checkraised the flop, you were in perfect position to do it. I'm not checking the turn or river until I see a little more action from him. I think you should've bet/called the river.

Grunch:

Villian is UTG+1, without reads and that preflop play, I'd cautiously put him on a premium hand AA-JJ, or AK. On the flop his raise tells me he probably has AA or JJ, when he caps I'm discounting the possibility he's holding something like AK.

Hard to get away from trips, sitting here I could say fold, but I doubt I would have had the composure to do that during the hand. Like the slow down on the turn, but why raise the river and possibly/probably cost yourself extra?

If I lose money with a set, I usually lose alot of money (er...okay BBs).

Maybe it is a leak in my game, but all in all, I think it is a very small leak. I'd jam the turn atleast.

Id c/r on the turn. Bet on the river if your still there.

I actually like the flop to try to bet/3bet.

Turn I would bet, I may or may not puss out if villian raisies. As played you absolutely have to c/r.

As played river is ok.

In my opinion, looking at this flop in the proper way would set you on the right path for the rest of the hand:

Make no mistake: SETS ARE MONSTERS, especially in our small stakes games when, for some reason, these donks never slow down long enough to consider your pocket pair. So, if you capped every damn street every time you hit a set, you would absolutely make money on them in the long run. But in this spot you're specifically in good shape because:

Think about the hands that beat you at the flop: AA, JJ.......and that's it! What are the chances he wouldn't raise with either of these? Slim, and even if you happened to be wrong this time, we're talking about long-term handling of these situations, so just assume he doesn't have either of these holdings.

What he easily could have is a two pair hand, the kind that we commonly limp with: AJ, A8s, J8s, etc. That's what I'd be putting him on. Obviously if we knew this for sure, we would raise him all day long.

So this is my long-winded way of saying ram and jam that pot on every street. If the board happens to pair up or flush out and he still wants to push against you, you can ease up and just get to the showdown, but you'll always be right to juice a set in this circumstance. Good luck!

Preflop I usually like to have at least one other player cold call behind the raiser (so there are at least three others seeing the flop in the raised pot) before I cold call with any less-than-big pair. With a medium pair you are probably on the edge of being +EV multi-way so it is probably okay.

On the flop your dream comes true! A set up against Broadway over cards so action city. Nothing unusual you bet and Villian raises his (probable) top pair (maybe even AJ), the preflop raiser drops (so less need to worry so much about a bigger set at this point) so a 3-bet is in order. With the broadway cards on board you want for Villian to pay to catch one of his two outs (four in the case of AJ) so there is no real big need to slowplay.

The 9[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] hits the turn so not so bad (bad cards would have been an A or J). Villian capped on the flop so a check raise seems in order. If Villian reraises you might start to worry about a passive preflop limp with AA or JJ but still you have to think about capping it or not depending on your "gut feeling" of Villian (since you have no read). In the micros limping with the big pairs definitely happens a lot but you have a set, and well played sets will <u>always</u> lose a lot of money when they lose.

A blank hits the board on the river. Very good for you (again no Ace, no Jack). After a check-raise on the turn betting out on the river would seem to be the right play, however, because you passively played the turn a check raise on the river is okay. Villian reraising could mean you are beaten so calling is okay. I don't see a fold here especially given the "mixed signal" you gave on the turn.

Sets do lose and when they lose they lose a lot of money, however passively playing them without strong indications of trips (a second Ace or Jack hitting the turn or the river would have been scary), a completed flush, or straight are almost never correct. In this case you don't have a read on Villian so there is no indication that he limps with big pairs. If he does (did) then make a note of it, shake off the loss, and get on with the next hand.