Bad laydown preflop?

[Dave G.]

Folding an often dominated, offsuit hand against a raise doesn't make you weak-tight. It makes you solid. People who habitually call such raises are the people you want to play against. If I'm raising AK here, I'd love it for someone with KQ to call me. He is so far behind me. If a K hits, I'm in for some money. Sure, in this case, I'm not looking good, but this flop will occur less than 1% of the time. Most of the rest of the time, I'm golden.

Big offsuit hands are good hands to play but they are also situational. Playing them profitably requires you to choose the right time to play them and the right time to dump them.

For example, AJo is consistently one of my biggest winning hands. I don't know why. It's always right up there with the big pairs. However, I never play this hand against a raise, not even from the SB or BB. If I did, I am sure it would be performing significantly worse due to all those times I hit but lose to a bigger hand anyway.

And I'd like to emphasise again that you're paying 0.75 BB, or 1.5 SB, which is double the 3/4 of a bet figure you keep using.

I would consider this a significant leak. When you play this hand against a raise, you're potentially going into the hand when your opponent has a big edge against you. There's no reason to give them that edge - fold and wait for a better time.