My first try at NL

[bakku]

There's no way I'm taking SB's whole stack, I don't think you read the description I made of him too closely [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]. He's a 2+2er terrorizing the table and raising just to piss everyone off, but he's not about to spew his chips everywhere if he knows I have a hand. I think it's close between trying to get him to fold and keeping him in the pot. There's already $40 in there

[kerpowski]

The last thing you want him to do is fold here (unless he'll fold AA but I give CDC more credit than that). If he has any hand other than AA folding would be correct. You want him to put more money in the pot. Pushing all-in is going to fold any other hand. You want to raise an amount he may call, but where he does not have the proper odds to draw.

In this case I'd raise $25-30. Enough to make it a mistake for him to call drawing to a set or an ace. Push on any flop. This line gets more money in when you are ahead and the same in when you are behind.

[kerpowski]

You want to keep him in the pot and it's not close.

[jdl22]

[ QUOTE ]
SB is a 2+2er, there's no way he's calling without AA after I push. That's the main thing I question about this hand..

[/ QUOTE ]

Your logic is bad here. He is a good player. He is aware that you are a good player. He is aware that you are aware of his strategy. Given the way you see him playing he could think you are trying to shut him out with a good, but not great hand.

Suppose you are correct and that he will fold anything but aces. Then you would be willing to make this move with jacks or even tens and it would be +EV. He will recognize that and may call with hands like QQ or JJ.

That reminds me of a hand played at a NL25 table that was taken over by a bunch of 2+2ers. There was a preflop raise by a 2+2 guy in EP that was raising a lot (we were all basically trying to buy pots off each other) making it about 4 or 5 to go. I had kings in MP and pushed with rougly 50 bucks. Ulysses was in LP (with a rather large stack) and called. He had QQ.

We talked about the hand after and he told me that if I was just a typical party player he wouldn't have called with queens but because I'm a reasonable player he assumed that I would make that move with a range of hands and thus his queens were good. I'm not sure he was 100% serious (we were discussing this because as it turned out his queens were good [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]) but I'm sure he was not 0% serious.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

I like it actually! Hope you didnt run into aces. Even if you did, it was probably the $12 all in guy, so you might still profit from the side pot if you get called.

al

[Chris Daddy Cool]

I think the decision is to try to keep me into the pot and extract bets from me postflop. You have to consider that there's two people already all in, so AA between the two of them is likely.

If I fold preflop, Bakku may get shut out of the pot completely from AA because he ain't getting in any more money from me when I fold.

I think his main focus should be tryng to build a nice juicy side pot between me and him on the flop if he thinks I'm capable of folding a "big" hand if he pushes before. If he thinks I would call with less than AA, then he should push.

[bakku]

Thanks for the responses everyone, very educational on the crazy world of NL

So when I pushed Chris folded what he later said were pocket 8's. The flop comes J high, I'm happy. The turn is a brick, I'm even happier. River is an ace and I crap my pants. But it doesn't matter, the limp-reraiser flopped a set of jacks and takes it down