Hand comments please

[ethan]

I actually saw your original post in the NL forum. A couple of the replies were rude, yes, but you should also note that the posters there saw this hand as very straightforward. All the decisions in this hand are ones that you want to be very straightforward for _you_, and they will be with a little more tournament experience. (That forum's also had an excess of bad-beat stories as of late, although yours wasn't one.) This is definitely the right forum for your post, and if you have questions regarding NL cash games you'll probably want to start with the low-stakes NL forum. The one where you posted is for strategy in higher-stakes cash NL games...usually 5/5 blinds or higher. I'd recommend reading the forum, there's a lot to be learned there, but those games play much differently than the $25NL at party.

3x the BB is a good raise size, 5x is a little high. You should also increase the size of your raise if people have already limped in ahead of you...the 3x suggestion comes from a pot-sized raise, so with 2 limpers you'd probably go closer to 5x. On this flop there's no way you're going to get him to fold. A tighter opponent, maybe, but not one who'll call a quarter of his stack preflop with K7s.

So, with regard to what happens if the flop play gets tricky. JJ's a difficult hand to play postflop, there's been a _lot_ of discussion of it in this forum. I'd suggest searching through previous threads and seeing what you can find.

You're very unlikely to get to a showdown without going all-in. If you show weakness after your preflop raise, your opponent's going to put a bet in somewhere. If an overcard comes and your opponent pushes in, you're going to have to decide whether he's just trying to move you off your hand or whether you're actually beat. With 2, things look worse. (Also, an ace should scare you more than a K, which should scare you more than a Q.) If he checks to you and overcards have flopped, remember that they look scary to him, too. You raised, he doesn't know you don't have an ace.

I could keep rambling on this for awhile...the short version is "it depends" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] If he has you beat on the flop, so be it, but I'd err on the aggressive side if unsure what to do. And read the archives, this is a popular topic.

good luck.