AQ vs. limp, re-raise, take a look

[EasilyFound]

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You put so much money in preflop that you no longer have the luxury of betting for information.


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I forgot about chip stack size when making the last reply. Now I understand why you say fold. If you're going to commit nearly one third of your stack preflop, then you are in a spot where you really should push or fold. In your view, AQ is not the kind of hand where you want to push a reraise. It was such an odd reraise though. At least that is how it seemed to me at the time. He limped, and then made a relatively small reraise. Not how I would have expected someone to bet if they had a monster. And then his check on the flop with that board. It was just very strange. At least to me. That probably explains my actions on the flop and the turn. THen his final bet of 600 was also odd. Very strange.

[sweet72]

Phil you make a good point about low chip count and not being able to really push for information. Would you have called after the bet was $600?

I relooked at the start and AQ is not a bad hand. Why such a small raise to start? Control was lost when the reraise was just called. I think if the raise had been bigger to start (Like 300), the original reraiser would have folded. You would have won less, but you wouldn't have been put in the ackward sitaution you were in. Worst case scenerio, he goes all in and you either lose the 300 and fold or call with a very good hand anyway. Which you would have won.

[Phil Van Sexton]

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Phil you make a good point about low chip count and not being able to really push for information. Would you have called after the bet was $600?

I relooked at the start and AQ is not a bad hand. Why such a small raise to start? Control was lost when the reraise was just called. I think if the raise had been bigger to start (Like 300), the original reraiser would have folded. You would have won less, but you wouldn't have been put in the ackward sitaution you were in. Worst case scenerio, he goes all in and you either lose the 300 and fold or call with a very good hand anyway. Which you would have won.

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Raising to 100 was fine. He wasn't expecting to get re-raised. In general, if you are re-raised with AQ, you are going to fold. Therefore, you don't want to raise so much that you can't get away.

If you think the re-raiser was a maniac, you should just push rather than call preflop. Or you can fold and live to fight another day. It depends. Calling is clearly the least attractive option.

[sweet72]

I don't think there would have been a call if 300 was bet. A 100 raise is a little small. I think the other guy looked at it as weakness and was hoping to steal the pot there. Maybe 10 times the BB was a little high. If AQ had just limped in, he would have lost all control and even a small bet by KJ would have put a lot more doubt on how good the AQ really was.

[Phil Van Sexton]

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I don't think there would have been a call if 300 was bet. A 100 raise is a little small. I think the other guy looked at it as weakness and was hoping to steal the pot there. Maybe 10 times the BB was a little high

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It is likely that no one calls if you bet 300, but that's not really the point. If you want to bet 300 and make everyone fold, go ahead and do that with 72o or any hand. You don't need AQ to do that.

I think 100 is fine (maybe 120 is better with a couple limpers). You don't want to make the pot so big that you can't play post-flop.

I'd probably only raise here with AA-JJ and AK/AQ and maybe a couple others. With AA-QQ/AK, I'm likely going allin if someone raises me. If someone wants to try this crap with KJ, they are often going to run into a monster.

In this case, he got very lucky with his KJ and would've taken 100 from me. Oh, well. He won that time, but it's really a terrible play by him against the range of hands that I'd be raising with here.

[11t]

I fold preflop, but all things being equal I bet the flop and fold to a push back. You won't see good players do the complete raise with much less than KK.

[Phoenix1010]

I don't like playing AQo on level 2, even with position, especially with players (in this case, two very large stacks) already in the pot. My standard raise is three times the big blind plus one big blind for each limper (some like 2x the big blind for each limper), so in this case, you would need to raise to at least 150 to really be discouraging a call. Against stacks this large your raise to 100 probably looks like little more than a minraise, They're still going to play (and probably correctly) with whatever hand they limped with.

You probably have the best hand preflop so you have a small pot equity edge, but if you get called in more than one place your actual chances of winning the pot aren't very impressive. Remember that any king high other KQ isn't very far behind you. Most king or jack high flops are going to wreck your hand, not to mention the times that someone flops the set that you gave them odds to make. You really just want to take this one down preflop. Still playing AQo at this level is debatable, and depends mostly on how you view your abilities postflop. You can certainly show a profit, but against loose opponents, the value of position, and of unpaired offsuit high cards, goes down. I say you should conserve your chips instead.

After the reraise, a fold was clearly in order. His range of hands has now shifted heavily to the strong side of the spectrum, and your pot odds are not even 2:1. I don't think you can expect to have much fold equity with pushing preflop, and calling would mean throwing a fourth of your stack into a pot where you will miss the flop completely 2/3 of the time, and really not be comfortable with your hand the other third (as evidenced by all the checking). You don't have enough chips to play that loosely preflop.

I check the flop as well, since at least half of the hands that I could have put him on preflop are now beating me. After the turn I'd be tempted to take it down with a push, since there are some free cards I'm afraid of, but checking again is the best play. Pushing will get you called only when you're beat, checking induces a bluff on the river. If you check the turn you have to call the river. Given the way he played it, you'll have the best hand much more than the 1 in 3 times necessary to make it a profitable call.

I don't like the preflop play, but I agree with the play on all other streets.

-Phoenix

[EasilyFound]

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If you check the turn you have to call the river.

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Exactly what I planned to do. thanks to everyone for the comments. they were very informative.