see mike push. push mike, push

[mike l.]

how would you play the hand, starting from preflop. what factors would you take into accountin making your decisions? please be specific.

[montechristo]

just some thoughts....

raise more pf, 100 is good. Pot the flop, call a raise. If you get a caller push the turn. If they have a 10 you are getting broke this hand. Tom is smart.

[Andrew Fletcher]

[ QUOTE ]
how would you play the hand, starting from preflop. what factors would you take into accountin making your decisions? please be specific.

[/ QUOTE ]

I like the re-raise to $50, since it seems to have acomplished what you wanted. AA is hard to play out of position in a multiway pot, so my raise of $50 is designed to shrink the field and hopefully get you heads-up w/ the original raiser. Maybe if you're lucky he'll even re-raise with AK, KK, or QQ. However, I've played in 5-5 games where that raise could be $25 and accomplish the same thing. I've also played in games where it would have needed to be $75-$150. So that's entirely dependent on the game, but if you're raising for the reason I think you're raising, then I like it.

So now we're to the flop. The pot is something like $180-$200. Since they called your re-raise, we most likely eliminate AT, JT, QT, or KT from their possible hands. KK-88 is likely as is AK, AQ, or maybe AJ from a really loose player. I'd bet 2/3rds of the pot to give anyone chasing a flush draw impoper odds to call. That is also a good value bet for extracting money from someone with a big pocket pair.

I can see an argument for a push if some people on the table think you're a LAG. In my mind, you're representing AK/AQ of spades with that push. They will likely call with KK-JJ.

[craze9]

It does not make sense to raise more w/ QQ than with AA.

If anything I'd do the opposite, because I want to get as much money in preflop w/ AA, whereas w/ QQ the flop is quite important. Also, AA is harder to fold postflop, so you want to give worse implied odds to potential callers.

There are times to "blow people out" preflop, but your hand doesn't matter that much when you do it, because your obective is to get everyone to fold, right?

[mike l.]

with QQ id obviously be hoping someone calls with something i beat, but if i happen to push everyone out im not gonna be bummed. with AA if i reraise too much preflop then everyone might fold and i definitely would be bummed. see?

[durrrr]

50 is fine preflop, 3/4 pot the flop, push the turn. If some1 c/rs the flop puke on the table(and call).

[Jocke_F]

with two opponents and a possible flushdraw + gutshot is this really way ahead way behind? they might have as much as 14 outs together

[cwl]

given the way you have described your opponents it sounds like they can have enough hands that you arent folding for the amount of money in play so thats one aspect you dont have to consider anymore. given that your not folding the thing to think about is structuring the betting in such a way that the broadest range of hands you want to play against can put in the largest amount of money. pushing is probably not the answer to this. what range of hands do you think a push is better against than a pottish sized bet?

the decision i think you have on the flop is between checking and betting somewhere between 70-100% of the pot or so.

i think your pre-flop raise here was about right, something between 50-70 pre-flop seems correct to me. i dont understand why some people want to raise more than 70 or so, that just seems like a waste.

i think your proposed 120 raise with QQ is real bad. what range of hands are you expecting to call that raise? if your not expecting much of anything to call it then why would you want to turn your very strong hand into a virtual bluff? if everyone folds the fact that you had QQ and actually had them beat isnt really worth anything. if a 120 raise is actually getting called by a decent range of hands then ill probably retract my statement about a bigger raise with AA being bad.

[mike l.]

at last a good well thought out post! thanks!

anyway let me go through this one question at a time:

"given the way you have described your opponents it sounds like they can have enough hands that you arent folding for the amount of money in play so thats one aspect you dont have to consider anymore."

right. see i didnt realise that at the time though, i didnt think about it. the main thing i felt was fear: as in, i really want to win this pot, i would like to get doubled up, but im scared one of them has a T or will catch up, i dont want to lose this pot fear fear FEAR! that's where i screwed up.

because if i had assessed the flop and the situation i wouldve realised okay given my stack size and my hand and what they think of me im committed here to putting all my chips in. a $150 bet wouldve priced them in all wrong with anything they hold that i beat and if they pushed i could just call and let them show me their KTs or JJ or whatever they got.

now about the QQ i think a $120 raise was an exaggeration on my part. i might bet $80 or $90 because there's some money in the pot (about $50) already and some of them are dumb enough to call that amount with AJ, KQ, etc.

again nice post you layed it all out pretty nicely.

[ QUOTE ]
the main thing i felt was fear: as in, i really want to win this pot, i would like to get doubled up, but im scared one of them has a T or will catch up, i dont want to lose this pot fear fear FEAR! that's where i screwed up.


[/ QUOTE ]

Are you really afraid someone has a T?
And if so, why then are you putting all your money in?