Tough AA Hand

[La Brujita]

Thanks for the responses.

I made a small raise preflop because I thought the texture of the table made it much more likely to face a reraise than have a number of callers. I also thought an added benefit would be, if the hand were showndown, that I could start stealing with a smaller raise. I often/usually use the standard bet with aces and sometimes steal with the smaller amount so hopefully it wasn't a tell.

I decided to bet half the pot on the flop because the texture didn't look very threatening, and I wanted to show some meat behind my continuation bets. Perhaps not a good enough reason but I didn't want to get into a situation where 2/3 of a pot meant a hand I am protecting and 1/2 pot means whiffed ak.

I didn't think he would call with a super wide range of hands and so the call on the flop was troubling. I thought some Jack, or a pair 66-TT were the hands I could probably beat. I didn't think he would get to frisky on the flop with too many other hands.

Against that range, maybe I should have bet the turn not sure. I wanted to keep the pot small and reevaluate.

The river bet really worried me. I knew I probably couldn't get away, but for some reason it really smelled like a teaser bet. Very strongly so.

Anyways, I called and he had quad fours, probably lucky he had them because I might not have been able to get away from a bigger bet, and he wanted to make sure to get some value. I really didn't see him doing this with a middle pair, I know its hard to have such a read on the internet, it was just what was going through my head.

I thought this hand was interesting for a number of reasons, not just the river.

1. The flop weak lead by him would have stacked me.

2. I had a few decisions on various streets.

3. The luck factor in tourneys is often something like this or the hand I went out on rather than traditional bad beats. In some sense I was lucky to keep half my stack with aces vs a floped set given that flop.


The hand I went out on, its happened a few times recently: I get short in BB and pick up middle pair like 88. EP raises, I push (about pot size) on flop of rags, he has overpair.

You look like a genius when he has overcards and feel like a donkey when he doesn't. The "luck" here is him happening to have overcards or not or you happening to be able to get away because an ace or king flopped.