Play a Hand With the Masters #2 Pre-Flop

[Cactus Jack]

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I've seen several people mention limping to disguise the strength of their hand.

I really don't understand this.

Your entering the pot from UTG. What range do you expect people to put you on? If your playing a bunch of hands from UTG with only 20-30BB it's not really going to matter how you play AK.

AK is on the weak end of your UTG holdings(or should be) so disguising it as weak really doesn't make sense to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Frankly, at this stage of an online tourney, I'm not expecting them to be putting me on any range of hand. There may be a couple of people at the table who are capable of doing it, and hopefully I've indentified them so if they raise, I know what range they may be on.

My range UTG in this spot would be AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQs. The latter two I limp, the first three I raise. I feel this is way too early to be putting my tourney life on the line. Not always, and taking the standard line has often been painful. (Once too often calling an idiot who played 76o a round ago and running into a set when you're all in with AK reinforces the pain of being overly aggressive.)

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

CJ

[Jason Strasser]

Come on.

You raise your standard amount. If there is a reason to limp then you limp and there are some obvious benefits to limping and then attacking overaggressive opponents. But for the most part the standard play is raising.

The big problem with limping is that if you raise many hands you dominate will still come along but if you limp many hands like J2o might see a flop from the BB and you really aren't any sort of big favorite against J2o.

[Sam T.]

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I raise / yawn. Discussing this street is so pointless. Sure you can limp but obviously the default is to raise. If there is a boring street I dont understand why we dont just skip ahead.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take your point, but what this street/thread is useful because it allows a general discussion of how the hand MIGHT be played. Lots of folks are auto-raising, but some are limping, and explain the logic behind their decision. There is nothing wrong with saying, "I always raise AK in EP", but it is important to know how your opponents might play the hand, and what other options are out there if you decide to get creative.

It also nicely illustrates the importance having a plan for a given hand. It is fine to auto-raise, but it is good to have considered ahead of time how you will react to a re-raise from different players based on their stacks, position, and your read.

If we leave the discussion at, "I raise." we're missing the complexity of this and every hand.

[A_PLUS]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So your range is tighter than AJ, 88 for an EP standard raise?

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Let's say it's AJs and 88...add up the percentages for what I'm gonna fold/come over the top of that reraise with.

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You are right. I wrote that at the end of a very long day.

Still not tight enough to fold AK, but tighter than I originally thought, for a good player. Add in the party factor and it becomes a no brainer for me.

[kuro]

[ QUOTE ]
My range UTG in this spot would be AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQs.

[/ QUOTE ]

That range is way too tight with your stack size. You're missing a lot of value by not playing mid pocket pairs for set value and depending on the table premium suited connectors. Playing AQs and not playing Jacks makes no sense.

[Cactus Jack]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My range UTG in this spot would be AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQs.

[/ QUOTE ]

That range is way too tight with your stack size. You're missing a lot of value by not playing mid pocket pairs for set value and depending on the table premium suited connectors. Playing AQs and not playing Jacks makes no sense.

[/ QUOTE ]

My apologies. I meant to say RAISING hands. Of course I'll play 77-JJ. Sorry.

I'll also raise AK, too, sometimes. Again, depends on the table at the time. I'd always prefer to play Trapper Jack in the first 45-60 min. I definitely am one of the tighter players, esp early on, which absolutely goes against my nature. Go figure.

(If I were not aggressive by nature, would I be posting here, and esp so blatantly against the grain?) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

CJ

[betgo]

I think Gigabet limped. Otherwise there won't be that much action later in the hand to discuss. Also, the play tends to be aggressive at this stage. Gigabet also limps from early position a lot. He likes to play deceptively and he may feel he can use his skill advantage better this way.

I raise to 300. No big decision here, IMHO. AK's a great hand, and OOP it needs to be played aggressively preflop.

Left out that if I get reraised I'm pushing.

The beauty of AK is that it's only a real dog to two hands and it's got a bunch of pretty good hands dominated. If you play it like you've got a big pair preflop, you get some nice fold equity out of the smaller PPs, and you're never making a huge mistake unless they have AA or KK, only 6 combos of hands out of their raising range which almost certainly includes AK (9), JJ (6), QQ (6), and likely also includes TT and maybe AQs or so.

Of course, if the reraiser is all in, I'm calling as I'm only a 3:2 dog against TT+, AK or JJ+, AK.

I think so too.