A post for Tommy Angelo.

[elysium]

hi mikey
going for the check-raise on the flop wasn't that bad a play in this particular game unless you've been betting out with nothing a lot. it's not something that you should often do, however, it's not that bad. the difference amounts to pennies because often, you will trap and keep the back-doors coming at you, along with the weaker hands. it wasn't illogical if you had everything you needed. did you? well, you certainly had the right type game to go for a check-raise.

by the way mikey, i'm laughing here a little because i can't imagine how you think this post is a post for tommy of all people. tommy is an executive. this is a bag boy's hand. the whole entire specter of this game is anti-tommithian. you got checked around? that's happened to tommy once in his life. at airport security. the man will never fly again.

[elysium]

hi mikey
good post. since you called a player whose limp in means nothing, even from UTG, and had no way of knowing what the CO would do, and that furthermore the CO is also a bad player, unless there is something in either of these two players' profiles suggesting that he wouldn't bet or raise without a stronger hand than two pair over-pair, and that a slowplay with a reasonable number of hands that you beat would be possible in two spots; wrong, but possible; you have no issue here mikey. you're not cold-calling two, and these guys are unreliable. that means that your calls have value. the one exception is if you think that the MP would have been weak-tight enough to play his AA like that. it looks like a lower pocket pair to me mikey.

you won't win many of these, but you will win often enough to easily call any bet, even when your call doesn't close things. and closing with a call isn't an issue either. the flop weakness shown, albeit not badly played, just the way it worked out, may have incited the type action you have here, and calling is pretty rudimentary there.

you'ven't an issue here mikey.

[Tommy Angelo]

The votes are in and tallied, and the contraction of the week award goes to ... elysium, for "you'ven't."

[Luke]

Mikey,

I don't think giving the checkraise a shot on the flop was a mistake for a couple of reasons:

1. You're not going to get many better boards to risk giving a free card on - you're basically only afraid of an ace because even a 9 only has 2 outs and may bet anyway.

2. The player on your left is very likely to bet and you will have an opportunity to trap everyone for multiple bets when they are likely very far behind you.

Now, the reasons to not attempt a checkraise are:

1. Since you've shown so much preflop aggression, there's a chance you've scared everyone off from betting the flop and getting it checked through will risk a free card and make the hand more difficult to play from then on.

2. The pot is huge and you're happy to knock out any and everybody.

Given those reasons, I think the tiebreaker is that since you play with these guys regularly, you'd like to vary your game here and there. So if you want to put in a checkraise once in a while on the flop, this is a pretty good spot to do it given all the variables.

What are you afraid of anyway on a 944r flop, someone hitting a runner runner straight? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

As for the river, maybe there is only a .005% that the UTG guy is bluffing. But there's a 5% chance he thinks his A9, TT, 76, 97 is good or he misread his hand and thinks his T5 straight is good.

I see it happen online all the time but it happens live too where I suddenly get bet into on the river, I scratch my head, call with my TPTK or overpair and then get shown some mediocre hand like middle pair. It's not a bluff and they don't see it that way, it's just that bad players aren't good at determining the relative strength of their hand and reading your hand. That's a big part of what makes them bad.

Luke