"The Dreaded Ace"?

[12AX7]

Hi Guthrie, Mikever,
Ah, the two of you have nicely encapsulated my experience.

Against "thinking" opponents I'd be thinking along Mikever's line. And have tried that.

But I seem to run into what Guthrie describes. Hence my frustration with it at the micros. I'd swear thier strategy is "Any ace, any time". I've started to wonder if I should run a sim on that strategy! LOL! (At one time I did run no fold'em sims with an opponent profile of "Any Ace, Any King, and any Pocket Pair" to give me an idea what hands won more than thier fair share in short handed games. Ran the sim for every hand, from heads up to 6 players. Was planning on proping at the time and so was focused on the short handed problem.)

Seems it's random. Sometime you raise, and they even raise you back... and they had like... second pair or something! You think, "What was he thinking? Why was he coming at me?" Other times you'll be thinking "Ah sh't he's got the freakin AKs." and you're 100% correct.

So I've been trying to resolve the issue with some sort of strategy that's concise enough and +EV for multi-tabling, wherein you often don't have good reads. And for the moment I'm not using Poker Tracker + HUD.

So anyway, it seems to be a murky, touchy-feely sort of situation. Guess I should get Poker Tracker and try to see if what I'm doing is working or not.

Guthrie makes a good point. If you have four in the hand when an A comes out, chances are good somebody has it. I might think about checking here if I am in first position and see what action develops. But knowing me, I wouldn't. I would just rather put out a probe bet to get the information I need rather than having to call a small bet not knowing what I'm up against.

I may be going about this all wrong, but if I have JJ, let's say, and A-10-6 rainbow comes out, and I am first to act with three others in the hand, I will put out a bet of maybe half the pot. If I am called, then I will check on the next street and call a very small bet in relation to the pot, and fold anything else.

If I had just checked on the flop, and somebody who is last to act makes a small raise, I'm gonna have to call not knowing if it was a pot stealer or an Ace, and I don't want to be in that situation.