First time playing live NL; an AK hand

[sweetjazz]

I come from a limit background, and other than playing some SH NL for low stakes in a home game with friends, I only know about NL based on watching TV / reading relevant sections from some poker books / reading tournament recaps / general poker theory.

The game I was playing had a 2/5 blind structure, with a $200 buy-in. In the hand I am involved in, the relevant opponents are:
Me - my stack is at about $750 when this hand starts
MP - a loose aggressive player who has me covered
SB - an unknown player with a stack of $200 (the buy-in, actually $195 since he was the BB the previous hand)
BB - a horrible player who has called big bets on the river with less than A high...has literally called off hundreds of dollars already; he has about $250 - $300 in his stack.

I am UTG in this hand, and I raise to $20 with A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].

MP, SB, and BB all call. (I also think there was another caller who ended up folding on the flop, but I don't remember for certain.)

The flop is A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 4 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 3 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. SB bets $30, BB calls, I raise to $150, MP calls, SB goes all-in ($25 more), BB calls, I call, MP calls. (Note: As I understand the rules, nobody can reraise over SB's raise because it wasn't the size of the pot.)

At this point BB has around $75 in his stack, I have about $550, and MP has me covered. Pot has about $800 in it.

Turn is the Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. BB checks, and I push all-in.

How did I do?

Pushing into a dry side pot isn't a good idea with TPGK. One, it takes away value from your hand that you may have recieved and secondly only a hand you will be is going to call this [2pair/set]. Your overall goal in this situation is to extract as many chips as possible from hands that you beat [KK,JJ,AJ etc.] .

[sweetjazz]

This also entered into my thinking during the hand, so I was remiss to leave it out in the original description of the hand. MP called my raise to $150 on the flop without much hesitation.

[The_Bends]

Eugh.

Firstly I agree with your play completly PF and on the flop so...

Ok first we can ignore the BB because he has so little left it doesn't matter what he does. Second we know MP is LAG and has simply called on the flop. I've got to say I'm confused. We need a preflop range on the LAG. What will he coldcall a raise with? 33/44/34s/56s/A3s/A4s?

Also is he good or bad? I assume he's not terrible because you don't mention it but any more info would be good. If he's good then he would only cold call that flop raise with an absolute monster and even then he should probably push to take advantage of his image. All draws and maringal hands either push or fold. Is he tricky or just aggressive?

All I've got is questions really but if you pushed me for an answer I'd try to get to show down cheaply. You've a decent hand but its very weak given the action. Many players will auto check in sidepots which could get you to the end without much more damage. I'm assumiung of course that MP isn't bad enough to have a flush draw in this situation.

[sweetjazz]

Thanks for your reply. These are good questions. Let me try to clarify how I perceived MP's play. He is much too loose preflop, so he could call the raise with T7o or 94s or what not. He is capable of reading other players somewhat decently, but it looks like he likes to make plays that aren't correct mathematically, hoping to win a big pot. So he'll make loose calls, especially PF and sometimes on the flop. Also, some of his plays seem erratic -- i.e. don't seem to make much sense and so I can't figure out what he is doing -- though I haven't seen any hands showndown where he has made a wierd raise. So I am suspicious that he makes unusual plays that don't necessarily have any reasoning behind them, but it's also possible he's making good plays that I am just not thinking of. I wouldn't say I think he is good, but he is better postflop than most of the other players at the table. (The BB, whose horribleness I hope I conveyed, was not necessarily the worst player at the table. There were two others who were in the running with him.)

I don't think he was good to the point of having thought deeply about how to play various hands in this kind of situation correctly. My read was that if he had a monster, he might just smooth call and he might raise, but I thought he would take some time to think about it. Not a lot, but he would be thinking about how to get my entire stack. I figured he was too loose to fold a draw, and that he wasn't willing to risk most of his stack on a draw because he was afraid I might call. I think he was hoping he could see a river card cheaply and figured there was some chance he could trap me into losing a lot of my traps if I hit my flush. I also thought Ax was possible with x being a T, J, or Q. I didn't know if he would call there (so I guess you could say I wasn't sure if he was just a little bad or quite bad) and I didn't know if he would try to force me out if I checked to him on the turn with a hand like that.

BTW, this thinking could be way off (and that's one reason why I am posting...even though it is hard to talk about a read on a player when nobody else got to see him).

My thinking was that the villain had a flush draw and so I had to push on the turn to keep him from seeing the river card. I also thought there was some chance that he might bet all-in on the turn with a worse hand than mine (either a draw because he's not thinking about the side pot or more likely a hand like AT/AJ/AQ that he thinks might be good and he thinks he can push me off anything besides AA), though I really couldn't tell how likely this was or whether I was just being paranoid about this possibility. However, my push was a risky proposition, as my stack was almost 2/3 the size of the pot (which was enough to force out a spade draw or force it to call unprofitably) and MP could have a monster, plus some of the time SB has me beat (though I think he would check-raise me with most of the hands that beat me). BB is so bad that I am beating him over 95% of the time here (yes, he could be calling with two broadway cards because he is that clueless), so I don't consider him very relevant.

So I may have botched this hand pretty good, but should my plan on the turn and river be to check and call only small bets (say $100 size bets), but fold to a big bet from MP?

[sweetjazz]

Is the general consensus that I should be worried about a big hand sitting behind me and try to get to a cheap showdown?

I come from a limit background and so one thing I am trying to understand is when to watch out for being trapped, without becoming weak and giving up on too many big pots when I have the best hand. I have difficulty when the pot is big but my stack is also big, as I don't know what the principles are which should determine whether I should be using my stack to protect the pot and maximize my chances of winning it (something you always are looking to do in limit HE, though you're usually risking a lot less and you're only going to knock out weak draws) or whether I should be worried about being stacked off and being ready to get rid of my hand.

So what I really want to know is what should I thinking about to decide what my turn action is in the hand. The Bends gave me some things to think about, and if I perceived my opponent to be a good player, he suggests that I strongly consider trying to show down for cheap, because the only smooth calling hands would be monsters that have me in bad shape.

Anyway, any advice on what I should be thinking about, or even what I should have observing before this hand took place, would be very helpful.

This is the first time I have ever played full ring NL with a big stack. While that was nice to have and the players were so bad that I maintained a big stack despite the fact that I made several boneheaded plays. (It also helped that I didn't take any bad beats when I was in with the best of it.)