Live 5/5 NLHE at Foxwoods

[sniperd]

This is my first time posting here, but I like the advice I have seen and would like an opinion about this hand. I recently played my first live casino NLHE game at Foxwoods. It has $5 $5 blinds, and a minimum of $200 for a buy in. I have played quite a bite of Party Poker $100 NL and do well, but really wanted to give the live game a try.

I had played for about an hour, and felt OK at the table. I am UTG+1 and get our favorite hand AA, and decide to give it a shot with 6 BB up to $30. I have $600, and players have between $400 and a few grand. This was a little more then the typical raise hand, but I was hoping for a little action, well, I get 5 callers.. uggg…

Flop comes 9 7 2 all rainbow, and I bet $50 into the $150 pot, trying to represent a little weakness, hoping somebody comes back at me with their 10 10, J J, and the like. Well, a newer player that looks pretty excited makes it $150 to go, and it folds back to me. I ask him how much he has behind and he has about $200 more, so he is pretty much pot committed (right?). I feel he will go all in with me if I move on him now, so I figure, it will cost me $350 to be going after a $500 pot if he gets all in (I think my math is right here).

My read on him is that he wants to get the money in now, if I knew he was a really good player, it screams set, if he is a bad player, it screams 10 10, A9, etc. Well, since his body language is SO obvious I am leaning towards novice, I got the flop I wanted, I got the action I wanted, I think I am at least ahead 50% of the time here, and I think I am getting 1.7 to 1 on my money(right?), so I better do what I planned, I move all in, he calls.

He has 2 2… set, crap. Well, long story short, I river the A and take it down, yippee for me. It’s nice to deal a bad beat once and a while. Of course I got very lucky here, but I question my play. My question is, just purely on money (reads aside) is this a good move on my part in a NL Live game? Was the pot right, did I bet enough pre, should I have dumped to the raise? Would a player typically make the plays my opponent did with hands I can beat? On Party, I would get the money in automatically the way they play, but I am planning a Vegas Trip and I don’t want to be the sucker at the table. Thanks in advance for all your replies!

[Garland]

Welcome to the board, sniperd.

I play online and live. I would say it would probably be the correct thing to do online most of the time,

However, there's one additional factor in live play: table image and tells. I don't like making assumptions, but let's suppose you played for an hour and folded everything in sight. People will take notice of this, especially live. When you raise you're representing a big overpair or at the very least AK, AQ or KQ.

When the person raises you on the flop from $50 to $150, I would give serious consideration to studying the player. Would he do this with a good nine, an overpair himself, a straight draw even? I'm a pretty good study of character, so if I'm reading the player's body expression correctly, he has hit the flop and hit it hard and this would be a good fold.

After he raises, see if you can do some time indicating your hand without explicitly telling them you have a big pair. The longer you take to think, the more it will become obvious you have AA, KK, QQ or JJ. If after that time the person is still looking pretty confident, I would fold because I don't think he cares about your damned AA. But if you do fold, don't you dare show your hand or else people will take liberal shots at you.

Garland

[sniperd]

That really is a good idea. I do play in a few live home games everyweek, but how I gauge my reads has been dependent on how I have seen players in the past. But you make a really good point on waiting to see if they are still confident after a pause, very smart. I really do appreciate your response, thank you very much!

[schwza]

(Disclaimer: I only play online). I think Garland's advice could be good in general, but you would have to have a very very good read to make this fold. Someone cold-calling 6 BB with 22 may not even be aware of the difference in strength between KK and a set of 2's - I think it'd be tough to read the difference in his/her body language. (But maybe you can... if so, more power to you.)

Assuming the opponent is smart enough to lay down 97, you fear only 9 hands (3 combinations each or 22, 77, 99) and there are a lot of hands you want to be all-in against (if you assume s/he'd play this way with A9 and TT-KK, that's 12+24 = 36 hands). If the bad guy's cards are face down on the table, I'm pushing here.

On a seperate note, how would you compare Party to Foxwoods? I've only played the 25 and 50 at Party but I'd like to try the Foxwoods game after I get some more online practice.

[Garland]

Yeah,

I can read body language pretty well in person. That is to your distinct advantage when playing no limit live. Sometimes it's really obvious you're beat. All you have to do is follow through with your instincts and do the right thing...fold. Here's an example of when I played no limit live (the players are so weak, it's unbelievable). The structure is 1-1-2 (1 on the button) and 4 to go. I have $100 and the raiser has me covered. There's a caller or two, and I limp for 4 with K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] in early position, and the guy to my left raises to 13. Well, there's a stone caller and the other two limpers call, and I decide since I close the action and know how to play this well after the flop, I'll call for 2 pair value, flush, straight value or trips. I actually probably should have just mucked it. I didn't, but that's neither here nor there.

Flop comes:

K [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].

I flopped top pair, but since I'm in early position I check to see the reaction of the original raiser (as well as the other players). He goes all-in immediately with the biggest stack on the table (or close to it). Everyone folds and it's to back me. I look left and see a confident man erect in his seat not caring that the flop contains a king and that someone could have it. Only explanation: He has the King himself...with an A behind it. Or he has AA himself.

I take another 5 seconds and muck. He rakes in the pot and he flashes the predicted K. I'll bet my life the other card is an A. God, that felt good.

Garland

[turnipmonster]

I like limp reraising with AA UTG. raising is great too.

after 5 people call you, things aren't looking so good. on the flop you bet small so you can reraise or possibly fold depending on your read and the action, and then you went with your read and got the chips in the center. good play. you happened to be wrong, but oh well. the beauty of poker is sometimes you can be wrong and still suck out. unfortunately this guy didn't have a lot of money. try to suck out on people that have a bigger stack in the future [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

that said, AA is an easy hand to overplay after the flop, especially in big bet. getting significant action after a big preflop raise by you usually spells trouble.

--turnipmonster

[sniperd]

I would say the Foxwoods game the playing $100 NLHE on Party are the difference between chess and checkers. I do very well playing on Party Poker, the plays often seems transparent to me online, and you CAN get callers all in pre when you have AA. In the 5 hours of live play at Foxwoods I saw no all in's pre, people were raising 'correctly' (4 to 6 bb with good hands) and there would be the occasional 10 bb raise pre that everybody would fold to. Players in general were very crafty, slow playing, protecting hands, not paying off winners, betting just so pot odds to draw would be wrong, check raising when weakness was sensed, etc. I would say, that if 20 hands were played, 1 would make it to a show down, almost all action completed on the flop or pre flop, this makes it hard to judge where people play their cards at. That being said, it was a good time, but I think I will stick to Party Poker to make money!

I guess the only other thing I didn't like is paying time for rake, it's $12 an hour, and the comp you earn is $1 an hour, seems like a rip off, but I don't know, maybe this is average.

So, overall, it was a fun learning experience, that made me think a lot about how 'real' no-limit players play, and will certainly help my game on-line.

-SniperD

[TomCollins]

Calling 6BBs with a deep stack is not even close to a mistake. But at party where you only have 10BBs to begin with...

[sniperd]

I shouldn't have put the correctly in quotes, I really meant that it was correct for them to raise that amount. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[turnipmonster]

$6 time charge for a 5-5 game is average, I wouldn't imagine they would rake big bet games anywhere, although I guess they do online. I much prefer paying time to paying a rake.

--turnipmonster