Thursday, March 29, 2007

AA and position

Not all no limit is played with a cap on buyin size and when there isn't a cap you often have situations where the stack sizes are very large. There's a thread on 2+2 where this is the case.
Seat 1: Mjlivingston ($2,425.50)
Seat 2: pr1nnyraid ($6,158.50)
Seat 3: Klausen ($4,726.50)
Seat 4: truestthoughts ($2,213), is sitting out
Seat 5: Ph1LLeD1NGUE ($1,900)
Seat 6: tango1x ($1,950)
tango1x posts the small blind of $10
Mjlivingston posts the big blind of $20


It's a six handed table, but only 5 active players. But the stacks are fairly deep, particularly since the hand develops into a confrontation between Seat 2 and Seat 4.
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pr1nnyraid [As Ac]
pr1nnyraid raises to $70
Klausen raises to $240
Ph1LLeD1NGUE folds
tango1x folds
Mjlivingston folds
pr1nnyraid raises to $850
Klausen calls $610

The question being asked is about how to play the flop (we'll get to that in a minute. We need to look at the preflop play first because all subsequent play starts with what happens preflop and you need to anticipate future action when you play preflop.

Being first with AA when the stacks are deep is a tricky situation. You don't want to go anywhere but you don't want to get your foot halfway into the grave. In this hand you're only 5 handed, so the risk of being first isn't even close to what it is when you're at a full table. But it's still a critical situation to consider.

One important characteristic we're told by the hero is that he has an Insane image. That means that aggresive play isn't really going to do much in the way of giving away your hand and he should probably play a very strong hand straightforwardly. So his coming in with a raise is probably the right thing. The other little tidbit is that the other guy is somewhat nitty.

Without that Insane image I think it often pays to be a little more tricky, often limping with AA looking for a reraise. Whether or not you should do that 5 handed depends partly on what your image is and partly what the aggresive tendencies of the table are. You don't want to limp with AA and then have nobody raise.

If you do limp and nobody raises, if you end up with one or two players limping behind you then you might want to think about just giving it up on the flop if things look iffy. Don't fall in love with AA if the pot is small.

With the raise, raise, raise again that happened here though the pot got pretty big. This is usually what you want with AA but not when you're going to be first after the flop.

The flop is what prompted the thread.

[Qd 4h Tc]

What to do?

I like checking.

The hero thinks that JJ is the bottom of the other guy's range of possible hands. Which means the only two hands you'll really get action from if you bet is KK or QQ. A check will probably still get you action from KK and if you check he might be likely to underplay QQ, putting you on something like AK or 77 and wanting to suck you in.

What do you think?

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