I am at the casino last night playing 1/2 NLHE as usual. I started with a $100 buyin and got to $150 and our table busted up. I get to my next table and I am card dead for the next hour and a half. I made a terrible hero call and got down to about 90 bucks. I start catching a few cards and work my way back to about $280.

I'm on the button and look down at AA. I get 3 limpers and raise to 7 which is my standard play with a big pckt pr. Flop is 8c2dQs. Villain(who has been caught big betting a bluff on at least 4 occasions) bets 10. I raise to 30 and he calls. The turn is Qd. Villain bets 22. I call. River is 7c. Villain goes all in for 40. Hero??


Second hand: AA in the cutoff. 2 limpers, I raise to 7. BB calls. 2 folds. BB is a weak passive player that calls way too often with weak hands and folds good draws(he has about $50 in front of him). Flop is 4cKcTd. BB checks, I bet $20. BB calls. Turn is Kd. BB pushes all in for $30. Hero??

Meh, I know you prob got tripped on both, but I think we call both for the price and make sure.

Hand 1: You've got AA on the button with 3 limpers, raise it up big to like $15. It'll look like a steal and it also makes the hand way easier to play. The 1/2 Live games I've played are very loose preflop, so raising to $7 with three limpers does nothing.

Hand 2: You just showed down aces (I assume you called), 2 limpers and you're still in late position, raise it up to $12-$15

At what 1/2 game do you play where you make it 7 after 3 limpers and get the majority of them to fold?

Remember, Aces play best against one opponent and not 4

Riase it up big preflop and these hands are much easier to play!

My thinking may be flawed but here it is. In these games, raising to 7 doesn't chase players out. It builds the pot and gets you in trouble. One of the weaknesses of my cash game has been not making enough money from my big hands. Usually because I over bet somewhere and push people out. Honestly, I'm not afraid to lose with big hands. I don't get mad when someone gets lucky against me playing cards that they shouldn't be. I have been at the table with the villain from the first hand on several occasions. He is an older man with a ton of money and he loves big pots. He makes very loose calls and then buys a lot of pots with big bets. He was the person that I wanted to keep in the pot. I didn't want to raise him out of the pot. I felt like I could push any callers out of the pot on the flop and make some money off of him. Especially with my position and my very tight table image. My main question in this hand is on bet sizing. At this point, I feel I got too greedy with the 30 dollar pot sweetening raise. But I am always reluctant to push in these situations. My plan was that if the board did not pair and I did get heads up with the villain, I was pushing the turn no matter what he did.

On the second hand, it really didn't matter because he had very few chips. I wanted to play the hand to get them all.

If you make it like 15 after three limpers (or more), one of them will almost always call, and you only want one of them to call when you have rockets.

A very very -EV live game.

Yes once you get a pot w/3+ people you begin having to take bet/fold lines w/AA instead of bet/call ones. Obviously that sucks, so you need to jack this up pf. That's the critical mistake in the hand IMO. Villain shouldn't have enough money left on the turn, never mind the river, for there to even be a remotely difficult decision (assuming we can get it in on the flop).

You win more with your big hands (especially AA) when you value bet hard. Raising to 7 builds the pot, but not in the way you want to... if you raise to 7 and all 3 limpers and the bb tag along, you have a nice pot of $35, but you're against 4 opponents. If you raise to $15 or more... and get one caller, you'll have a $37 pot (2 limpers who fold & blinds + $30) and a lot more equity!

This is good! It's the right mindset, but you're leaving money on the table, and in others stacks by not trying to get full value. Of course you don't just want to open shove with Aces, but again, pot odds are giving the limpers a great price to see a flop when you raise to 7.

Incorrect. I don't understand why this is such a common misconception. If you raise with AA you want as many callers as possible (you might start losing equity after something like 10 callers but practically speaking that statement is correct).

Against 1 player aces hold up something like 80% of the time

Against 3 players aces hold up like 50%

I think this is about right?

This is bleh thinking imo. If you were all in preflop against like 8 other people and you had aces that would be great because you would win more often than anyone else and it would be +EV. If you're in a hand against 4 people postflop with stacks remaining, you're only asking to put yourself in a situation where you are basically guessing if your aces are still any good. It's almost impossible to put 3 opponents on believable ranges if two people limp at 1/2, you make it 7, the BB calls, and the two limpers call (unless you have ridiculous impossible reads). They literally can have anything, therefore you cannot rule any particular hand out and are in a guessing game. If the flop comes J 8 6 , you can't rule any two pairs out, any sets out, any big draws out, anything. You're just basically going to bet and pray that every single person missed.

Seeing the flop with aces multiway is basically a set up hand waiting to happen, because you'll just never have any idea if you're any good.

'

Your equity is still great since it's 4way, but you're unlikely to ever stack multiple people. I'd rather have 80-20 equity to win against one person who might be apt to put in rather than let 4 people see the flop and then let one person stack me as a 56-44.

If you don't raise to 15-22 dollars here you should probably stop playing 1-2 live....you could get AA UTG, raise 20, and get 4 callers....raising 7 in your spot might as well be a limp in.

To the extent you're implying that it is always undesirable to be in the pot with AA if you're less than 50% to win, you're failing to recognize how you make money playing poker. The objective is not to maximize your chance of winning any given pot, it's to maximize the total amount of money you win over time. If our primary concern is only to take down the pot, then you would want as few callers as you could get. In fact, with that mindset, 0 callers would be optimal

But if the objective is maximizing profit, you want to make whatever play maximizes expectation. Surely you recognize that it can be correct to call a bet on the flop when you're less than 50% to win the hand if the pot is laying you the right price. This concept is really no different.

Your point is well taken. But my point is just that if you raise preflop with AA and you start getting irritated once the 3rd guy enters the pot behind you, you're probably failing to appreciate the nature of expectation. If the problem is that you cannot lay down AA post flop once you're beat, then fix THAT leak, but stop incorrectly valuing winning percentage over expectation.

I think you're misunderstanding and yet understanding at the same time. When you have AA, and have 5 opponents going to the flop, your hand actually becomes HEAVILY RIO. Not because you might be a small favorite or even a dog to win the pot 50 or more % of the time, but because you're going to get in situations where you have to basically GUESS what your opponent has on the flop. If you raise and get one caller, it's easier to play postflop than to play against 4 people, and thats a fact. There are VERY few times when even if the flop goes 3 or 4 way, that you're going to get action that you want from multiple people and be able to get it in good. If the flop comes 3-4 way and it doesn't contain an ace, you do not want action. You just don't, because generally that means the likelihood of you losing has increased heavily and you're usually beat, barring solid reads. You would HAVE to know that your opponent is going to get it in on a K T 8 board with KJ in a 5 way pot on the flop to consider it a good idea to get it in good with AA after 4 people see the flop, and then he still has to be at basically the bottom of his range for you to be ahead.

I'm not, but I'm sure even you can agree that it's better to be a heavily favorite to win over a small favorite? If you had a CHOICE, which you don't always have, surely you would take the 80-20 over then 56-44.

I was just about to edit my last post when I saw this one. I agree that post flop play is certainly much more difficult with numerous opponents and that this consideration certainly has merit. My only point was that it is a common error to value win percentage over expectation (an error which you clearly do not make). So to clarify, if you raise with AA preflop and start silently cursing your luck after the third caller because you are no longer greater than 50% to win the pot, you have a leak in your thinking. If you start cursing your luck because you know you're going to have a difficult time putting anyone on an accurate range post flop, that is perfectly acceptable. But that first post I responded to betrayed the former line of thought.

Well, this hypo is somewhat meaningless without more information. All things being equal, the answer is self apparent. But would you rather be a small favorite to win a pot with $10K in the middle or a huge favorite to win a pot with only $10 in it? This obviously goes back to my original point about the primary objective being the maximization of expectation. You obviously appreciate this fact, but not everyone does, as evidenced by the common erroneous attachment to 50%. I realize it was somewhat unclear but my suggestion to stop overvaluing win percentage was not directed specifically to you, it was more of a general observation.

I understand, I just didn't want to let it go if you were thinking it was great if you get 5 callers with aces, because although it's still +EV either way, it isn't very fun to have that happen to you, because you'll usually end up getting it in bad.

I dunno if KJ was saying it's better to play AA vs 1 person because it is simpler, or because of the EV/win percentage situation. I lean towards him thinking it was because it is easier to play than because he wants to be a bigger favorite.

I understand that the more that I raise, the fewer people that I have to compete against. But I can't overstate the fact that I wanted to keep the villain in the hand. Keep in mind, I had played for about an hour and a half on $8 because I got no hands that would play. My image was that of a very tight player. If I raise this pot to $15, I really believe that I would have taken down the 8-10 bucks already in the pot. Again, I am trying to learn the right ways to make more money out of my big hands. The last time that I raised to $7.00 with AA, in nearly the same situation, I made $185 from the hand. With the hand that the villain had, there is no question that if I raise to $15, I lose him. I discussed this hand with my son today. He has played a lot of pots with the villain and he agrees that I should raise to 15-20 here. When I explained the whole hand to him, he agreed that raising to 20 would probably have pushed Peanut(the villain) out. My son feels that if I had pushed the flop, Peanut would have thought that I had AQ and probably would have folded.

Listen, to win the hand, the $7 bet was incorrect. IMO, though, to maximize profits, in this situation with a totally correct and experienced read on the villain who is prone to gamble and bluff big, the pf bet is correct. At this point, where I really feel like I messed up was not pushing the flop. The $20 more to Peanut was nothing with his Q4o. The flop was where I should have taken my profits knowing full well that peanut could easily be playing a Q. In fact, I thought there was a strong possibility that he had a Q. But I could not fold for $22 on the turn. And against Peanut, and because I had seen him make this kind of bluff when me missed, on several occasions, I felt like the pot was big enough that I had to call the river. I just let my desire to win a big pot win over what I knew in my gut was a bad beat.

So what you're sayin is, you didnt want to raise him because he likes big pots and you didn't want to scare him away from a big pot?

Do you expect to lose the other limpers as well? If so, then make this play with a lot more hands than just AA.

I think there's too much focus on results here.

We don't know that he has Q4o when we raise to $7. Isn't most of his range going to call $12? Because we happened to hit the bottom of his range this time, doesn't make this the best raise size in general.

When we raise the flop against his 5-outer, we don't know that he's going to catch on the turn. His calling the flop raise is a good thing and our bet sizing is a success.

We don't know if he's bluffing at the end. We played the hand with a style specifically to give him an opportunity to bluff. This time he wasn't. That doesn't make it a mistake to pay him off.

I pretty much agree with Nobbir.

The thing is when you get three or four callers, your potential ev is lower because they're not all going to put stacks in post flop. All that happens is you end up getting the money in against the 1 or 2 hands out of 3 or 4 or 5 that hit the flop hardest. And as someone already said, a raise to $15 and 1 caller is the same pot size on the flop as a raise to 7 and 3 callers. Plus easy poker is profitable poker.

I read through the whole thread but all I really care about is the bolded above for now. That line of thinking is just 100% wrong and will just KILL you. I know it has been thoroughly discussed but it needs to be discussed even more.

There is not a single time when doing this is going to be correct. You are just inviting 8 people to crack your JJ-AA every damn hand. Don't play your big pairs fancy. Be raising 4x + 1x for every limper...MINIMUM... One guy said raise to $15 makes it look like a steal...NO!!! That should be a standard raise...Making it 20-25 makes it look like a steal, and you'd maybe even get ONE call from someone out of that.

If your logic for raising to $7 was to keep "peanut" in, then that is a horrible line of thinking as well...You are pricing other people in just to keep one donk in. Ok, so you may be able to beat him, but now you have the other 98237498 people to worry about. Just bet, bet, bet.

You are the type of person that seems to sit there and let everyone price themselves in and give them the proper odds to chase whatever they are chasing and there is NO way that this style is profitable in the long run.

Raise more (not just your "standard 7") with your premiums, and get max value.



Those two comments don't go together well. If he likes big pots...raise more.




Bad thinking...Don't raise less just to keep one guy in.


Don't be results oriented.


and

Don't make sense when together.



I will now leave this for Ryan, the attention-whore, so he can confirm I am probably right and then start a fight with someone.

Fargopoker is right about everything. OP, play me hu4rollz.

Now you need to post a dick-waving graph so you can hump this thread into submission and prove you are the so-called FCP STRAT KING

looll. That's why I love you.

ROFL

I still lean towards disagreeing with this and would like others to chime in/explain this to me. Obviously the difficulty of post flop play has to be considered, but I still think reluctance to fold AA once you're beat is a separate issue. So let's ignore that consideration for the time being.

Now obviously there are pathological examples where you're going to be way ahead even when you see the flop with several opponents. For instance, AA has 96% equity if your four opponents hold 22, 22, 33, and 33.

But even if we consider what we can characterize as more likely scenarios, AA still often wins unimproved even against numerous opponents. Lots of our opponents entering the pot are likely to have a big ace or a pair and if the flop pairs the board and no one hits a set, everyone now has a very long way to go to catch up.

Since this isn't the first time this concept has ever been discussed, i've borrowed some #s I found elsewhere.

If you could take AA and put it up against any number of random hands, what would the optimal number be? Let's have each player put 100 in the pot for the sake of simplicity.

AA vs. 1 random hand: 85.2% x 200 = 170.4
AA vs. 2 random hands: 73.4% x 300 = 220.2
AA vs. 3 random hands: 63.9% x 400 = 255.6
AA vs. 4 random hands: 55.9% x 500 = 279.5
AA vs. 5 random hands: 49.2% x 600 = 295.2
AA vs. 6 random hands: 43.6% x 700 = 305.2
AA vs. 7 random hands: 38.8% x 800 = 310.4
AA vs. 8 random hands: 34.7% x 900 = 312.3
AA vs. 9 random hands: 31.1% x 1000 = 311.0

So, where is the spot when adding a caller becomes bad for our expectation? Not until the tenth caller. Up until that point every additional caller was making us money.

Leaving aside the consideration of what to do on the flop, which I think is a whole different issue, what am I missing here? Thanks in advance.

Nothing. Solid post, IMHO.

Simple. The goal of aces is to raise enough to get as many people to call still...a balance of both.

Its like this, would you rather see 5 ppl at $7 a hand or make it $15 and get 3 callers?

Or you could be like me, raise to $17 with TT and get 6 callers and flop quads. That works even better...just sayin.

Fargo is right as is NoBBiR

I was for raising big for two reason

1. get value from your big hands
2. thin the field some


To rjkdb8, I don't curse when a third or more call when I have AA, I was just trying to help the OP see that you need to raise more with premium cards for the reasons that have been discussed at length!

The only problem is that this equity requires us to get to showdown, which is going to be near impossible to do correctly in a multiway pot. When you're up to 3-5 opponents and one of them leads at you or c/r the flop (assuming you didnt hit a set), a lot of the times youre going to either call down as a huge dog or get bluffed off the best hand.

What if occasionally we win a pot large enough to more than make up for all the times that we call as a dog or get bluffed off the best hand? Will this happen often enough to make the scenario profitable for us on average over time?

For the record, I understood what you were saying, it was just worded kind of funky, which can lead to people misinterpreting what you implied.

I don't think so personally, although I'm not sure how to back that up. I just don't think we will stack an opponent with AA multiway as often as HU.

so you're saying to limp or min raise aces? I mean, you'll get one or two folds and then be up against the optimal 7 callers right?

So you're saying to just open the pot by moving in with aces? I mean, you'll get everyone to fold and be up against the optimal 0 callers right?

I'm saying my intuition tells me that we should be raising only for value preflop and not to "thin the field." I am also saying that I am not certain that I am correct but so far I haven't been convinced otherwise.

You should be raising what is a standard raise for all your other hands. And you should be playing optimally anyways, which is generally a pot-sized raise.

Therefore if you are playing optimally with all your other hands, raising the pot with your AA should be accomplishing your objective of maximizing profits for every player that calls, whether only 1 person picks up a callable hand or 5.

Yes, if the whole table calls, then whatever, proceed cautiously, but odds are they all won't so this is really a non-issue.

In fact, this whole debate is silly and you guys are pretty much arguing the same thing.

Don't do anything "special" because you have a monster, just keep playing your fucking game.

You raise for value. You play EVERY hand for value, whether to maximize your value when you win and minimize the losses.

But the thing is, raising less to keep more players in (Since your theory is that more people helps to maximize your EV) is wrong. It makes your game exploitable.

This has turned into a stupid thread.

I never said anything about raising less to keep more players in the hand. Or min raising. Or limping. The theory is not that more people in the pot is good, it is that more money in the pot is good.

In the calculation that I posted above where everyone puts $100 in the pot, pretend that happened at $100NL. I'm saying that once we make that raise, we are rooting for all of our opponents to call.



I just wanted to make that clarification and now I will be quiet. I am not trying to be purposefully difficult, I was really just genuinely interested in understanding/exploring this.

Well then it really just came off as that was the play you advocated making.

I guess it just wasn't clear enough to understand for me.

Probably my fault, oh well.



Yes the more people in an all-in situation when you hold AA, the better. But that is such a non-issue that it really isn't practical except in theory.

Fargopooker is wrong

Speaking strictly of hot & cold performance, there are some hands that prefer as many additional opponents as possible. AA still kicks all of their butts. When folks say, "JTs plays better against many opponents," they mean that, given JTs and at least one callers, additional callers improve that player's equity. They don't mean that given lots of callers, it's better to have JTs than AA. At least, they shouldn't mean that.

This thread is making my head hurt.

And I mean a lot.

According to most statistics that I have seen, I was 48,000/1 to get AA two hands in a row. There's some debate over the exact number but regardless, it's pretty rare. I wonder what the stats would be that I would get those two hands and lose 80% of the chips that I had. It was a perfect storm scenario that I get the table bluffer in the first hand and the short stack in the next. And I had position on both and had both covered in each hand. I hear people say all the time "I hate getting aces." I hear "9T is my favorite hand." AA is still my favorite hand. I'll take it any day over any other hand. No matter how you play them, in the long run, we will all win more holding AA than we'll lose with them. Or at least we should. There are some people that feel the proper way to play them is to just shove with them. To me, that is playing scared and loses more value than it protects. I don't guess it is any worse to lose a huge pot to a set, with AA, than it is to lose a huge pot to a straight with a set. I saw someone post on here that we shouldn't be looking for right and wrong decisions but optimal plays. I guess that applies more to the monster hands than it does most other hands. I definitely didn't play this particular hand as well as it should have been but my only real regret is that I didn't push the flop.

Oh and in the second hand, yeah, he had a K. This genius went on to state that if I had bet more before the flop, he would have folded. I told him, I didn't want him to fold and thanks for the free poker lesson. Yeah, I was a little tilted by then.

I don't think it's 48,000 to 1. It's only 216-1 to get aces, so getting them back to back is just 432-1, since past outcomes don't effect the second deal.

When all the chips go in, both players usually have big hands/draws, and someone is headed for a cooler/bad beat.
That's the game.


EDIT: what I mean is that, honestly, very little of your profit comes from getting AA.
It comes from playing the other 221 hands better than your opponent does.

I think you need to multiply instead of add.